[maxhedrum]

Greetings -

While there are many sources for new and used repair parts, so far I haven't found any for the consumables that may need replacement in the course of a repair. Specifically I'm looking for replacement heat sink pads, copper foil tape, and that bloody one-use yellow tape used to hold cabling and flex boards down. It would also be good to know the actual technical names to facilitate searching for sources.

Repair shops get this stuff from somewhere. I've tried Digikey, MCM, HFC, and a general search to no avail. Some of this material is used in camera equipment and none of the usual suppliers to the industry carry these products either. I'm studying to become a Mac certified tech, so have been picking up machines to practice on and want to do the job right, which usually means cleaning up after someone else's botched attempt.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[tooki]

http://www.stanleysupplyservices.com/ carries some of that. The yellow tape is called Kapton. Heatsink thermal compound and thermal pads are available from pretty much any computer component place like Newegg.

[ibook_steve]

While some of these things may be available, you have to remember that a lot of stuff may be Apple custom and not available anywhere. Even some of the thermal pads and tape I used when I worked at Apple were custom.

Steve

[tooki]

Yes, but often an off-the-shelf shop supply works fine. Much of the Apple stuff is ordinary supplies repackaged. (Remember the carefully-wrapped and -labeled paperclips that came with early iPhone exchanges?)

[chabig]

For heat sink pads, can't you just use Radio Shack heat sink compound? And don't worry about replacing tape. Your machine will be fine without it.

[maxhedrum]

Thanks all for the replies, just what I'm looking for.

So far the only source I've found for thermo pads that seem thick enough are these: http://www.itapestore.com/index.asp?...TS&Category=19. The pads are necessary for the GPU and it's memory chip set, as by design there is too much clearance between them and the heat sink to use paste.

The hunt continues.