Today, Nick and I got the opportunity to tear apart an old Samsung computer monitor. I was more than happy to make sure that no one would fall victim to this monitor’s low resolutions ever again. We used Philips and flat head screw drivers, as well as some pliers, to disassemble the monitor,

We began our journey by removing the monitor’s plastic stand. The stand was attached to the monitor by four hooks that slid into slots on the bottom of the monitor, and it stayed attached by means of a small plastic clip, seen at the front of the stand below.

The stand had a slot with a rod through it, allowing the monitor angle to be adjustable. Additionally, a small spring helped the swivel stay in place and not disconnect. I assumed that the plastic parts of the stand were made from an injection molding process. After removing the stand, we moved on to the monitors outer plastic shell, which was likely created through injection molding as well.

The outer plastic shell was attached by two Philips head screws on the bottom of the monitor, and a tab on either side of the screen.

The screws were very easy to remove, but the tabs we a little more difficult. We tried using flat head screwdrivers to press the tabs, but for some reason Nick and I couldn’t manage to press the tabs in far enough to release the monitor shell, so we ended up having to brute force it a little bit, causing very minor damage to the plastic pieces. We did finally get it off though, and the outer shell was intact, revealing the electronics below.

Our next step was to remove the thin metal casing that surrounded the electronics areas. We believed that this casing was made by a stamping process, because it was clearly a flat, perforated sheet that had been folded into the shape shown. After removing a couple screws, the metal was gone. One interesting thing we found was a plastic piece that had been darkened by soot of some sort. We assumed this piece had been made by vacuum molding, and that it served as a guard to prevent electricity from reaching the metal sheet.

We were advised by Dr. Wettergreen to avoid the actual screen part of the monitor, due to concerns about large capacitors and such, so all we had left to do was remove the motherboard. We unplugged everything from the motherboard, cut a few cables, slid the motherboard tray out from the rest of the monitor, and removed a multitude of screws to take the motherboard out of its metal tray. The metal motherboard tray was snugly fitted into the monitor case, but we manage to slide it out without any damage. Finally, we were left with the lone motherboard.

We examined the motherboard a little bit, noting all of the capacitors, resistors, transducers and other fancy magical electric doohickeys. After that, we were ready to clean up, because we weren’t going any further into the monitor screen electronics as a safety precaution. We collected all of our parts, and disposed of them in the appropriate trash cans, and returned our tools to the workbench after a job well done.

One of the things I was very surprised about was how few screws there actually were to remove. There were far more screws securing just the motherboard than there were in all of the other parts we disassembled combined!

Our most difficult hurdle was removing the plastic shell at the very beginning. We spent a significant amount of time trying to remove the shell properly, but we just couldn’t get it. We couldn’t figure out why the tabs would get pushed in far enough to release the shell. The rest of the computer was much easier to disassemble.