Hi DIY!
My headphones of many years recently broke. My first response was to attempt to glue them back together with super glue (ethyl 2-cyanoacrylate) however that didn’t seem to hold. Not even a little bit.
I then did a bit of searching and found that Sony often use ABS plastic in headphone manufacture, so presumably these are ABS. I then read super glue should work okay on ABS, however there seemed to be no bonding happening at all.
Do any of you have any tips for the best kind of glue or epoxy to bond these plastic parts back together and get the music flowing again?
I plan on wrapping the joints in thread afterwards, for additional durability. But first I need to get them bonded.
physical reinforcement is a good suggestion lots are coming up with. If it’s not too late, I’d recommend doing that with something that dissolves the ABS instead of an adhesive. ABS dissolves readily with a few solvents, like acetone. Get physical reinforcement in place, and IF you do not need any bulk filler, just use a solvent like acetone to literally melt and repolymerize the plastic back together. As long as there’s no new gaps or new voids, the physical reinforcement should leave it stronger than the original. At least after all the solvent evaporates away.
If you need gap filler or bulk reinforcement, two part epoxies are definitely the way to go, though make sure to use something quite flexible or it’ll just crack off the next time you drop them.
Speaking of physical reinforcement, when my headphones broke in a very similar way I was able to use cable ties to secure them back together. Ugly but it worked.