How To Repair A Hinge With Epoxy Putty

Obviously, the following repair wont work on all hinge repairs as not all hinge repairs are the same!

One common hinge issue is the screw threads are broken (or at least the plastic they were embedded in has become damaged) so you either need to use Hot Glue to do a repair or (on older Retro/Vintage laptops at least) you can also re-secure the screw threads back in to place.

Some people use Epoxy Glue, but I don't know about you but I tend to make a tiny bit of a mess when using glue and if you got a tiny amount of it on your laptop screen then it would be ruined!

This is where Epoxy Putty comes in to play, strong as anything but it's a bit like plasticine when you apply it with none of the mess of glue!

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Here I have a 30+ year old Compaq Contura 4/25 that has a damaged hinge:

As you can see the threaded inserts are no longer being held in place!  Fortunately they were not lost (nor rolling around loose in the laptop) but were still attached to the screws/hinges.

Using a conical tip on my soldering iron I did my best to heat/melt them back in to place.

I then closed the hinge back over the threaded inserts and very carefully (loosely) screwed the screws in to check the alignment and then made any minor adjustments that were needed.

    

As you can see from the angle below, the top one is a little bit wonky so it just needed a littler persuasion from the soldering iron to get in to the correct alignment.

Once correctly aligned it's time to use the Epoxy Putty!  Simply slice off the required amount and put the rest back in the container it came in (I also store the cylindrical container in a sealed plastic bag).

 

Then, (whilst wearing gloves) squeeze the two different colours together until it all becomes one.

 

Using something like a metal spudger or a scalpel carefully place the putty around the screw threads making sure you push it down so when it cures it will firmly set on to the plastic.



As you can see, it doesn't look pretty but as it's inside the laptop it doesn't need to.  You can use a wet (gloved) finger to smooth the putty out should you wish but there is no need in this instance.

Within 30 minutes of you mixing the putty it will be hard enough to drill in to but it will require a full 24 hours to be fully set/cured.

Due to the amount of damaged caused by the hinges breaking one of the threaded inserts was further back than it used to be be so I had to use a few tiny washers (and a slightly longer screw) to finish off this repair.

After waiting 24 hours it is then safe to screw in the hinge and check that the putty has took hold.