PlayDate Button Repair

I have not worked on one of these myself. I have only heard from others who have either contacted me for help or posted Youtube videos about problems.

Apparently some people are experiencing problems with the A/B button not working. I am not sure if there are different versions or improvements. I know very little about this device and this post is entirely going off the responses I've gotten from people over email and txt messages. 

In my opinion, the issues I've heard about are regarding the plastic A/B button having trouble reaching the internal button snapdome switch. 
In the first picture here there are cross shaped added stickers to the top of the larger white sticker. The large white sticker is a common feature and used to simply hold the metal snap dome switches in place. The added cross sticker is unusual and I suspect it was added at a later stage to increase height while maintaining flexibility because the plastic key caps were not quite deep enough to reach the snapdome switches. I know of no other reason to add these little cross stickers. 

What happened?? I can only guess but most likely they had a million A/B switch plastic key caps made but the plastic shrunk or the design was a tiny bit off in final production. When the A/B button did not work as well as expected, the cross shaped sticker was added. That may solve the problem but additional changes to the plastic after some temperature changes, use or whatever... cause the button to not reach again. A very slight change can make a major difference. 

How to fix it? Again, I haven't fixed one of these and just going off what other's have told me. I recommended adding a tiny dot of glue to the bottom center of the yellow A/B button plastic. The customer who provided all these photos below reported the tiny glue dot solved the problem. 

What kind of glue? I would use thick super glue and activator, then sand down if needed. Just a tiny dot, maybe the thickness of cereal box cardboard. Most people don't have thick superglue or activator. Epoxy would work well and should be sandable. Other glues may flatten and ooze or may be hard to work with if they leave too big of a glob. Always a good idea to sand or scrape the plastic surface before applying glue to improve adhesion.

If this helps you fix yours, please leave a review comment below and upload pics of your repair! Thank you

Teardown Instructions on iFix