Blog: Fixing My Monitors
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Fixing My Monitors - Wednesday, November 27, 2013
I took the day off from work to run errands, among which were getting my car smogged and replacing the blown capacitors on my second monitor. I even wrote a guide about it (repairing the monitor, that is).
A month ago, my first monitor went bad due to faulty caps. I picked up a soldering iron from Home Depot and solder tip cleaner and solder wick from Radio Shack. I bought a replacement capacitor kit from eBay for about $14.
Opening the monitor and getting to the power supply board was easy enough; desoldering the caps was another story. The iron tip initially didn't get hot enough to melt the solder but instead oxidized. Nothing that the tip cleaner couldn't fix, though.
I then read that people with similar problems with desoldering pointed out that the board acts as a heatsink, drawing heat away from the solder. Heating the board with even a hair dryer can help reduce the heat differential and allow more heat to be concentrated on the solder. This technique worked well enough, and with enough persistence I was able to desolder all the old caps. Soldering all the new caps went pretty well, especially given that it was my first time soldering.
This time around, when my second monitor died for the same reason, I repeated the process and it expectedly went smoother than the first time. One blast with the hairdryer and all the caps were able to be desoldered with ease. So now both of my monitors have new caps that hopefully are immune from the capacitor plague. Sure, one of my monitors has recently developed a green line running vertically down the screen, but I expect my monitors to last me a long time. I never knew that soldering could be so fun!
A month ago, my first monitor went bad due to faulty caps. I picked up a soldering iron from Home Depot and solder tip cleaner and solder wick from Radio Shack. I bought a replacement capacitor kit from eBay for about $14.
Opening the monitor and getting to the power supply board was easy enough; desoldering the caps was another story. The iron tip initially didn't get hot enough to melt the solder but instead oxidized. Nothing that the tip cleaner couldn't fix, though.
I then read that people with similar problems with desoldering pointed out that the board acts as a heatsink, drawing heat away from the solder. Heating the board with even a hair dryer can help reduce the heat differential and allow more heat to be concentrated on the solder. This technique worked well enough, and with enough persistence I was able to desolder all the old caps. Soldering all the new caps went pretty well, especially given that it was my first time soldering.
This time around, when my second monitor died for the same reason, I repeated the process and it expectedly went smoother than the first time. One blast with the hairdryer and all the caps were able to be desoldered with ease. So now both of my monitors have new caps that hopefully are immune from the capacitor plague. Sure, one of my monitors has recently developed a green line running vertically down the screen, but I expect my monitors to last me a long time. I never knew that soldering could be so fun!