I made my WP-34S (30b) usable!

[Dave Britten]

(01-26-2018 04:08 PM)jebem Wrote:  Interesting idea.

I use the hot glue gun to fix wiring n the walls from time to time.
I was not sure if the hot glue would really stick strongly enough to the calculator PCB in order to resist the continued key pressings, so I never tried.
I will test it on one of my next repairs and see how it goes.

I have been using stronger adhesives on these keyboards, like Araldite fast cure variant. It takes more time to cure than just a few seconds on hot glue, and of course it will be much harder to undo the rivets later on if we need to do another repair.

Once you've removed the mushroom tops of the heat stakes, the hot glue makes an excellent replacement. It doesn't have to bond with the PCB, rather it has to bond with the tip of the plastic stake, and spread out a bit over the PCB to hold it in once it hardens. Make sure you use a generous enough blob, and if you can get the glue down around the stake itself (i.e. inside the hole through the PCB), it should have a really good grip. The fact that the load is being shared by multiple glue stakes also helps.

The only annoying part is cleaning up all the little wispy strings of hot glue that you'll undoubtedly trail everywhere.