Hi Some people wanted to see a repair video in quote marks on my three-phase power analyzer here because the LCD has missing segments and it does seem to vary in the previous video. Sure, you saw it, had two lines out and then at the end of the video I was able to like it just came good and I was able to actually get some images of it and include it in the video. but it seems to be this bottom part of the LCD down here. Yeah, just randomly loses rows like this.

So I thought we just open it up and have a look. I mean it's most likely just going to be an issue with the zebra strip connections on the LCD or something like that Now I have actually done a teardown video on this and I haven't watched it again but I forgot what a complete dog this is. To actually get open, you have to surprise the lid off is a pain in the butt and that's the most. I can sort of like flip it up it is.

Ah, it's just awful construction to try and get apart current over range and it's got this absolutely crazy cube based construction. I've actually done projects like this before, not if my own design but I have worked on them and well, that's just yeah. Anyway, I won't go there, but you can see it in my famous hand video actually. but even this, they've got this plug-in board which plugs into here to contain some you know, Discrete 7/4 series logic goes.

This is what goes off to the LCD over here and then all of this plugs into this top card up here as well. So it's all got a wedge together as a thing. so when you turn it on without that board plugged in, you get that current over range thing. that was a bit of a pain to get out those screws without getting the other boards out.

but anyway, pretty much stock standard. You could get a replacement for this I'm sure if you're really tried it depends on where the mounting like the the connections are and stuff like that. they might vary. but yeah it's just a like a dot matrix module and you'll note that it's got the clips here so it's not going to be any other driving circuitry like that.

it's going to be the As I said the zebra strips underneath. So to really fix this like we could just have a go at trying to maybe tighten these up a bit which or like pull zebra strips across. but I think I'll just take it apart and give the zebra strips and wipe over and put it back together so you just give those little squeeze like that and they straighten right back up. They do feel a little bit a little bit loosey goosey.

actually should be good. Now that screen should pull out, it may require a screwdriver. You can see the zebra stripping. they're a bit annoying.

Doing this behind the camera always gets in the way, but it's coming out there. We go. Oh yeah, there's a yeah, there's a zipper. Oh, we know the whole thing.

Just the bezel came off. Look at that. Anyway, there's our zebra strips up there. top and bottom.

Oh hang on. No zebra strips. You can see them along there like that. They're actually only four.

You can see the individual individual connections like that. They're only for the columns If I get it at the right angle. Yep. I Think you can? Yep, Yep.

Yep. you can see it there. There you go. Forget in the light.

you can see the connections in there like that on the glass surface and they'd be top and bottom. There you go. Yeah, so you can see them when they're there. For the columns, are there you go.

So it's split into two halves like that and top and bottom are a little bit different. but the rows which are the ones that are failing. Uh-huh it's gonna one of these hot buyer attachment ones which was seen before I believe it was in a fluke, a fluke oscilloscope so no taught like the handheld ones. The early models are those notorious for having this issue and we've probably seen Don maybe one or two other repairs as well.

So the problem is not going to be the zebra strips, it's going to be one. Well, if you can figure out exactly which contour, it's going to be a couple of contacts down the bottom there. Now because this is actually sent, this top part of it is sandwiched up inside the glass up there. If it is up in there, then you've got a bigger problem and that's going to be hard or maybe impossible to fix.

Maybe you could just heat it up and hope you get lucky or something like that, but it's likely going just to be Whichever rows were out in there, then it's likely just to be the contact down to the PCB down in there so he might be able to heat those up and fix that. Now this actually has some kind of coating on it. you can see like all that all that crap coming off there. so I'm not sure what that.

that stuff is sort of like silicon coat on top of that. so just me pushing down on those would be enough to fix this. I'm not sure actually. can we power this up now? I think I can put it back together, physically, put this board back in, and then have the ribbon cable and the LCD coming out the sides.

I'm going to try that. Okay, a whole bunch of the verticals are out because there's not enough pressure on the screen, but you can see that some horizontals are up the top or out and several down the bottom as well. The problem we saw before, so if we push on this, we should see them all come back like that. There you go.

so all the verticals so they'll fix themselves I'm not worried about that now. they'll fix themselves once we put the metal plate back on. But yeah, look, we've certainly got a couple of ones down there and one line up the top, right? So now I'm going to try and put pressure down here and see if I can't Oh, hang on. that's not good.

