A while back the picture quality on my 7" touch screen used in the car computer dropped off dramatically. It was well out of warranty so I took it apart to get a closer look inside. It turns out one of the contacts had melted as well as the corresponding line in the computer to screen wire. I contacted the manufacturer and they wanted a chunk of change to fix it, enough change that I could get a competitors brand new touchscreen, ouch.

I did some research online and found a vendor that sold the particular connector I needed, a female 20 pin DFP connector with 90 degree PCB mount. This actually took me a rediculously long time. $2.50 later I had the connector and was ready to go to work on fixing the screen.

What followed can only be described as the slow methodical murder of my screen. I had to remove 19 tiny connectors before I could even get to the 22 connections I cared about. Each of the first 19 connections was a tiny rod that went through 2 circuit boards and seemded to have been soldered at 4 points. I first tried de-soldering braided wire to get these connections free. That didnt work, the capillary action of the tiny through board connections was too much for the de-soldering wire. I next borrowed a tool I had never used before; a de-soldering pump. Basically its a spring powered vacuum that sucks up melted solder. The suction is supposed to be enough to get it out of tiny channels like the ones I was dealing with. It didnt work like I had hoped. All the connections were still in place. In the end I just heated and ripped out 6 connection which allowed me to bend the two circuit boards back and forth to break the remaning 13 connections. Once broken, I was able to heat and rip the remaining 13 connections out. This was not a good approach but it worked. 

I was able to remove and replace the 20 pin DFP connector pretty easily. I then started putting the 2 circuit boards back together. I opted to use wire rather than tiny metals rods to join the boards so I could more easily get to and fix any solder mistakes I might make. I only had two types of wire that would fit, crazy small wire and human hair small wire. I started with crazy small wire and ruined even more contacts forcing the wire into the circuit board. I switched to using human hair small wire even though I was pretty sure it was an insufficient guage to work. At least I could get it into the circuit board though.

After it was all said and done I figured I had about a 10% chance the board would work and about a 5% chance it would look better than it had before. I connected it to my computer and turned it on. Viola. I turned on right away and looked nice and bright. The picture is just barely not as sharp as it had been brand new. All things considered, I was supprised just to see it turn on, let alone display the correct picture.

Apparently God had pity on me, or rewarded me for no going over my swear word quota while soldering the board. Either way the screen works. The only downside is that now the screen is far too fragile to just be rolling around in my car. I am putting the screen in a box in the closet until I am ready to mount it permantly in my car. 

Check out all the photos here.