Fluke 87 III - brittle plastic, broken screw posts.

[aargee]

Hello all,

I have a Fluke 87 mark III, its lower screw posts that hold the two halves of the meter together have snapped.
One was broken at first, with the remnants rattling around inside. On inspection to see what was rattling the other one broke when re-assembling.
It appears that the plastic has become brittle and easily crumbles.
This may have been affected by fumes from a previously leaking 9V battery? The plastic of the posts and the case in the immediate battery vicinity seem to be brittle.
Without replacing the front shell, I'm looking for options. Top of the list is 3D printing an ABS pillar(s) and gluing them in as replacements - I'm just concerned about the ability of the bonding to hold. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

[james_s]

I've never seen a battery cause that but maybe it's possible? I've heard that some disinfectants can cause the plastic of medical equipment to become brittle. I have a Tek TDS3000 scope that the entire housing and knobs all turned brittle and started crumbling to dust.    The plastic is PC-ABS, probably the same stuff the Fluke meter is made of since it's very durable normally. Maybe there's a plastic engineer around here who would have some insight.

[coromonadalix]

when you have the broken studs, try to glue them / realigne them

I used a mix of superglue and baking soda  for one of my 189, and slowly rehtreaded the screw in it,  Fluke have special threads

Be careful, normally the super glue will tack really fast

Still hold fine after a few years

[MarkL]

I've used this stuff to brace or rebuild broken plastic posts:

  https://www.plast-aid.com/

[andy2000]

I'm not sure what causes it, but certain batches of ABS plastic become extremely brittle.  I know it's not caused by the environment because it often only affects one piece of a device.  I'm not aware of any way to fix it other than replacing the defective parts.