One of my acquaintances wanted to wear the key ring on a chain or a tape around the neck while working in the OT. That became essential when the pockets of the OT dress started having holes or the stitch at their bottom started coming off. The key to the OT locker would fall out of the pocket causing no end of a bother. He procured a tape of the type used to wear identity cards around the neck. He put the key ring through the loop of the tape. Unfortunately, the spiral of the key ring rotated in the reverse direction and the ring came off the tape and fell off. Needing this thing fixed and knowing my happiness at fixing things, he approached me. It would have been easy to get the engineers to weld the two ends of the ring together. But it would have been sort of irreversible. The heat of the welding would have burnt the tape too. I fixed it as follows.
I took a piece of plastic tubing of an intravenous infusion set. I heated the ends of the spiral on a flame. Then I threaded one end of the piece on one end of the spiral ring, and the other end on the other end, before the ends cooled down. This produced a continuity of the two ends such that if the ring rotated in the reverse direction, the loop of the tape would just move from one end of the spiral on to the other end, but never come off. I heated the ends of a set of pliers and squeezed the tubing over the spiral ends so that the plastic melted a little and stuck to the spiral. The plastic tubing was transparent, so that the key ring did not look odd. Who is going to notice it in the OT around the neck of a male anyway?
(It took me ten minutes to think of this idea, another ten minutes to assemble the components and tools and do it, and one hour to prepare its 3D model on my computer.)
I took a piece of plastic tubing of an intravenous infusion set. I heated the ends of the spiral on a flame. Then I threaded one end of the piece on one end of the spiral ring, and the other end on the other end, before the ends cooled down. This produced a continuity of the two ends such that if the ring rotated in the reverse direction, the loop of the tape would just move from one end of the spiral on to the other end, but never come off. I heated the ends of a set of pliers and squeezed the tubing over the spiral ends so that the plastic melted a little and stuck to the spiral. The plastic tubing was transparent, so that the key ring did not look odd. Who is going to notice it in the OT around the neck of a male anyway?
(It took me ten minutes to think of this idea, another ten minutes to assemble the components and tools and do it, and one hour to prepare its 3D model on my computer.)
