Most complex superglue surgery in my life. Mending a cracked leg sleeve on a tripod. Had to glue 3 shards (still imperfect) and get glue in crack in front, then apply a g clamp while it dries, since it’s in tension and would pull apart.
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This won’t be perfect but should solve the soft play in one leg that makes leveling hard. Should hopefully get telescope alignment work better. Plan B, call maker for replacement sleeve. Plan C, 3d print one 😱.
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I’m making myself do more repair/maintenance these days partly because I think the world needs to return to a repair over replace ethos, partly for fun (replacing the sleeve is the best move here, and replacing the tripod is probably what’s actually possible)
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Gluing a complex fracture in a plastic structural component is simply not something the world economy wants consumer humans to do. This thing is made in China and getting the part probably means an hour in the phone and months waiting for it to be shipped across the world. Silly.
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In a better world, 3d printable CAD files would be available to any buyer. The most environment friendly solution here is 3d printing this at home. You’d fix the problem without shipping a small package from China OR sending an otherwise perfectly fine tripod to the landfill.
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In general the world needs to be a lot more in situ repairable. We’ve reached the extreme of mass production, process industry concentration and minimal initial unit cost economics.
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Replying to
design for durability
design for repair
design for reuse
design for recycling
vs now none of the above
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That's what fell out of my head from a bit back prompted by vgr. It is becoming an engineering sub- or para-discipline.
See ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/explore/the-ci
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Yeah, I've seen the ellen macarthur work... one of my gigs involves similar ideas/problems. It's a very hard sell though, since it goes against a very strong economic grain.

