Repaired a refrigerator drawer today. A little bit of plastic fractured in a high stress area on the drawer, namely a small lip that attaches the front of the drawer to the main drawer. This caused the front of the drawer to pull out, but not the drawer. This has been quite an annoyance to both myself and my wife. The refrigerator is only 1-1/2 years old. Here is the broken piece.
Yesterday, I decided to fix it. Made a prototype, which wasn't quite right, but gave me some hope it could be done. So came up with version 2!
Today finished version 2. Here are two pictures of the solution. I made a piece with a lip, this went on top. Then I made a bottom piece which was roughly shaped to the inside part of the drawer to act as a nut. I made the nut plate larger to reduce the stress on the sandwiched plastic. M3 screw. 6061 - stronger than the plastic. The lip is on the drawer face. The lip catches the plastic molding that is part of the drawer body.
The inside surface of the drawer was curved, so had to do quite a bit of filing and fitting to get my custom nut plate to fit. Have to say it is nice to have the drawer fixed. It was hard fixing this in situ. If I have to do this again, I'll empty the vegetables from the drawer!
The plastic molding features on this drawer conspired against any clamping. I found a decent spot to drill on the top piece. Marked it and drilled for 2.5 mm on the mill. Then brought piece to fridge and used it as a drill guide. Hand drilled with 2.5 mm drill through the plastic. Used hole in plastic as a guide and held nut plate underneath and spun drill bit to mark nut plate. Then brought nut plate to mill and drilled and tapped for M3. Finally used an 1/8" (3.125 mm) drill to get clearance through the top plate and the plastic. Miraculously, everything lined up and I assembled it with an 8 mm long M3 socket head cap screw.
Now back to whatever it was I was doing... What was that again?