Fix your broken palm rest corners on your ThinkPads!
This fix will be applicable to all ThinkPads that are using plastic for the case, the same steps will apply to repair any plastic pieces on anything, however for the magnesium base on ThinkPads you won't be able to plastic weld and should go straight to bondo or JB weld. This specific example is on a ThinkPad but will work on any laptop or computer case.
You'll need some things such as;
- The broken laptop
- Soldering Iron
- Respirator (ABS Fumes are bad)
- ABS plastic donor scrap
- Tools to cut the plastic (tin snips)
- Sandpaper
- Bondo (optional)
- JB Weld (optional)
- Paint (or plasti-dip)
First you'll want to cut a piece of ABS plastic scrap that roughly fits into the area you're trying to replace. You'll want to cut this oversized so you have some material to sand down smooth. Use the soldering iron to "weld" the new scrap in place where there is a void in your palmrest. You can get the shape pretty good with just the iron.
Next we'll use some 120 grit sandpaper to smooth out and further shape the corner. You can progressively move up in grit to get a finer surface finish. I sanded mine down but still had a few divots and imperfections.
I opted to try some bondo to further smooth out the surface, just a small application then back to sanding. I was able to get this very smooth without altering the shape. Of course you can just keep adding more ABS plastic if you didn't want to use bondo.
After that I realized it would be good to reinforce the underside, now maybe I should have plastic welded the underside too but I figured it may be easier just to JB weld this part, and it was.
I'm convinced you could fix your broken part solely with either bondo or JB weld, or solely by plastic welding. Here are 3 methods for doing this fix and all are valid.
After getting the shape and smoothness down, I masked off the thinkpad logo and applied some matte black spray paint. I would recommend painting the entire part, as the finish will not be an exact match. You can also use plasti-dip as an alternative.
This came out great and looks very much like a factory part. I went an extra step and customized and painted my whole laptop which you can see in my build videos, check it out!
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⛧ \\ Table of Contents: \\ ⛧
00:00 - Intro \ Things You Need
01:05 - Plastic Welding
02:28 - Sanding
03:40 - Bondo (optional)
05:58 - JB Weld (optional)
07:55 - Paint
09:29 - Finished
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