Fix a scratched LCD?

[Mercutio]

Someone brought me a really nice 19" Dell LCD today that has a couple giant scratches down the front. Their toddler got caught in the cord or something and I guess it went for a little ride off a desk and over some legos or something.

There's nothing wrong with the monitor other than the scratches but obviously Dell's not going to warranty it.

Has anyone tried fixing a scratch LCD?

 

[timwhit]

Maybe take it apart and see if there is some kind of protective cover that could be removed/replaced that protects the actual LCD panel.

 

[Stereodude]

Someone brought me a really nice 19" Dell LCD today that has a couple giant scratches down the front. Their toddler got caught in the cord or something and I guess it went for a little ride off a desk and over some legos or something.

There's nothing wrong with the monitor other than the scratches but obviously Dell's not going to warranty it.

Has anyone tried fixing a scratch LCD?

Not gonna happen. The part that is scratched is the front polarizer of the LCD itself. You can't replace it yourself, and you could buy several of them for what you could get a company to replace the front polarizer for.

 

[Mercutio]

Well... a long and arduous googling leads me to believe that I might be able to repair the scratches with silver polish. Meh. May as well try; the screen is already ruined anyway.

 

[timwhit]

Is it really so bad as to be unusable? Maybe you could give it to someone that is strapped for cash, like one of the college kids that you build systems for.

 

[Mercutio]

The bad scratch is about 6 inches long and is visible from 10 feet away. It's also visible when the display is actually on. It's a bad scratch.
I shall take a picture.

 

[Mercutio]

 

[timwhit]

Yeah it is bad, but if it was between no monitor and a scratched one, I would still take the scratch.

 

[ddrueding]

I actually have a 19" with scratches a bit worse than that. I use it on my bench. I actually ended up using a rezor blade to remove the materiel that was hanging off the display, but the display under the scratch still looks like @ss. I wouldn't use it for anything but checking progress of windows installs/updates.

 

[ddrueding]

Ugh, sorry for the typos...it's to early (8:45AM)

 

[Mercutio]

Silver polish did not appreciably change the appearance of the major scratch, but it did help with a lighter one (barely visible in the photo), and it also did a wonderful job cleaning fingerprints and other crud off the plastic. It absolutely didn't hurt anything.

I'm going to try a couple specially-made LCD scratch repair products as well, but if nothing works I'm just going to be happy to have a new bench monitor.

 

[sechs]

Your only option is to fill the scratch with either an appropriate filler, or by melting the existing nearby material into the scratch. Most of the scratch repair products attempt to do one or the other.

 

[Mercutio]

That's what I was hoping the silver polish would do.

 

[Groltz]

We use Meguiar's Mirror Glaze Clear Plastic Cleaner #17 on aircaft cabin window reveals. (The thing with the clear plastic lens and shade in it, not the actual window glass) It removes very fine scratches but I doubt it would help that gouge in your screen.

The best cleaner that I've found for either CRT or LCD monitor screens is Stoner's Invisible Glass + a pure bleached cotton cloth with no laundry soap residue in it.

Good Luck

 

[paugie]

Sayang. (it's a tagalog word, roughly translated "what a waste" or "what a pity")