DIY LCD Backlight Repair

Bill Nye (not the science guy) writes to tell us that InventGeek has an interesting article on do it yourself LCD backlight repair. From the overview: "Those of us that have used LCD monitors for a while know that over time the backlight starts to dim and will eventually completely fail. Leaving you with some electronic scrap that you could sell on eBay for 35 bucks or so. Well for less than $20.00 and about a half hour of your time you can replace the backlight and rejuvenate that monitor to as good as new condition."

Comments

Warranty

[Mr. Freeman]

This probably voids your warranty, although if the screen is going blank the warranty has probably already expired.

I wonder how hard this actually is to do. I've read countless tutorials on do it yourself projects and they almost never work for me.
There's always some little detail that you miss that could leave you with a pile of broken junk instead of a new monitor.

Classic Slashdot link

[Rogerborg]

A barely legible article that contains the absolute minimum information about a potentially lethal operation involving jillions of volts of capacitance and using power tools to cut almost-but-not-quite into one of the most toxic substances around, which, not at all incidentally, we are advised to just "dispose" of when we're done with it. Gee, I wonder what the author did with his? Tossed it in the garbage, or throw it into the sewer?

Frankly I'd rather that we just linked to bomb making instructions, as it would probably result in fewer acute injuries and chronic health problems.

Re:Classic Slashdot link

[MattskEE]

Anyone who uses the phrase "jillions of volts of capacitance" obviously doesn't understand what's inside an LCD monitor, nor how dangerous it is.

There is really nothing dangerous in them, LCD's cathodes don't use more than 1kv, and unlike CRT's, there is no significant capacitor that will remain charged when the monitor is turned off. Obviously there would be some risk if you actually worked on the inverter while it was on, which isn't even dangerous if you are careful.

And if you're that worried about the safety of cutting into a cold cathode, you could always use a shop vac to improvise a fume extraction system, in case you screw it up. Or you could order a harder to find cold cathode that does not have the covering mentioned, or salvage one from a scanner.

If you take a few minor precautions this operation is not really dangerous at all. Don't complain about how stupid this author is when you don't understand how LCD backlights work or basic safety proceedings.

How old?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Those tubes are pretty long life, how often do they fail on average? I thought it was something like 50,000 hours, so something that fails in the first three years or so of average use (40 hours a week * 50 weeks of use a year = 2000 hours a year) should be pretty rare. If the display is too old, it might not be worth that much anyway as older LCDs can get pretty bad for colors, contrast ratio, viewing angle and such.

They do dim with age though, which isn't a problem for me, I try to reduce the brightness anyway.

Not that dangerous

[Flying pig]

As my physics teacher used to say, if the things physicists work with are really as dangerous as that, why do physicists have above average life expectancy?

The answer of course is that most of these hazards are serious for people who are exposed to them continuously as a result of work or environment (e.g. asbestos, radon.) Occasional exposure to a small amount of mercury is unlikely to do you a lot of harm; it might even kill a bacterial infection you didn't know you had. Working continuously in an environment containing detectable levels of mercury vapour could be very bad indeed.

Re:You Know What You Were Thinking...

[wan-fu]

Oh, and how could I forget:

science rules

Ugh

[Jeffrey Baker]

As others have pointed out, the linked article is unreadable, barely informative, and likely to damage the environment and one's health. So here's a better idea: if you want to reinvigorate an aging LCD monitor, why not just remove the back altogether, and mount the panel on a nice white LED lightbox? It seems like it would be a big improvement.

Re:$20 + Hidden Costs

[alienw]

There is not much mercury vapor in a CCF tube. About a thousand times less than in a regular 4-ft fluorescent (like the ones used in offices). Those tubes routinely get broken during installation and removal. If it was really that harmful, everyone working indoors would be dead by now.

Re:uhm, yeah

[node 3]

I don't think I'll be following these instructions for my dimming 17" powerbook. Anybody have any *good* instructions for fixing one of those?

Looking at the text you quoted, I don't see anything terribly "bad" about the instructions.

If you're referring to his spelling, it's fairly clear you are smart enough to have figured out what he was saying, so why judge whether to follow the instructions based on spelling instead of based on your understanding of the instructions?

The primary purpose of instructions are to convey the steps and procedures for accomplishing some task. Spelling and grammar are definitely useful in writing clear instructions, but they are not so critical that a few mistakes necessarily render the whole thing useless (unless the mistakes happen to be "well placed", which none of the examples you've given are).