Hacking Nooo! The thumbstick on my 3DS XL broke off!

[finkmac]

Glue is dumb. Get a few off eBay and replace it, it's rather easy (on the O3DS XL).
All you need to do is remove the bottom plate, and then the circle pad can be removed with a single screw.

 

[akira123]

The same thing happened to me. I used superglue at first; which worked for almost a year, but soon the cracked pieces of plastic underneath the rubber cover started to dislodge and hinder movement. Eventually I just had to rip the the whole thing off, and I now just play with the broken nub. If you don't want to go to the trouble of buying the parts and disassembling your 3DS then go with the superglue option but just note that it may not work permanently.

 

[Sumea]

buy a new one for like... 3bucks a top and shipping from china, open your 3DS with some good old screwdrivers, replace it, be done with it.

I been personally doing handheld open ups and replacing digitizers in my old DSlite for years, I did one flashME brick and then one brick save with BIOS swap 'n write trick someone told about. I swapped heat paste and Blu Ray lasers in numerous PS3 models and I have been part of secret gorilla raids against Al'Queada.

Honestly this situation is one of the easiest you could be in.