Plastic W.E. 500 Body Warped.

[Dan/Panther]

I have a Green bodied 500 that the body is warped. When you lay it on a flat surface, the front left corner is 1/4" higher that the rest of the phone. The frame is not bent, it appears, something may have gotten stuck under that corner when the body was put back on. It makes the dial face look crooked.
My question, anyway to straighten it, I though maybe very hot water with a weight on the handset area. Or even low temperature in the oven with weight. Any thoughts, or ideas, I'm willing to be the guinea pig on this.

D/P

[poplar1]

Does anyone know how to straighten out a warped soft plastic housing?

I have a mediterranean blue 554 wall set that was apparently flattened by too many boxes of phones on top. It is not cracked, just warped.

I also need soft plastic caps for the handset.

[Russ Kirk]

My suggestion is to place it in very hot water to soften the housings.

[DavePEI]

I have a Green bodied 500 that the body is warped. When you lay it on a flat surface, the front left corner is 1/4" higher that the rest of the phone. The frame is not bent, it appears, something may have gotten stuck under that corner when the body was put back on. It makes the dial face look crooked.
My question, anyway to straighten it, I though maybe very hot water with a weight on the handset area. Or even low temperature in the oven with weight. Any thoughts, or ideas, I'm willing to be the guinea pig on this.

D/P

Hi Dan:
Personally, I would go with the hot water idea, as then for certain the temperature won't be above 212 degrees (at atmospheric pressure). It should be a little safer than using the oven. It is certainly worth a try! It would be a shame if you were to damage it any further, but this would seem your safest bet, well worth a try! Good luck, and report back!

Dave

[TelePlay]

That would be like annealing the body, which should work in theory, but my biggest concern would by hoe the shell is weighted down. Putting something heavy on the cradle could do more damage for when the shell became warm enough to straighten out, the weight used to hold it down could depress the cradle area or bow the sides. How and where the "straightening" pressure is applied is critical to getting it straight without doing damage elsewhere. Maybe making a plaster cast of a "straight" 500 shell and placing that over the warped one when heating would work. A small amount of additional weight could be placed on top of the plastic cast when heating the warped shell would evenly distribute the weight over the entire shell and the cast would keep the other parts of the shell from becoming deformed.

Also, if heating, once heated and "straightened," I would think it would be best to let the water come to room temperature over hours rather than just pull the shell out. That's how we annealed glass.

Here's one link I just found on a Google search for annealing plastic. Got lot of hits  so there are probably a lot of info out there on what and how to do. It does mention the heat and cool slowly method. Holding it down will be your decision.

http://www.annealingplastics.com/

Or even better, this

http://www.plasticsintl.com/documents/ABS%20Annealing.pdf