A fair amount of ironing gets done in our house, the holiday cottages generating at least six washes a week end. So when the cry went up that the fancy Tefal remote tank steam iron had packed up certain people were close to panic
No problems says I - OK it's expensive but we can justify buying another as it's in stock locally, and if I can repair the original it can sit on a shelf to quell such panics in the future.
Immediate problem solved - diagnose the problem and fix the potential 'spare' unit. Well it was only the button on the actual iron handle that releases steam, hardly high tech as it toggles on a pivot pressing onto a micro-switch. But the pivots for the button had broken off resulting in the button dis-appearing into the body of the iron.
A quick bit of googling located a spare which was promptly ordered (about £4) and it went onto the 'to do' list .Order confirmed emails, order processed emails, payment taken emails, sorry we are out of stock for two weeks emails, then at last, item in stock and will be sent out 'when processed by stores'. That was four weeks ago. So I sent a chaser email only to be told now that the item was no longer available anywhere
So time to slip into 'workshop mode' - make one ! so with good intentions out I went to steam up Fusion 360 to model one and 3D print it.
But looking at it it proved to be the most confoundedly difficult thing to model ! The shape being sculpted in all dimensions I reckoned that time would be better spent mending the original. It's pivot pins had broken off - these are 3 mm diameter extensions from a bar moulded onto a flat bit. No room to drill anything.
I ended up forming a 'gutter' from 0.5 mm brass stock which I carefully peened round the remaining bar, then I dressed down the extensions to form new 3 mm pivots. I'd intended to glue it to the broken bit, but in the end the peening proved more than adequate to hold it in place.
No photo of the bit I made as I forgot, (sorry) but have a picture of a very similar button from a slightly different model
So net result about £300 of steam iron thingy bob saved to fight another day and probably stronger than it was originally
