PDP-8 replacement paddle switch handle and Drilling guide

thingiverse

The switch paddles on many of the PDP-8 computers are relatively fragile and when bumped will have one or both of the pivot pins shear off. This is good because it protects the even more difficult to repair front panel switches and circuit board. I have provided a drill guide that will hold the switch to the base of a drill press so the body can be drilled out accurately. I have also provided a high resolution STL of the handle created with Fusion 360. I made the model as accurate as possible and then added some features to make it more printable on FDM type printers. It should fit on the following PDP-8's, DECset8000, Lab-8, Straight-8, PDP-8/e, PDP-8/f, PDP-8/l, PDP-8/m, and PDP-8/s. I believe it will also work on a couple of the PDP-11 models although I have not seen any of those handles myself. The biggest problem you will have is matching the colors of the originals. For this reason I made the Drill guide. If you have all the damaged handles you can fix them and avoid the color matching issue. If you don't have a full set I suggest you find a close match in color to the colors found on the front panel and print a whole set of each color. Another alternative would be to print them in White, and either Grey or Black for the alternating color. Or you could print them in all white and then try to paint them to match.