I want to glue the pins into my Atlas shipping containers and I was wondering what kind of glue you guys would recommend. Do I need heavy duty modeling glue, or is there something non-toxic I can use?
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I have found that not glueing the pins allows the containers to fit better. Obviously that makes it time consuming if you want to change containers and you risk losing the pins. Atlas sells 3D printed replacement pins on their website, but they are not as strong as those that come with the containers and they are not cheap.
If you decide to glue, I can tell you what I did and the problems I had glueing the pins using CA glue. When you glue the pins in you have to be very careful to make sure that they are absolutely straight. If not, the containers will wobble when stacked or, even worse, fit so tightly that the pins can be sheared off when the containers are joined together. If you use too little CA glue the pins will sometimes be pulled off when the containers are separated.
The 40' reefers and the 40' high cube containers recently released have oval "holes" on the top of the container. This allows for a little error in glueing, but they still have to fit into the well cars which have round holes that are not very forgiving. None of my 40' reefers would fit into my Maxi-IVs if I glued the pins. They stacked with one another just fine due to the oval hole. When I asked Atlas about the problem I was having with the reefers they told me just don't glue the pins in. So the bottom reefer container I left with the pins loose and that worked perfectly.
Now I wonder if those Aliexpress clone-containers ("evemodel") copied the oval-hole idea.
Looking at their photos they seem to have fixed-in-place pegs on their bottoms.
---PCJ
