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Broken Ball Joint

Submitted By : mokanaman / Alan

A broken ball joint in a poly-cap is a common fault in Bandai articulated kits.

Snappers and people who are a little heavy handed or regularly play with their kits are most likely to face this problem and throw out or replace their kit. All you need is wire, a pin vise, drill bit, super glue and plastic cement for this tutorial.

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4 Comments

  1. Another thing you can do is, instead of just pinning the broken ball back onto its peg, you can actually drill all the way through -both- hip ball joints and run a pin straight through both hips. This will help prevent the other joint from breaking later, and each hip will be able to draw a little strength from the other. You could also pack the hollow space between the hips with super glue + talcum or epoxy putty or poly putty to reinforce the pin even more.
    Brass or steel rods are very good for this kind of repair. Sewing pins work pretty well as they’re both easy to find and very strong.
    Repairs like this, with super glue and a pin can actually be quite a bit stronger than the original plastic joint. Like you, I tend to use a combination of super glue (for the pin) and solvent glue (to rejoin the plastic) – but really the solvent glue is probably a waste of time. In my experience even parts “welded” back together with solvent glue aren’t strong enough to take the stress one places on a moving joint. It’s really the pin and the super glue that do all the useful work here.
    Sometimes it’s even worth doing this to a joint before it breaks. It can be hard to guess ahead of time what joints will need this treatment, but it’s easier to reinforce it before it breaks than to repair it after it breaks… And a pinned hip joint is very strong.
    Great work on the video, BTW. It seemed like a very nicely done presentation of the problem and its solution.

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  2. thank you soooo much! I have the exact same problem with my 1/144 Freedom Gundam.

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  3. thank you i have the same problem on my gafran

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  4. I think this same technique or a variation of it will work with other action figures as well as models. MU, GI Joe’s, or 6″ stuff like Marvel Legends and DC Universe stuff possibly? I’m sure I have some things in my parts bins that I can try this on.

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