3.5" Flip Out LCD liposuction guide (thickness reduction)

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kibble
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3.5" Flip Out LCD liposuction guide (thickness reduction)

Post by kibble » Thu Apr 07, 2011 2:44 pm

So I recently purchased one of these screens:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 5594wt_936" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I thought it was going to be fairly similar to the flip out one in Hailrazer's 3.5" screen guide, but alas, twas not and contained one annoying feature; The main board and the LCD couldn't be connected together directly and had to have a long ribbon cable with adapter board between them, which in turn would make the whole setup thicker than it can be.

Luckily, the company that designed it left the pads on board so that with a little work, the LCD can be connected directly to the main board with no fluff in between. Wasn't that just nice of them? :mrgreen: It's probably very likely that these components are used in several different models of screens, but knowing exactly which ones they are..... yeah. So if you happen to have or acquire one of these particular models of flip-out screens with this setup, rest easy knowing that you can eliminate the long ribbon and adapter.

Disclaimer: This mod isn't for those with weak constitutions or the blind. I'm not responsible if you screw up your board! Keep in mind that even though stuff looks big in the pics, the actual components and connectors are really tiny and any solder bridges, dirty contacts, broken traces, and rogue circus clowns can potentially cause problems ranging from possible fried boards, video issues and discoloration, headaches, amnesia, dyslexia, or pregnancy (ok, maybe not pregnancy.)

So with all that said, if you're up to it, feel free to continue with this guide. :mrgreen:

First off we have this:

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What we want to do is take the connector from the adapter board, which was double-sided taped to the back of the LCD (didn't get a pic of this) and remove the FPC connector that attaches to the LCD. You want to be careful when removing the board from the back of the LCD as you don't want to damage the ribbon going to the LCD or break the LCD in the process.

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Using your favorite method of desoldering SMD components, remove that bad boy from the adapter board. In my case, I used a heat gun on the opposite side of the board so that it would melt the solder and I used a set of needle nose pliers to remove the connector when it was loose. You can also use something like chip-quik to do the job.

Clean the pads you will be soldering to with some braid to have them be as flat as possible since there's usually left over solder on them and are uneven. Make sure you also clean off the SMD capacitor pads that are near the FPC connector pads as you will also need to relocate some capacitors.

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Place the FPC connector on the main board pads and tack down a couple of corners to keep it in place. Use flux and the thinnest solder you can get to prevent bridges. AVOID GETTING FLUX IN THE CONNECTOR AS IT WILL CAUSE CONNECTION PROBLEMS! To continue soldering the connector to the board, I've read and seen people form a ball of solder and running it over the smd contacts. With plenty of flux, the ball will just roll over them and not form bridges. I wasn't having much luck with that and so I took a little bit of solder on the tip of my iron and touched it to the pads and moved away from the connector. I would add a little bit of flux to the contacts I had soldered and with a clean tip, run the iron over the contacts again to reflow the solder. Repeat for other side. If all goes well, hopefully you'll end up with something like this:

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There's a total of five capacitors that you must move, or if you wanted to, just add some new ones, but I don't know the values and I don't have an L/C meter, so moving them was the obvious choice. The capacitors we're interested in moving are located underneath the long FPC connector that originally went to the ribbon cable. They are C8, C9, C10, C12 and C13

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They must be moved as follows:

C8 ---> C32
C9 ---> C29
C10 ---> C26
C12 ---> C24
C13 ---> C22

The pads for these caps are located around the smaller FPC connector and as you can see here, have alread been moved:

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Once you have everything soldered in place and have inspected for cold solder joints, solder bridges, broken traces, ninjas, pirates, the MPAA/RIAA or other potentially problem-causing issues, you can attach the LCD to the board and lock it down to test functionality. Don't fret if at first you get only a white screen, video with discoloration or something like this:

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The most likely causes of any of the mentioned problems is either contacts not soldered properly, dirty FPC contacts, not having inserted the FPC in all the way or a combination of these. In the case of the picture above, the issues were dirty contacts and a few cold solder joints. Release the tab and clean the contacts on the LCD's ribbon with a small amount of alcohol and a q-tip or something similar. Try to make sure you give everything a once over again, if you have issues, as you want to limit removing and reinserting the FPC as much as possible to avoid damaging it.

Once you're able to obtain a happy, non-discolored/distorted Mario, rejoice, for you have successfully performed the surgery!

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To finish off and keep everything in place to prevent damaging the ribbon between LCD and board, use some double-sided tape between the board and LCD, but use some sort of insulator between the two to prevent shorting out contacts on the bottom side of the board.

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Coming Soon: Kibble's L'Ectroshop (parts and stuff FS)

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