Original Post

Is it common for the plastic joint housing the pivoting ends of the metal legs on the stand to develop a crack in it from normal use? (much like the Glitched Display problem, although the GD problem hasn’t happened to me yet) I’ve read about this having happened to stands in the descriptions for eBay Virtual Boy auctions.

7 Replies

Yep… the plastic center piece on the stand almost always breaks, even if you’re careful. Really, it was a bad design. I remember breaking my stand the first day I got it, just opening the stand from the collapsed position, and my friend did the same to his the next day. And just a few weeks ago, my center piece got a new large crack, even though I was being extremely careful because there was already a small crack.

DogP

I guess I’m lucky. My stand is a used one, has no cracks, and I’ve had it for about a year. (Of course, the glitchy displays and non-working left speaker are another problem.)

Whew, at least I know now that it mostly wasn’t my fault. 😀

Actually, I have 1 broken stand and one that is still holding. To fix the broken one, I just hot-glued the piece back together and then tightly wrapped a zip-tie around the whole assembly for extra strength.

Really, since it’s a fairly common problem, that might be another candidate for custom part fabrication. 😀

Fwirt wrote:
Actually, I have 1 broken stand and one that is still holding. To fix the broken one, I just hot-glued the piece back together and then tightly wrapped a zip-tie around the whole assembly for extra strength.

Really, since it’s a fairly common problem, that might be another candidate for custom part fabrication. 😀

Yeah, I’ve thought about making metal repros. It was a really bad design flaw to make that little cover out of plastic.

I got a chunky plastic one made for mine (cnc machined), works well. The one i actually use now has fixing screws that go fully through the ‘medallion’ to the metal bracket on the stand, it then just flexes around the screw holes and not the material deforming to allow the legs to open.
There has been talk of getting batches of this type of thing made but currently mold costs are a bit of a stumbling point, but i think it is beeing looked into.

Hedgetrimmer wrote:
I got a chunky plastic one made for mine (cnc machined), works well. The one i actually use now has fixing screws that go fully through the ‘medallion’ to the metal bracket on the stand, it then just flexes around the screw holes and not the material deforming to allow the legs to open.
There has been talk of getting batches of this type of thing made but currently mold costs are a bit of a stumbling point, but i think it is beeing looked into.

Wow, awesome!
I figure a mold of that size including manufacture of a minimum of 500 pieces would be about $500 or so as a base price from Hong Kong, no? As you up the quantities from there it’s probably only an extra $100 for 500 additional pieces.

I doubt you could sell 500 of them is the only prob. At say $5 a pop you need 100 buyers to break even.

It’s so difficult in this small scene that it’s probably better to be a labor of love and make them yourself if you have access to the right machinery.

On a side note, I sure do look forward to the link cables.

 

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