Azone/Obitsu 50 hip/shoulder joints issue

Forgive me if this question has been asked and answered elsewhere, but I've done a few searches and have come up empty so far:

 

I have two lovely Azone 50 girls that I bought last year, both barely used. I'm so happy with how well they pose, but... very shortly after they arrived, I noticed that their legs and shoulders were loose. Examining the inner skeleton, I saw a multitude of cracks in the hip and shoulder sockets-- one of the hip sockets had been completely destroyed (has now been replaced). I don't play rough with my girls and don't put them in extreme poses without some kind of secondary support.

 

It seems odd to me that this same problem happened with two different dolls from two different sellers. My question is, is this a common/known problem with the Obitsu50/Azone50 frame? Will this eventually happen with the replacement parts I bought? How can this be solved or avoided (other than repeatedly epoxy gluing the cracks to mitigate further damage)?

 

EDIT: Might have figured out a way to solve the shoulder issue by loosening some of the screws so that the sockets can be moved more easily/with less pressure and stress to the frame that would cause it to crack. It's the same issue with the hip, but it's not the hip socket itself causing the problem, it's the thigh peg... I don't know how or if I can even access that on an Obitsu.

Shoulder (chest part) and hip (pelvis part) breakage is common in the Obitsu 48/50. By "common" I don't mean lots of Obitsus break there, I mean that of all the likely places your Obitsu 48/50 can break these are the most common places.

 

The most common cause of breakage is rough handling. This does not necessarily mean the the kind of handling Sid Phillips dishes out in Toy Story. It's mostly from normal joint manipulation. With resin dolls if you want to move an arm from their side up to over their head, you can just grab the hand and pull the arm up. The elastics used to string resins are very forgiving and will bend and stretch in almost any direction.

 

With an Obitsu, or any other doll with an internal skeleton, such a move should be handled differently than how one would handle a strung resin doll. There are numerous joints involved in such a move and each joint bends or rotates in a specific way. Each axis should be moved individually to reach the final pose. Inadvertently tugging a little at a joint in a direction it was not designed to go will with time weaken the joint parts.

 

The chest sockets of the shoulder joint with their multiple axis of rotation are especially susceptible to stress and cracking. Gluing the cracks in shoulder peg receiving tubes is a common solution. Another fix is to place very small zip ties around the tube to reinforce them. And with the worst breaks the part can still be replaced entirely.

 

I have over 35 Obitsu 40cm through 50cm dolls and in the course of ten years and over 400 episodes of MADh Vinyl, my girls have received a lot of wear. I have replaced numerous chest, pelvis, and other parts due to breakage, sometimes from accidents, other times from mishandling. Many of these doll have never had a part break. My oldest 50cm was purchased from the very first batch of 50cm bodies and is over 10 years old and has never had a part replaced. One of my latest new acquisitions came with a shattered shoulder joint.

 

Needless to say, breakage can happen to anyone. The key to longevity of your Obitsu is careful handling.

K-2, I was hoping you'd see this and my wish was granted-- I figured if anyone would know about this and how to handle it, it'd be you

 

That makes so much more sense when you explain it that way (resin joints vs. Obitsu/DD joints), and now I understand where the stress on the plastic that's causing it to crack is coming from. When I pose them now, I'll try to isolate and support each joint as I bend or straighten it (kind of as if I was helping someone stretch chronically contracted muscles, which I do often at work).

 

I never would have thought of zipties! I might give that a try.

 

Thank you so much for your advice! This was super helpful