Impossible repairs: Broken neck brackets

All of the dinosaur's moving parts are attached to the various control mechanisms with welded brackets.

This particular joint holds the two main tubes running along the neck onto the back of the control column, the part that you hold to move the dinosaur's head.

The manufacturer laser welds the two brackets to the back of the control column, thoughtfully welding their outer edges, but not their inner edges where all the force is distributed through as you move the head. To add insult to injury, they have changed the neck design on this particular dinosaur so that instead of two neck joints there's one. It makes it easier and cheaper for them to suspend the neck tubes from the neck pivot, but it doubles the stress on the control column joint. It also means that the dinosaur's head always leans to one side. But hey, cost savings, right?

Guess what happens?

Predictably, the brackets snap off.

Since the control column is fairly easily removed, it would be possible to weld a new bracket on, if you have a laser welder that can cope with such thin metal tubing. Assuming that you don't, we need an alternative.

To repair this particular failure, I used mild steel brackets. They're 19mm angle braces and they cost under £4 for a pack of 50. Mild steel is relatively soft and easy to work with. Eventually this will also fail because of the high load placed on the brackets by the neck design, however they will probably last until the end of this dinosaur's useful life.

The repair is straightforward once the control column has been removed. Drill out the hole in the bracket to accept the M8 (Metric 8mm) screw that holds the neck joint on and drill a smaller 6mm hole through the control column. Through this hole, use a M6 screw and nut to secure the new bracket, using washers to align it with the existing one.

Optionally, also grind down what's left of the broken bracket so that the new screw head sits flat on the surface of the control column.

Almost as good as new!

Not quite. As part of the single tube cost saving design, the centre of gravity of the neck seems to have moved forwards. Instead of suspending the main neck pivot from the 'shoulders' of the dinosaur where the skeleton is strong, the manufacturer has moved the joint forwards. To achieve this, they have added in another curved tube, welded only at each end and without any reinforcement or strain relief. When you move the dinosaur's head, this extension tube flexes quite alarmingly. It is only a matter of time before those welds break and the dinosaur's head becomes inoperable.