Repairing a crack at the top of the knee with breakthrough of the joint

Hi,

this group of repair examples deals with repairs under reduced material tension.

Incisions with material tension can be identified by the fact that they are already slightly or widely opened by themselves.

Important! The material tension must be reduced under all circumstances.
There is no other way!
With mineral oil / white oil / baby oil a large-area and intensive mineral oil saturation must be carried out.

The following use case is an excerpt from Indigo's handbook for the CWA .

In part B, repairing a crack at the top of the knee with breakthrough of the joint is showcased as example.

For this repair, you can use Indigo's replacement for Chinese "TPE glue", which actually is a Cold-welding TPE & TPR diffusion adhesive (CWA). This "TPE glue" alternative was developed by German company Indigo Individual, also known for a TPE repair kit, a stain remover and a magnetic M16 connector.

As previously described, oily and greasy areas are cleaned with a cotton swab and some mineral oil / white oil / baby oil:

Here is the detailed close-up of the cleaned crack:

• The joint is open and the surrounding padding is torn. Therefore, it is advisable to create a new padding.
• There is no missing TPE material inside the crack and around the joint.
• The need to integrate new TPE material inside is not given.

Now the leg is slowly stretched straight while we watch as the incision closes slowly:

The incision closes completely to a closed line.

The incision itself is slightly frayed, but no TPE material is missing.

We weld this incision step by step with the diffusion adhesive.

The slight frayings can be easily pressed down with a toothpick or modeling instrument, whereby the diffusion adhesive is welding these frayings into the incision:

Creating a new padding for the knee joint:

In order to keep the incision at the knee constantly open, a so-called "blunt wound spreader" is recommended:

Thus, both hands are free for work.

For the padding, first aid compression bandage is recommended, which we cut in several layers.

Then the bandage is soaked in some mineral oil / white oil / baby oil and pushed laterally under the TPE material using a modeling tool or medical instrument:

The new padding around the joint:

Welding of the incision in the knee:

a) Reduction of material tension:

The leg is now stretched straight and also slightly a bit over straightened.

This closes the incision completely.

The increased straightening completely eliminates material stress and even creates a slight compressive back pressure:

b) Large-area and intensive mineral oil saturation:

With mineral oil / white oil / baby oil, the area around the incision is now slightly oiled.

Then let the oil act in.

This process is carried out a total of 3 times.

Therewith an additional material relaxation is achieved, and built of an additional mineral oil buffer, which weakens the diffusion adhesive in its power so that there is no uncontrolled separation.

The incision is welded in 2 steps from the outside to the middle; see direction of the red arrows in the picture below:

The incision is really strong closed due to the back pressure, thus it is not necessary to create a stabilization with duct tape.

Also the duct tape would not stick due to the mineral oil saturation.

Left side of the incision:

The incision is opened as usual with the thumb and forefinger.

With the brush, very little diffusion adhesive is now applied and carefully distributed in the opened incision.

The incision closes by the back pressure by itself.

Then we wait for the curing time of 8 hours.

Right side of the incision:

The steps are the same as before.

Result after the curing time:

The post-processing is carried out after the curing of the diffusion adhesive. This is covered in section VI. "Post-processing" of the handbook. Every customer will receive the unabbreviated manual as PDF file.

This documentation is © by Indigo-Individual e.K., December 2018. All rights reserved.

Sandro