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PowerBook 160 help (broken hinge mount)

techknight

Well-known member
Well there isnt anything left of the posts, they have all crumbled away leaving only the jagged remains on the base.

Anyway, Where to get solvents? only thing around here is lowes and home depot is here too but its a haul.

 

techknight

Well-known member
I guess I have to experiment with acetone and old pieces from leftover powerbook parts. Problem is, I have to leave the brass fittings and etc in place because theres nothing left, its all crumbled and busted away, so ill have to melt the plastic as a slop in acetone, and brush it in place.

Problem is, What brush? arnt brushes plastic too?

 

techknight

Well-known member
I am most likely going to do it this way:

http://www.1000rr.net/forums/lounge/56168-do-yourself-abs-repairs-cheap-solution-fixing-fairings-2.html

Only problem is, I know using acetone or other solvents for welding is a problem because it creates air bubbles in the plastic as it hardens and drys. Problem with that, its in the hinge area so that can weaken it enough to re-break you think?

Also what brushes or spout style bottles would be ok with acetone sludge? Almost need 3D printers to extrude new posts. And just use ABS glue to insert the post onto the original plasic, and use a bit of acetone to soften the replacement post to insert the brass ring. That would be ideal.

 

mcdermd

Well-known member
The only way I've done this before was to take what I could of the old bits of the threaded socket and lightly superglue them in place. I then scored the area around it with an xacto knife. I made a rectangular form as large as would fit inside the empty space around the standoff before filling it with JB Weld. After fully curing, I filed and fitted the JB block to fit snug with the hinge.

I had to rebuild the bezel side also as the cylindrical area had cracked out. With that side, I completely filled it, then used a drill press to recreate the hole. It has been nice and solid since but admittedly, I've also been rather ginger with it too.

 

Paralel

Well-known member
I'd be rather careful with dichloromethane, it's not particularly nasty, but it's certainly not a friendly substance. You can't really work with much of it unless you're in a very well ventilated space or a fume hood.

 

OleLila

Well-known member
Here is a success story with pictures as of 2018. https://imgur.com/gallery/xlJQgIW#VDMwwrW

Further caution/heads up for beginners out there. When you remove the 2 screws under the the caps and take the front bezel off, the two screws you just removed ARE 50% of the hinge anchor. Do not open or close the lid/move the hinges (unless there is remarkably little resistance) once you have removed the bezel as the remaining 2 anchor points will snap (shatter maybe a more appropriate term) very easily. 

 

PB145B

Well-known member
Cool! I’m curious to see how this holds up long term. I’d also like to see the inside again after a few months of use to see if it looks like anything is starting to break again.

 
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Paralel

Well-known member
That hinge design is similar to a few PC laptop designs that I have worked with. Why people ever thought hinges like that were a good idea is beyond me.

 

PB145B

Well-known member
That hinge design is similar to a few PC laptop designs that I have worked with. Why people ever thought hinges like that were a good idea is beyond me.
I agree. As much as I love the PB 100 series, the hinge mount design is terrible.

 

OleLila

Well-known member
Here is my progressive repair of one of the two broken hinges on a PB 160. This is JB weld. It is a game of less than millimeters to get these to line up. It was difficult even using the remains of the shattered support. The pictures are from the first attempt. I did heap up the JB Weld, but it flattened some during the initial drying. I used a dremmel to shave away the JB weld so the hinge would fit. It was not a quick process...shave, try hinge, find resistance, shave, repeat. In the pictures with the hinge screwed on, you can see that the right post is a little off...I got a screw in, but it broke fairly promptly.

On the second try (not pictured). I coated the screw and the back of the hinge with olive oil, then, carefully keeping the oil off the post, I screwed the post onto the hinge, then put the JB weld down and pressed the hinge into place and screwed on the good side to hold it in place for drying. I was very careful with replacing the LCD, etc but so far so good. Also,the unbroken posts were shored up with some JB weld while there , but even in doing this, I had to dremmel a lot away of that JB Weld that had just been put down to get the hinge back on.

Thanks to Jannai for the bright screen (capped).

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Together.jpg

 

Jinnai

Well-known member
Oh, does it work better than before? That's great to hear!

Impressive job on the hinges! I have many laptops with damaged hinges, but I've never tried a proper repair. Once there was a conspicuously lacking metal bracket - there never was one there but there clearly was space for one - so I cut one out of sheet metal, and it served to spread the tension across the lid instead of focusing it on right where the hinge was. Horribly bad design thats guaranteed to fail when the plastics age a few years.

The other time I didn't feel like messing with JB weld (I've never used it) so I used a Dremel to modify the hinge so that it was looser and put less tension on the plastics. Don't worry, it wasn't a vintage laptop, just a poorly designed Lenovo from the '10s, but yeah it made it rather floppy then.

 

PB145B

Well-known member
Here is my progressive repair of one of the two broken hinges on a PB 160. This is JB weld. It is a game of less than millimeters to get these to line up. It was difficult even using the remains of the shattered support. The pictures are from the first attempt. I did heap up the JB Weld, but it flattened some during the initial drying. I used a dremmel to shave away the JB weld so the hinge would fit. It was not a quick process...shave, try hinge, find resistance, shave, repeat. In the pictures with the hinge screwed on, you can see that the right post is a little off...I got a screw in, but it broke fairly promptly.

On the second try (not pictured). I coated the screw and the back of the hinge with olive oil, then, carefully keeping the oil off the post, I screwed the post onto the hinge, then put the JB weld down and pressed the hinge into place and screwed on the good side to hold it in place for drying. I was very careful with replacing the LCD, etc but so far so good. Also,the unbroken posts were shored up with some JB weld while there , but even in doing this, I had to dremmel a lot away of that JB Weld that had just been put down to get the hinge back on.

Thanks to Jannai for the bright screen (capped).

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OleLila, thank you for posting about this! I just bought some epoxy today, and I’ve got some broken back casings to experiment with, so hopefully I can successfully repair one! The original back casing for my 170 desperately needs repair, so I’m going to start with that one first (I’ve put a different, cosmetically worse, but structurally better back case on my 170 for now).

 

digitalrampage

Well-known member
OleLila, thank you for posting about this! I just bought some epoxy today, and I’ve got some broken back casings to experiment with, so hopefully I can successfully repair one! The original back casing for my 170 desperately needs repair, so I’m going to start with that one first (I’ve put a different, cosmetically worse, but structurally better back case on my 170 for now).
I myself have just tried two part epoxy on my 145B and so far so good. I need to try on some of my more destroyed machines though and see about building up the lugs in the right place when they are destroyed.

 

Papichulo

Well-known member
One thing i did with a powerbook 170 and a IBM thinkpad with stiff hinges is take the spring out of one of the hinges and loosen the hinges using a plyers now only one side has a spring in the hinge holding the screen and other side is free. Just dont loosen the spring hinge to much. 

 

Jinnai

Well-known member
I've done that too, sometimes they're just ridiculously tight and break the plastics unreasonably 

 

GregorHouse

Well-known member
I've made a 3D printed hinge fix for both PB100 series and PB500 series. It was all posted in an another thread, I leave the link here:




 
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MikeatOSX

Well-known member
Hi, I was successful today with a PowerBook 170.

I have three of them, all with one or two broken hinge mounts. 

Today I used the cover of a dead PB 145B, equipped it with the PB 170 hinges. I put little MoS2 Oil on the hinges and cleaned them. The active matrix display of PB 170 fits and now - I hope - it will live a bit longer. 

 
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