I was recently given a pair of broken headphones. The damage was nothing serious, the right ear had just snapped off. They still worked perfectly fine, so long as I didn’t need my right arm for anything; I needed that to hold the dangling phone up to my ear. The TV station that the headphones originally belonged to has no need for gear that only half-works, so they gave them away.
The design of these headphones makes for a very difficult repair. I’ve had the same problem with this particular brand before. They make great sounding headphones, and great looking headphones, but the ears break off far too easily. I’ve had many broken pares sent my way, and I’ve always tried to fix them the same way; by collecting the broken parts and trying to reassemble the phones from these parts. To reassemble the headphones, I’ve tried epoxy, elastic bands, resin bond, contact cement, melting the plastic parts back together with a soldering iron, and duct tape.
Duct tape works very well – for a day, then they fall apart and I’m back where I started, only now everything is coated in a good layer of duct tape goo.
Elastic bands work for a few weeks, then fall apart.
Epoxy lasts about a month before the flexibility in the plastic causes it to pop off.
Resin bond and contact cement do nothing-there is simply not enough surface area to stick properly.
Melting the plastic back together just gives off fumes that are probably very bad for me, then snaps apart as soon as put them on my head.
In short, all of these methods have failed miserably, and none of these were creative solutions.
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