My wife upgraded to an iPod Touch over the weekend. I inherited her 1st-gen Nano. And my daughter inherited my trusty old 128 MB iRiver 180T. And life was good for a time. But then she came to me in tears because she’d dropped it. The battery door, flimsy to begin with on this model, had broken off.

A quick test showed that the player was still working so I assured her I’d fix it for her. The door was held on by two plastic clips and a couple of tiny plastic screw mounts, now broken. Duct tape came to mind as a possible solution but I thought I could do better. So this morning—because I promised I would fix it and because I desperately needed to get away from the computer—I came up with this:

The wood is from a piece of scrap oak I have out in the garage (I think it’s oak). I cut it to size with a table saw and then used a Dremel tool and a chisel to carve out room on the underside for the circuit board. Then I sanded it down by hand into the shape you see here.

Next steps are to drill new holes and see if I can reuse the screws from the old battery door. I’m planning on doing away with the hinged door, obviously, and just screwing the whole thing down through the center instead of near the edge like the old door.

If that works, I’ll strip the conductor for the positive battery terminal from the old door and attach it to the new door. Glue probably. And then I’ll do a final sanding to get the edges flush with the body of the iRiver.

Of course, I may need to get some new bits for the Dremel. And I’ll need to buy a soldering iron. And if this prototype works, I may re-do the project using a nicer wood. Dark cherry or something.

Comments

1. Matthew on 2008-10-28 20:28:51 wrote: Way to go MacGyver. By the time you spend all the $ on the new tools, you could probably buy her a new MP3 player! lol But it wouldn’t be as cool.

2. John on 2008-10-29 09:15:07 wrote: Easily. You can get a new made-for-landfill mp3 player for $20 these days. But what fun is that? :-)