After surviving icepocalypse from the warmth and safety of my dorm room, I wasn’t super excited to make the trek back to the OEDK for class. However, my mood immediately changed upon discovery of this week’s lab: deconstruction!
I worked with Kelly on this lab to deconstruct a computer monitor. Here, deconstruct is a fancy term for “tear apart without breaking”. After removing a bunch of screws, the monitor remained intact. One flat head screwdriver and a little bit of force later we were able to remove the plastic exterior to reveal some metal casing. The lightweight metal seems to be used to protect the circuit boards and other electronic parts on the inside of the monitor. Due to the extensive holes and rough edges, it seems that the plates were formed through the manufacturing process of stamping.
Back of monitor with exposed metal casing
Upon removing the casing, we found tons of electronic parts all screwed down and fastened together. We decided to leave the circuit boards whole, but disassembled them from the base. One peculiar observation was that a lot of the parts were secured in non-machined ways. In the picture below, its clear that almost all the insulated wires were fastened using zip ties. Zip ties are cheap, easy to use, and actually secure tightly. Some other components were simply taped to the metal base.
Internal electronic components
Some other finds included a panel with buttons for the front of the monitor (power, volume, screen resolution, etc.), whole speakers, and unique jagged washers for smaller screws. The panel was intriguing because its function was easily recognizable, unlike other components such as the circuit boards. The speakers gave me a small jolt, but were still fun to disassemble. The jagged washers were most likely used to prevent rotation of the fasteners.
Front panel with buttons
Speakers (could these be replaced as a singular unit?)
By the end of the period we had deconstructed the monitor to its bare bones. Taking things apart is fun on its own, but this lab also led to some interesting conclusions:
- Monitors are hard to disassemble. My bet is the company wants you to purchase a new product rather than attempt to fix it when a failure occurs. (Samsung? Apple? One of you knows what I’m talking about)
- Even heavy-duty industrial fasteners can’t beat tape and zip ties.
- There are many manufacturing processes I still don’t know about….yet.
- Circuit boards look just as scary as they sound.
