I purchased this nice motorized rainbow maker for my work office and recently it had stopped turning. When I carefully opened it up I realized that one of the beveled (cone shaped) gears had cracked. The crack could have developed from the way plastics break down in sunlight (UV) or by stress when the plastic gear was pressed onto the metal rod. The crack had caused the gears teeth spacing to be out of tolerance and caused a binding that stopped the machine.

Fixing a Kikkerland Solar Powered Double Rainbow Machine

Location of the broken gear

The Kikkerland double rainbow unit

en gear

Fixed gear

(Fine wire twist with Superglue)

Broken gear

Due to plastic gear pressed onto metal rod

Notched end of metal rod

Crack through gear

  To fix this I had to sand away a bit of the gear where it meets the metal rod, this got the teeth back in proper spacing. I then took some fine magnet wire and twisted it around to hold the base of the gear. I then applied Superglue to the assembly (Note: if you sprinkle a bit of baking soda on the Superglue it makes it set immediately).

After installing the repaired gear into the machine it works like new again!