Turn a Dead Laptop Into a Monitor With Plexiglas Stand

Hi, this is an 'ible on how to turn the LCD panel from a friends fried laptop (cheers Martin :P ) into an external monitor for your home console, blueray-player or just as a second monitor.

First things first, this is my first Instructable and the first time I used a rotary tool and Plexiglas! So please bear with me :)

Also, I didn't really intended to write this 'ible, but my mates pushed me into doing it, that's why I don't really have many pictures from the process! I'll try to explain everything clearly, but if anything is unclear, feel free to comment :)

Step 1: What You'll Need

A functional LCD panel (get it from a dead laptop or buy one off Ebay etc.)
2mm A3 Plexiglas ( I got mine off Ebay, 2mm might be a little bit flimsy, but should do the trick)

5mm A4 Plexiglas (again, Ebay. 5mm for a sturdy base)

A controller board (Must be the right one for your panel!! To know what panel you have, you must take the casing around your screen apart and look at the back of the panel, it should be written somewhere. I've got mine off Ebay, I used e-qstore (came within a week!!) or njytouch. Email them the number of your panel before buying it)

Nuts, bolts and washers (depending on what size the holes on the frame of your panel are, I used 8 3mm bolts for the frame and button-board and 14 4mm bolts for the brackets and for fixing the controller board and inverter on the base.)

2 metal brackets (2 basic corner brackets to attach the base and the front sheet)

An adjustable wrench or small spanners

A slotted screwdriver

Fine sandpaper

A glass cutter ( to score Plexiglas, if you want to cut it, a carpenters knife will do the trick)

Optional:

A hacksaw (I needed to cut off two metal hinges, see picture for reference)

A rotary tool (I thought I'd have to cut a lot more than I actually did, still needed it to drill the holes though)

Self-adhesive pads as feet (stops the base from getting scratched, a quid on Ebay)

Step 2: The Preparation

If you didn't already, get the LCD panel off of your dead Laptop, you will find loads of tutorials on how to take apart your laptop on Youtube/Google. Also, if your mainboard is broken, take out your HDD, CPU, disc-drive and everything that you can reuse! Your Laptop might have a webcam, that you can take off and sell, or solder to a usb-cable! (I failed at that...)

Choose the size of your Plexiglas sheet depending on the size of your panel, I used a 17" LCD, so I choose an A3 sized sheet, that fit perfectly, without me needing to cut anything to size.

If the edges of your sheet feel kind of rough, use the fine sandpaper to smoothen things out. Also, don't take off the protective cover of any of your sheets, right before the end. (I know, best feeling in the world, but not worth risking scratches on it ;) )

Step 3: Time to Bend the Brackets

Take your two brackets and bend them a tiny little bit back, so that your endproduct will be a bit bend and won't look too straight and/or fall forward.

Take your time bending the brackets, don't overbend it and try to bend them at the same angle! I don't really have the right tools to bend stuff here, so I just used my manliness and it worked wonders!

Also, If you have hinges on your frame, that stick out, use the mighty hacksaw and cut them off! Be careful not to damage your screen though!

Step 4: Positioning Stuff on the Sheets, to Find Out Where to Drill!

The next step is to position your LCD on the A3 sheet of Plexiglas to determine where the holes are going to be. Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of that step, because I didn't intended to put the project online! Soz guys!

But what you want to do is quite self-explanatory! Once you positioned your panel on the Plexiglas, take pen, or pencil, depending what works best, and mark the outlines of your panel on the cover from the sheet. To make sure that you can see the points where you want to drill through later, use your drill bit and press through the holes of the LCD's frame to make it more visible later.

Now go ahead and drill the holes that you just marked. Make sure that you don't use too much pressure or a too high setting on your rotary tool/drill, because the acrylic might melt or even break. I used a scrap sheet of MDF under the Plexiglas to stop me from drilling into my table!

Step 5: Drill Away!

Once you've drilled the holes for the brackets, go ahead and put the Bolt and nut in. After that, take your sheet of 5mm A4 Plexiglas and position it so you know where you'll need the holes to be. I made the mistake to cut my sheet in half, because I wanted a different design, but changed my mind. Oh well.

After drilling all the holes, make sure that the front Plexiglas and the base connect properly and seem sturdy enough. If everything feels good, repeat the steps for the holes in the base for the controller board/inverter. Make sure you try it out first before drilling, you don't want to have the controllerboard to far away, so that the cable won't be long enough!

I wanted the buttons to be in the middle of the screen, so I had to come up with and idea on how to feed the cable from the controllerboard through the front sheet to the button-panel. I simply cut off a bit of the base in the middle. If you do that, use the cut-off-disc and the middle setting of your rotary tool, so your plastic won't be too hot and melt. Sand down the edges for a smooth feeling.

Step 6: Time to Put Everything Together

After you've made all your holes and are sure that everything fits together perfectly, you may put all the screws and bolts together, don't rush and take off the cover from the sheets, just in case something isn't quite right yet.

If everything worked according to plan, you can take off the covers from the front panel and put it on top of some cushions, like in the picture, to stop it from getting scratched.

Leave the cover on the bottom of the base on, to protect it, we're not quite finished yet.

Step 7: Almost Done!

Make sure that your LCD screen is clean and doesn't show any stripes or dirt. It will be hard to reach after you finally put on those screws and bolts!

The best thing to use to wipe the LCD panel is an old t-shirt or something similar. I used a sock, that I just bought and hadn't used yet. Perfect result.

Once your Panel is clean, you can go ahead and screw everything together, using your wrench/spanner and your screwdriver. Be aware: take your time, those small nuts are quite fiddly and you don't want to mess up your nice screen just before the end! If you can, get a mate to help you or force your girlfriend! (Just kidding, you should never force your SO to anything, folks! :) )

Step 8: Finishing Touch

After you've screwed that last bit in, go ahead and put the whole thing on it's front (Use the cushions from before to protect it!) and finally tear off that last bit of cover from the bottom of the base. If you screwed in the controller board on the top, take the cover off slowly, so you get everything off, even under the screws.

Now get your chair-pads and stick them on the corners , so you'll get a nice gap between the Plexiglas and the table, preventing it from getting scratched!

Step 9: Finished!

You should now be finally finished! Depending on what controllerboard you bought off ebay, you can plug in your Playstation, Laptop or whatever comes to mind ! Congratulations!

I hope you enjoyed this instructable and that everything was clear! If not, please feel free to ask in the comment section below! Also, I've entered in the Makerlympics Contest and would love for you to vote :)

Cheers!

Step 10: Little Edit:

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite clear on how to connect the controller board to the panel, so I'm a sorry for that!

It's probably easier to show you how to connect everything with the help of the pictures, I'll try to number each input on picture one with the part it belongs to on picture 2 and 3!

Thanks to Orkekum, for pointing out that I wasn't clear enough! Please feel free to comment if you have any more questions :)

Step 11: Added a Video and Some Pictures of the Monitor in Combination of My PS3

That's how it looks like when you connect your PPlaystation with the monitor via the HDMI input :)
BTW: The piture just seems very bright because of the bad lighting in my room and the quality of my phone!