New keyless remotes - and the mess than followed

I've had a couple of Mazda 626s, both with broken remotes. I got around it by making a little ring that sat in the recess where the two halves snapped together, but it didn't work that great and because I used metal, it limited the range. Dad recently showed me his remote, from an aftermarket keyless entry system for his truck. It has suffered a similar fate, but he had attempted to fix it with superglue. That didn't go so well, either. But his asking prompted me to make a new remote for him and me at the same time.

Started by taking a lot of measurements. Probably more than necessary for this, but I had what I needed. A height gauge is now on the list of things I "need". Other than that, the biggest problem I had was a coupler coming off of the X leadscrew, which prompted me to completely disassemble the mill and fix that. That led to me finding the bearing races had been replaced by common washers at some time, which was probably partly to blame for excess backlash in X. And while I had it apart, I found that the holes where the little screw that keeps the brass backlash nut in place were completely stripped out. So, I helicoiled them. And since I was this far into it, I figured I'd add a one-shot oil system.

I guess I should probably add some photos, maybe another thread on the way oiler, but I'll have to see if I got any good pictures when I was doing it. I did find that there are no articles about anybody else doing that to a sherline, or at least none that I could find. End result is that the mill is a much better machine than it was before and a much bigger joy to use.

Anyway, here are the pics of the remotes that I remade. They are both a little bigger, but the metal ring won't break off like the little plastic tab did.

Dad's remote. Old next to new.
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps90e1fec8.jpg

Insides of both.
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps29d6e994.jpg

My remote. Old next to new.
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps1d01e09f.jpg

Insides. A smarter person (and I think I became a smarter person as this project went along) would have used more tabs and a spoil board, like I did for Dad's remote, which I made after mine.
http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ps3c4ef12b.jpg

Nice Work! Broken remotes, been there and done that! When I have repaired mine or when I have got new un broken remotes, I have replaced the metal rings with o-rings. It seems that when the metal ring is connected to the typical metal key ring (with or without the small length of chain they inevitably get all twisted up causing too much stress on the plastic pieces and they break. I suspect remotes with keys carried by women in their purse last significantly longer as they are less likely to get all twisted up like they do in a guys pocket.

My solution to this problem has been to replace the metal with an o-ring. since replacing them, I have never broken another remote. I have fixed several remotes that were broken already by performing a little surgery and fitting the o-ring into the plastic and then attaching the key ring to the o-ring. In instances where the remote isn't broken, I have used polyurethane o-ring material to create an oring looping it through the metal or plastic ring on the remote and then welding the o-ring material together with a soldering iron. I have one set of keys that i repaired this way over 8 years ago and i'm still using it with the same. fabricated o-ring.

Not sure how you modeled the remote, but if you can save it as a stl file I can 3d print you some from Nylon 6 and you can have some spares.

Regards
Bill

Bill, I have used o-rings for stuff like that before. I didn't like anything I came up with for this, though. A lot of people just run a screw through one end and hack away a place to run a ring through, but that's not my style. I didn't actually model it. Did it all in 2D. I started to model it, but it started taking longer than I wanted to devote to it. And that wasn't really any complex shapes. I'm sure as I get more experienced, that will get better, and there's no better way to learn than doing, but I needed to get the one done for Dad before this coming weekend, so I needed to get moving. I actually have a friend who offered to print it for me about a year ago if I could model it and get him something to slice. Maybe as I get some free time, I'll try doing more with it, but for now...