Gluing rubber feet on Librem Laptops

Not sure how one of those let alone 4 would work on the laptop.

I’m seriously considering trying to fit them on without gluing them just to have some feet that wont fall off. maybe different positioning

3M makes different tiers of double sided mounting tape that would likely work better than whatever glue you’re having issue with falling off. And if you’re genuinely in search of something truly permanent an epoxy is going to be closer to what you’re looking for… Maybe solder/fuse something on instead, though I can’t recommend that kind of permanent approach as eventually whatever you attached would degrade and replacing becomes significantly more of a hassle than a fresh piece of mounting tape.

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Agreed. I just used a needle point sized amount of krazy glue under the pad. It seems to be permanent enough now. I know I could still pry it off will minimal effort. I’d recommend the needle point drop of krazy glue really.

I did buy the rubber feet pack. If one should fall off and be lost I’ll just replace all of them with one of them.

Regarding the 3m dual mounting tape. That stuff is no joke. I used it to mount a dome camera on a ceiling. It was on there so well, when it came time to move, it ripped the ceiling off.

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A year later, and I’ve just learned the same hard lesson: these rubber feet don’t stay mated to the laptop for anywhere near its reasonably anticipated lifetime. However, having superglued them back into place after scraping off the goo, I’ve realized something more serious: this is potentially a slippery slope toward serious hardware damage. The reason is that, when a foot comes loose, it’s usually not replaced immediately, and often enough disappears into the world. This means that the laptop no longer sits quite straight, so chassis warpage, and thus board warpage, and thus trace disconnection, can occur over time. All for want of better rubber feet.

I’ve read the suggestions above for more expensive screwed standoffs, etc., but I think there’s a fundamental problem and a simple solution. The problem is that the feet don’t fit the slight curve of the chassis, so they’re prone to detachment, especially when scraped against in the inside of a laptop case over and over again. If the chassis were redesigned so that the rubber foot mounting disc were flat, all would be well, and we wouldn’t need fancier standoffs or exotic adhesives. Yeah?

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Lets hope this lesson was learned on the soon to be shipped Librem 14.

A side note: My Librem 13 has 1 superglued foot, as none of the other feet have come undone, and it is showing zero signs of ever coming loose again.

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I wonder if the superglued foot is any closer to the hotter parts of the laptop than the other feet?

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Good point. The original adhesive is still sort of liquid at 75 degrees. I guess another option would be to just superglue them on at the factory, which would mean that they would need to be ordered without adhesive. The clean fix, though, is to flatten the metal underneath them. I assume this is easy to do with CAD changes and automated moulding, but what do I know.

I had all 4 of my original feet fall off of my L13v3. It’s my one major gripe about the construction quality of Librem machines. I tried using superglue, but that didn’t work very well for me. As a side note I believe cyanocacrylate glue is not good for electronic components, so be careful to make sure it doesn’t leak through the small alignment holes for the feet themselves.

I feel like this whole problem could have been avoided by:

  1. Create a recess that the foot sits in, so the edges are not exposed to constant wear.
  2. Use a stronger adhesive.

I put a replacement set of OEM feet on after trying a product called ā€œLaptop Liftsā€ available on your traditional soulless online retailer, but they were not a good fit for the machine.

And don’t forget the stronger adhesives have a limited shelf life on the factory floor. Refresh your floor stock.