I'm putting pressure on that and those lines aren't coming back. That's not good. Does that mean it's up in the LCD up between the glass there and I can't put the black bezel back on because then I don't have physical access to the connections over here, so that's rather annoying. But anyway, you can just ignore the vertical columns that are out and there you go.

I've actually left it for like half an hour or something and it's come good. all of those rows. That's interesting if I experiment I just push the bottom down here. Not so.

perhaps it's some sort of thermal related issue and that's maybe not surprising considering that. Well, not that there's any heat being generated here, but it's interesting that over time it causes that. So hmm. and if I turn it off and then back on straight away, say comes good again.

So I'm gonna leave it for a while I'm going out now. Actually, just happened to be going out, so switch it off and then I won't physically touch it and I'll come back. or I'll come back a couple of hours later. Let's pair it up and not it's still good thing.

Come on, damn it No. I don't have a fault to fix. Alright, let's see if we can thermally abuse it. So I'll get the air duster, turn it upside down, which turns it into instant freezer spray.

and let's spray. No, not see anything. No, nothing on the cold side now shown in the previous video which I'll link in, but also try and splice in the footage here. how that actually I'm heating up the end of this with a hot air gun and then sort of like using a yes budget or just sort of force it down as I heat it up sort of to reheat the our thermal adhesive on here and I assume it's there thermal adhesive that they're using on here and that fixed my fluke scope meter.

So I could do the same thing here. but unfortunately, unless I can force this to fail again, I won't know whether or not it's actually fixed and that's a problem with intermittent problems like this is that it's magically come good. I've got to wait until it fails and I can't No amount of physical playing around with that is gonna cause those lines to vanish again. So what the like? Yeah, I there's like nothing I can do really unless that fails again.

I don't wanna? oh hang on No. there we go. We got it. We got it.

We got one. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is get some hot air, set it to like a hundred and fifty. don't set it too high, otherwise you can melt the thing and let's give it a bowl. Damn everything's at the wrong angle here.

Bloody trying to bloody film things is just ridiculous, you know? So oh yeah yeah yeah. looking see stuff starting to vanish. Alright so I get in there and just sort of like re heat all that oh not looks like they have I completely screwed it. It doesn't look good does it? Oops, what have I done I've really screwed the pooch there.

now. look at all these extra lines in here. Oops. no sort of come good again.

This is not one happy puppy. It's not performing like it did on the the fluke scope meter. Really does not like this at all. all I can think of as maybe heat it up and let it cool down and maybe it'll come gooey.

Oh LCD Yeah, a bit of a heat problem there with the LCD Well these flat flex interfaces. they're just horrible. Of course they don't have the exact specs on what they've used here, but Jesus just so touchy and it really doesn't seem any really easy. You know way to fix this.

I Have fixed these before by doing exactly this actually heating it up a little bit and pressing them back down and just hope that the thermal adhesive takes again and so it has actually come good. now. put the bezel back on and well. I don't know.

Fingers crossed, but only like long-term useless. So if we fix this or not, there you are. it's on its back together and it looks like we're good to go. but you don't know I mean these things are so dodgy and of course we just really just putting a bandaid on the problem.

we're not. you know, really fixing that properly and I don't really know how to fix that properly. If anyone not like has a really tried and tested technique for fixing these a little like a conductive thermal adhesive hot bar type flex attachments for LCDs please let us know. But yeah, and it's I don't know what's going to happen to this.

It could stay good for a long time, could stay good forever, could fail in the next couple of minutes. Some end? Yep, who knows. I don't know. Touchwood hello McFly mm-hmm that seems all right.

anyway. I hope you liked that. And as I said, I'll link in the Fluke video as well for the Fluke scope which had a similar problem, had a much larger issue than this one, so that's worth checking out. That'll be up the end here somewhere at the end of the video anyway.

I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. As always, discussed down below and over on the Eevblog forum. and by the way, I Am on other platforms.

For those who ask, there's a lot of people who ask. Um, probably my main other platform would be Bit Shoot. So please go over to Bit Shoot calm at slash Eevblog and you can watch me over on you. Unfortunately, it's only in 720p because that's all it allows the transfer of at the moment, but it's a nifty alternative to Youtube if the Australian government haven't censored it that happened today.

Yeah, catch you next time.