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Repair a Malfunctioning LCD

Step 5Results

With any luck, your results will be something like this. This repair, including disassembly, took approximately ten minutes to complete and the results are excellent; the screen is 100% functional again.

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14 comments

Jun 25, 2011. 10:20 AMpkertt says:

i tried this with a hairdryer on"hi" and it worked great!! you saved buying a new phone due to the un readable display. Thanks for a real handy instructable!!

Apr 22, 2011. 5:08 AMtheimaginaryduck says:

Just commenting to say I tried this with my electronic dictionary -- the screen was so bad it was pretty much unusable. I read these steps and I was really sceptical, thinking, "There's no way in hell this is going to work for me," but tried it anyway because I didn't want to fork out the money to pay for a new one, if I could help it. The result? Almost as good as new! (There's just one column of pixels which appears blank... damn! But I've had that problem before and it somehow came back on its own, so with any luck it'll sort itself out...) So a million thanks to you for saving my dictionary!!

Mar 22, 2011. 10:18 PMZaphodd says:

Just used this techniqe with an 2line lcd on an HP CP1700 printer. Used the back end of a sharpie to rub down the contacts/cable - worked great!

Thanks.

Apr 10, 2010. 10:57 AMValyntyn says:

Excellent tip! Armed with this knowledge I successfully completed a repair on my wife's 2003 Weight Watcher calculator.

Many thanks!
Valyntyn
B.C. Canada

Jun 22, 2009. 8:47 PMseabeepirate says:

pretty cool. will this approach work on say a microwave LCD or maybe an alarm clock?

Nov 18, 2009. 8:07 AMHycro says:

Depending on the alarm clock...those ones with the red lines that make up the numbers are actually surface mount LEDs, made to look like an LCD.

Jun 25, 2009. 7:51 AMramses says:

yes, but since those are line powered, be extremely careful of capacitors in particular. I wouldn't mess with the microwave because there is a huge cap in there, and you could damage the magnetron/ shielding to the point where it could leak microwaves and give you cataracts and fry all unshielded electronics in the area.

Jun 26, 2009. 1:58 AMSteel_Sculptor says:

maestro8 is quite correct with his reply. The sheilding within a microwave isnt as critical as the scare mongers make out. I remember talking with techs regarding microwaves when they first came out. To test, you would jam the door switch and put your hand in on low power to feel if there was any 'warming'. Obviously they werent as high in power as they are now but it was a quick test that was common practice among original m'wave techs.

Jun 26, 2009. 8:45 AMramses says:

meh. but some people take things apart with drills and hacksaws. about the cap, some go up to .9uf, storing around 1.8 joules at 2kv. while most likely not lethal, it wouldn't be pleasant.

Jun 25, 2009. 5:22 PMFurball_Fidelis says:

Lol. homebrew EMP from a microwave....hmm

Jun 25, 2009. 11:55 AMmaestro8 says:

To what "huge cap" are you referring? Most microwaves have a small (100s of pf) capacitor in the HV stage, but it is often coupled with a parallel resistor that would drain any charge on the cap quite quickly. Even without the resistor, the cap would drain itself in a small fraction of a second, through the resistance of the circuit in which it is connected. Also, the magnetron and shielding isn't as fragile as you're implying. It would take a hacksaw or drill to do the type of damage that would cause microwaves to leak. Even then, the leaked microwaves lose power as they dissipate into the room (remember the inverse-square law?) It would take quite a large leak to damage anything in the vicinity.

Jul 4, 2009. 7:16 PMmrsplooge says:

Actually, it would only take a very small hole, the size of 1/2 wavelength or a multiple thereof to radiate and cause EMI. Hence the term, micro-wave.

Jul 4, 2009. 7:17 PMmrsplooge says:

for a fun read, check out Waveguides.

Oct 26, 2009. 3:10 PMalopix says:

It is really healpful!
I will try it into two philips cordless phones.

Jul 15, 2009. 1:08 AMrhf027 says:

Very good !

Jun 23, 2009. 7:38 AMmario59 says:

I WOULD LOVE if it works... I have a Sharp multifunction graphical calculator that has THE VERY SAME display ribbon connector and LCD.... I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, hope this will work also for me!! I was in eager to find a suitable solution on the net and maybe you did my day! This evening I'll RUSH home and try it! Thanks friend! ciao Mario

Jun 23, 2009. 10:16 AMarduinoe says:

calculators arent that expensive , lol

Jun 25, 2009. 11:57 AMmaestro8 says:

If all we did was throw away broken items, never attempting to repair them, then we'd be piling up a lot of trash while wasting a lot of resources and effort. How does a 15 minute repair job compare to the hours required to produce and assemble a new calculator?

Jun 23, 2009. 6:20 PMjacobjordan says:

He said graphing calculator. A basic one costs around $60, and top of the line ones exceed $500.

Jun 23, 2009. 6:19 PMduckythescientist says:

Mine is, and mine is cheaper than some others that I've seen and want. TI 84+SE w00t, my calc rocks!

Jun 24, 2009. 10:32 AMjacobjordan says:

Beats mine. I got a TI-83+. I want an nSpire.

Jun 24, 2009. 10:47 AMduckythescientist says:

Don't those have less archive than the 84+SE? The graphics look nice, but I'm used to my 84+SE.

Jun 24, 2009. 10:57 AMjacobjordan says:

I'm not sure about the complete specs, but the thing that gets me going on them is the ultra high res display.

Jun 24, 2009. 1:31 PMduckythescientist says:

What is the display? I know the 83+/84+ is 94x62 one bit gray scale, but I don't know the nSpire.

Jun 24, 2009. 5:04 PMjacobjordan says:

320x240 4-bit grayscale. Pretty impressive for a calculator. It even offers antialiasing. Though they do make full color graphing calculators, but those are a bit out of my price range.

Jun 25, 2009. 6:08 AMhounddogger says:

Ti-89 rules them all =:)

Jun 25, 2009. 10:25 AMjacobjordan says:

How exactly does the 89 rule the nSpire?

Jun 25, 2009. 7:13 AMvolto says:

Why not just get a cheap old laptop and install http://www.graphcalc.com/, then your graphing calculator will have a full querty keyboard, 1024x768x32 res, and wireless intartubes.

Jun 25, 2009. 9:14 AMsmash10101 says:

most tests say no calculators with full qwerty, so you would have to use Divoraks or something

Jun 24, 2009. 9:30 AMarduinoe says:

oh ok , my bad . you can run java applets on some grahpics calculators , they are just begging to be hacked :)

Jun 24, 2009. 10:46 AMduckythescientist says:

I haven't seen those... I'm drooling already!!!

Jun 25, 2009. 11:18 AMReoTheYokel says:

Yeah, nice tip. My friend accidentally dropped his cellphone and the screen went completely black. The phone is 100% functional(he know the way to multimedia by heart), but is kinda useless with no screen. Would this tip work for it? I believe it's a Nokia 3120 classic.

Jun 25, 2009. 4:50 AMinjersey says:

Oh the disappointment! I have a West Bend Timer with a bad display that I immediately disassembled to fix. The LCD was enclosed in metal like Fort Knox. I heated it with a hairdryer anyway and pushed down on it until it cooled to see if it would reconnect. No luck but now I'm on the hunt for something else to fix. Maybe the handset in the bedroom ... Very useful post. Much thanks.