I’m working on tearing down and repairing my wife’s iron (this one here: https://www.oliso.com/smartiron/) and it has these cool feet that “automagically” deploy when you let go of it by using your hand capacitance.
Well, it took a bit of a tumble off the table, and afterwards when you release the handle instead of the feet deploying it makes sad robot noises.
This part was damaged, HAAS Domino for scale:
From the feel of it, I think the plastic is glass fiber reinforced (it scratches when you try to scrape on it) and it looks like it was molded onto the metal rod. The rod looks like some stainless, and since it’s maybe a 1/4" from the heating element I’m thinking the plastic is some sort of high temp stuff.
Now the question is, how do I fix it? I would try super glue as a first try, but it’s high temp and I’m afraid super glue may release as the temps it will be exposed to (obviously, the iron causes steam rapidly, so it’s well above 200F).
Should I try to machine out multiple parts and then weld them together or should I play with some 4 jaw chuck madness to get the cam portion done?
I think I’ve got enough skill to do it in three parts (the drive dogs on the roughly penny sized diameter, a carefully sized diameter shaft which rides in a channel for driving the first leg, and then the short rod to connect up to the larger rod) and then weld them all together.
I’d love to CAD it out and 3D print it, but I think it will be too high temp for ABS and I know it will be too high temp for PLA. Also, this area does have steam and water ingress, so it’s not exactly a good place to use plastic that doesn’t have some sort of strengthen like glass fiber IMO. Also, on the 3D printing camp they’ll be finding a way to affix it to the steel rod without using superglue.
Other options on the table are bin the iron (which is sad as it’s been serving my wife well until it failed) or convert it to a non-magic model and just use an iron stand (I’d rather bin it than admit failure jk).
@procterc, @TBJK, @Chris_Wischkowsky, @hon1nbo or any other Machine Shop peeps, I’d love some advice on manufacturing.
