Yeh an audio forum was my next port of call for this one... ive heard of regluing seperated surrounds to cones on large speakers with a flexible speaker glue, which i did to a JVC subwoofer with a butyl surround, however in that case the surround was intact, but never heard much about repairs being done with speakers that have deteriorating or punctured fibrous surounds... tho at a guess it's probably possible. Just not sure how possible on something as small as an iMac speaker... :?:
I'd never actually known about spray-bandages before, but youre right, it'd presumably be a fairly mild cocktail of chemicals if it's intended for use on human skin... might check it out next time im near a chemist. At worst if I put it on a damaged set of speakers and it disolves the surround, i havent really lost anything but a few minutes of my time as the speakers were otherwise junk.
But yeh I used to just be of the R+R school of thought myself back in the days before electronics recycling was a big dollar business, when for a lot of items it was easier just cheaper and easier to replace whole items or subassemblies with good ones that were readily available either secondhand or new. The problem is tho, there is a finite and dwindling supply of servicable parts out there for many pieces of equipment, and many of them are deteriorating themselves with age and/or use (a good example being iMac speakers and compact anny boards), so repair and restoration on a component-level rather than just assembly-level old-for-old replacement to me seems far more favourable. I actually started to think this way when I realised that my 2000cc VW Type 4 engine from my '76 Kombi were actually getting to the stage where it was more financially viable to spend the money on items to rebuld it than it was to source a secondhand replacement that may or may not remain in servicable condition. Same with my original busted gearbox out of it... it'd cost me 600 bux for a servicable replacement of unguaranteed life-expectancy vs about 1300 for a full rebuild of the old broken one to as-new condition. And now it's really the same with old computer parts....
I'd never actually known about spray-bandages before, but youre right, it'd presumably be a fairly mild cocktail of chemicals if it's intended for use on human skin... might check it out next time im near a chemist. At worst if I put it on a damaged set of speakers and it disolves the surround, i havent really lost anything but a few minutes of my time as the speakers were otherwise junk.
But yeh I used to just be of the R+R school of thought myself back in the days before electronics recycling was a big dollar business, when for a lot of items it was easier just cheaper and easier to replace whole items or subassemblies with good ones that were readily available either secondhand or new. The problem is tho, there is a finite and dwindling supply of servicable parts out there for many pieces of equipment, and many of them are deteriorating themselves with age and/or use (a good example being iMac speakers and compact anny boards), so repair and restoration on a component-level rather than just assembly-level old-for-old replacement to me seems far more favourable. I actually started to think this way when I realised that my 2000cc VW Type 4 engine from my '76 Kombi were actually getting to the stage where it was more financially viable to spend the money on items to rebuld it than it was to source a secondhand replacement that may or may not remain in servicable condition. Same with my original busted gearbox out of it... it'd cost me 600 bux for a servicable replacement of unguaranteed life-expectancy vs about 1300 for a full rebuild of the old broken one to as-new condition. And now it's really the same with old computer parts....