just smashed my dad's old macintosh G4 cube to pieces by moving the shelf it was on without taking it off first. AMA but no i only cried a little (so far)
just kidding, i didnt actually cry. but i feel like i should have. man, why didn't i move it first?
think the g4 cube is repairable? epoxy maybe… not sure if it’ll be strong enough though. thing is dang heavy. still don’t know where most of the shards went
@sabbatical Depending on what kind of plastic it is, I think you'd have better luck solvent-welding it than epoxying it.
@sabbatical per Wikipedia, it's made of plexiglass, so you can just get a tin of acetone from the hardware store. That's good news; some plastics require nastier or harder-to-source solvents.
@khird plexiglass! hm well then i wonder if that’ll work for the CRT monitor base which is also cracked. wonder if it would be a strong enough mend for the weight
@sabbatical Worth a shot. Looking at the picture I think the fracture will mostly be under compressive stress when the computer's upright; that is to say, the weight of the machine will tend to press the two faces of each fracture together rather than pulling them apart. Can't say from that pic whether that looks to be true of the monitor as well.
It might not be invisible but I'd guess it'd be structurally adequate.
@khird the monitor base is just one clean break (unlike the shattered cube casing) but it does look like maybe a spot with multidirectional force. this post suggests it’s made of polycarbonate: https://www.applefritter.com/node/5273
@sabbatical Wikipedia says acrylic, not polycarbonate - and I tend to think that's likelier, just because it's a quarter century old and it looks way too clean for lexan (look at how hazy old Nalgene bottles etc. get), plus lexan is notably shatter-resistant, and the evidence suggests that's not true of the article you have.
If it is lexan, you probably need something more exotic like dichloromethane, which both is harder to source and demands MUCH more attention to safe practices regarding inhalation, skin contact, etc.
@khird ah, i do recall folks selling replacement bases on ebay were calling them acrylic. overall it is pretty strong stuff — the way the base got the break in it was because a bunch of boxes were inadvertently piled on top and put a ton of extra weight on the already-heavy monitor, so likely wouldnt have happened normally. i'll try to remember to take a photo so you can see the way it broke.
@khird how do you know so much about what works with what, btw? very cool, i’d love to have this sort of in-depth knowledge on physical properties of things and what works well for what
@sabbatical Thanks! I'm the son of two chemists, and I broke my fair share of plastic toys as a kid. My dad would use the repairs as an opportunity to teach me.
@khird very cool! wonder if anyone’s written a laypersons guide to this stuff. maybe you should! :) not wanting to use the wrong stuff on the wrong stuff is a huge barrier to tackling tasks like this usually — for me and for many others, i’m sure. for good reason, it seems!