Hello all,
On my latest repair, I've found myself now going down the rabbit hole
of LCD module repairs. I started by swapping one of the Hitachi
controller chips from a donor LCD board and discovered some things
about LCD and heat along the way. The heat from the hot-air station
turned a lot of the LCD black. This scared be for a bit but it turned
back to normal when it cooled down.
However... (you knew this was coming, right?)... although the "new"
chip fixed the non-functional section of the display, it now has dead
lines and columns on it. I'm assuming this is due to the heat causing
issues with the zebra strips. I should have clipped out the dead chip
-- now I know. So, being in "Miracle Max" mode at this point ("he's
already dead!"), I removed the LCD from the PCB and cleaned the
contacts and the zebra strip. After this, I could apply great pressure
to a portion of the PCB/LCD and some parts of the LCD display will
function (displays text as expected) but I'm not optimistic that
reassembling the module will result in a functional LCD. From my
research, these things tend to take permanent deformation from the
contacts on the PCB and never make proper contact again.
So - the 65536-dollar question: Has anybody ever found a source for
zebra strips suitable for these LCDs? I have a working module from
another machine that I'm going to install in this machine, but I'd
eventually LOVE to be able to repair these modules, since "they ain't
makin' any more of 'em!"
Thanks,
-Josh
