A few months ago, as I was turning the engine for another run, there was a clatter and an odd-shaped piece of brass tube tumbled onto my desk below the layout. It took me a moment to realize it was one of the indexing tubes for the turntable. After repeated locking and un-locking, the stress on the joint holding the tube to the rotating disk had overcome the solder.
I never want to remove the turntable if I can help it, especially as the modelling on the module gets more and more intricate and vulnerable. So, after soldering the tube back in place – an operation facilitated by the locking pin and a screw driven into the PC board disk – I sought out a means to reinforce the assembly.
Of course, it’s all weird angles and curves on the bottom of the turntable. So, while I would have loved to come up with an elegant solution, I wound up with big chunks of Polymorph thermoplastic dribbled around the tubes. Then I drilled through the plastic and pinned it to the PC board beneath to make a mechanical connection. With luck, I won’t have this sort of failure ever again.
Pembroke:87 