The frame of my glasses is made by Ray Ban, RB6333 to be specific.
Some time ago the little pad on the left side broke and it simply fell off. I checked with my optician and they said they could fix it but since they claimed that the frame is made of titanium and therefore the procedure being too complicated for them. Instead, they would have to send my glasses to a specialist; a procedure which would take approximately two weeks and cost me approximately 900 SEK (about $100). A new frame would cost me twice the sum and I would probably also have to purchase new lenses. So, a lot of money was involved but, of course, I still could not resist the temptation of making a repair attempt myself!
When investigating the details regarding my glasses on Ray Ban’s website I found out that the frame is not made of titanium but gun metal. Gun metal is a type of bronze; an alloy of copper, tin and zinc. It is not well defined and there are quite a few variations, see wikipedia. However, the main ingredients and the melting temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius indicates that brazing could be used.
I have previously successfully used equipment from Rimac and OxyTurbo for brazing different constructions, including stainless steel. The Rimac burner is capable of producing a 2400 degree Celsius flame and the flux coated silver filler seems very versatile and has not let me down (so far). I attached a precision burner to the bottle and kept my fingers that, with a bit of care, brazing should work once again.
Of course, I had to remove both lenses and all plastic parts but that was easy. The tricky part was to properly align the little pad with the frame but my ubiquitous “third hand” did it again. The material is quite thin so only a couple of seconds of warming was needed. Then, a quick touch with the filler and the job was done!
The new joint seems to be very strong! The newly repaired arc turned out slightly thicker which is good from a mechanical perspective and is not visible from the outside. However, due to the heat a slight difference in color is noted on the left side but I can certainly live with that.
All in all a successful repair!