Plastic repair

Fridges, all of them afaict have rubbish inside fittings made of the cheapest plastics which in my experience break and make the fridge useless long before the thing stops working. I have in the past tried to mend the clear and the white plastics with other bits of plastic and solvents and adhesives without much success.

Pieces of wood, screws and PVA is my best advice.

TW

How strong is the foam? I suspect that a structurally sound but ugly solution is to put a couple of screws through the side of the milk shelf into the foam.

I have had some success repairing fridge plastics with hotmelt glue... you can build up fillets of it to gain extra support and strength.

Blob of expanding foam, assuming you have some that hasn't solidified? Cut to shape with a breadknife and painted.

I've got a similar problem which I haven't fixed yet since the only sure way I can think of seems to be ridiculously over-engineered for the purpose. I'm still thinking it through but this is what I'm up to so far.

Grab some thin-ish flat thermoplastic sheet. I'm thinking of the packaging for toothbrushes, SD cards and the like.Make a male and female mould the shape and size of the broken button. I've got loads of old scraps of plywood to do that with and I'll probably build it up with some Milliput then trim it down to size.

Heat up the plastic and mould it into shape making sure you have a nice, large flange all the way round the button.

When it's cooled down use contact adhesive to glue the large plastic flange onto the inside of the fridge door - making sure the button lines up, of course.

And yes - since you ask - I have got all day to fiddle around with things like that :-)

Nick

but what to screw it to? There's nothing that would have anything like enough strength to rely on a screw fixing or 2.

NT

zero

they wouldn't even screw in, there's no strength to it at all.

NT

I can't see any hope that 2 very small blobs of that would hold a milk shelf.

NT

I didn't think there was room for a flange, but will go & look later. If there is that might work.

NT

I'm guessing that sort of plastic is only about 0.5mm thick so I imagine there'll be some tolerance in the parts.

Nick

Glue a piece of plastic over the rest of the flat bit to distribute the weight. It has to be clean though, and be careful some adhesives do not like the low temperatures. I did this many years ago on an old Toshiba fridge it lasted for over 10 years till the fridge died.

I think I used contact adhesive. Evo stick or similar, and a piece of Perspex about 1/8th inch thick and about three inches long and 1 inch deep. OK so it was not beautiful but the shelf was fine! Brian

Hmm. The only time this happened to me, there was some strength to screw into. I can only think that you are going to have to attach to the plastic liner, but it is definitely a problem.

I suppose that you could screw through the side of the shelf into the plastic liner with some coarse self-tapping screws?

Dig a hole in the foam and fill it with body filler?

You're right - it was a silly idea. I've managed to do some surprisingly tough things with it by knocking it back a few times before it goes off completely. But it's probably not worth risking it with a couple of big bottles of milk :-)

Screw through the 'tin' from the outside!

Update: Got a piece of plastic to shape (tight fit) and used an epoxy glue which appears to have worked.

I've not done mine yet, but plan to use ms polymer sealant to form a replacement block in situ after scraping the foam back so the sealant can get behind it.

We need a wiki section on this

NT