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Started another mag switch rebuild

N Jenner

Oakley Expert
262
553
Started another tear down after finding another cheap donor pair. Managed to get the lenses out in one piece this time following the awesome write up from BriP.

For this one I decided to remove the bridge pins, this was accomplished by just shaving the back of the plastic pins slightly and the pushing them out the front with a non tapered punch. Amazingly the flex couplers for the nose bridge are not degraded at all so these will be reused in the final assembly. It’s also worth mentioning that the diameter of the pins are only .001” smaller than the standard pins from a Juliet but they are longer by .005” so I may be able to possibly use a set of titanium pins for the reassembly but they would sit slightly recessed on the front which may not look right. Does anyone know of a manufacturer that make a slightly longer pin? How long is the pin for an x-squared, I may be able to tap the back of the nose bridge to make those work.

Ive tried many different ways of removing the hinge pins but since they go into a blind hole I don’t think there is any way to remove them without destroying the pin. The final goal for these is going to be copper plated but I’m still waiting for the magnesium plate I ordered to start messing around with electroplating magnesium since that is uncharted territory for me. Until then I’ll be getting these all stripped and hopefully come up with a way to remove the hinge pins. I’ll try and update this thread with more pics as I make progress.

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So removing the hinge pins was a bit easier than I originally thought after messing around for another 10 minutes and basically you just need the right tool. The bottom of the plastic pin has a small hole and I ended up using a t7 bit the had a slightly tapered end. Press the bit in firmly until it just starts to bite into the plastic and then start to slowly rotate the pin to loosen it up, then gradually extract the pin slowly while rotating. Unfortunately after removal of the pins the spring assembly was damaged on both sides so I will need to fabricate something different for these. It may be as easy as using a rubber insert for a spring instead of a pin with an actual spring. More updates to follow.
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Looks good dude. There’s a guy on eBay that sells replacement spring cups for a Penny. Those may work.

Found the penny spring cups from the guy on eBay. Looks like they might work but 70 bucks for a pair lol........more than what the donor mag switch cost me so I’ll have to come up with something else.

Thanks for the heads up though as they are a very similar in design!
 
Quick update and maybe some of the gurus in here might be able to shed some light on the subject. Finally got the magnesium plate in to start experimenting with copper plating it but so far I’ve had zero luck.

Attempt 1 was with an industrial plating solution of copper sulphate but it turns out even the weak sulphuric acid in the solution will react with the magnesium enough to keep any copper from forming on the surface of the magnesium. Tried the same solution with titanium and it worked very well.

Attempt 2 was by making a copper acetate solution with acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide but even the mild reaction of the acetic acid and magnesium again did not allow any copper to form on the magnesium. This was again tried with titanium and although the finish was spotty it definitely allowed copper deposition onto the titanium surface.

Waiting on amazon to try attempt 3 but it will consist of just using copper sulphate dissolved in distilled water. I’m pretty sure the copper deposition will be extremely slow and I may try adding a bit of borax to the solution to help with the current conducting but I’ll have to see when I get the chemicals in the mail.

Does anyone have any other ideas that may help?
 

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