So I had decided to turn my 15" LCD into an overhead projector a couple months ago and finally got myself to do it. Let me just say that taking apart LCDs is not fun... I'm sorry I don't have pictures of me doing it, it didn't come to my mind, and it probably would've made you even more surprised that it still works
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The first thing that I did was to open the LCD, obviously. I used a Compaq 1501 LCD, it was actually very simple to do it, there were two slots at the bottom of the LCD (After you unscrew the bottom stand) where you insert a flat screwdriver and pry it open. After that you go through unscrewing millions of screws and by millions I mean over fifty. The hardest part was when two screws refused to come out, so lets just say that I cut a bit of metal with an exacto knife (Only thing I had on hand, and it took over an hour to do that). After unscrewing all the screws I came to all the circuitry which I carefully took out (really, I did do it carefully) and placed next to the LCD while the backlight was still in place. Next I took apart the metal that was holding the backlight to the LCD and took out the LCD. I then took the metal without the backlight in it and placed the LCD in a position where it would not be scratched and reassembled the circuitry to the LCD and placed on the overhead projector I own. I turned it on and it works, which is very surprising considering this is my first mod and it was fairly complicated considering that I had never done anything like it before. It does work very well and does not overheat (I've had it one for about 3 and a half hours and it's been fine), there is a 20" box-fan on high cooling the LCD down. I took some pictures of the end product using my cameraphone. (The first picture shows the size comparison between the original 15" casing and the size of the screen I'm using with it now, the casing is in the lower right.)
The mod took about four hours, which mostly went to taking the LCD apart. The cost of the components was as follows:
15" LCD - Free (Relative upgraded to a 19" and gave their old one to me)
LCD Power Brick - $20 (Unfortunetly it did not come with the power brick)
Overhead Projector - Free (My dad is a teacher and they upgraded to a better overhead projector. I still want to get a better one though, it's a bit dark.)
4 hours of my time - priceless (Come on, it was asking to be said
)
The first thing that I did was to open the LCD, obviously. I used a Compaq 1501 LCD, it was actually very simple to do it, there were two slots at the bottom of the LCD (After you unscrew the bottom stand) where you insert a flat screwdriver and pry it open. After that you go through unscrewing millions of screws and by millions I mean over fifty. The hardest part was when two screws refused to come out, so lets just say that I cut a bit of metal with an exacto knife (Only thing I had on hand, and it took over an hour to do that). After unscrewing all the screws I came to all the circuitry which I carefully took out (really, I did do it carefully) and placed next to the LCD while the backlight was still in place. Next I took apart the metal that was holding the backlight to the LCD and took out the LCD. I then took the metal without the backlight in it and placed the LCD in a position where it would not be scratched and reassembled the circuitry to the LCD and placed on the overhead projector I own. I turned it on and it works, which is very surprising considering this is my first mod and it was fairly complicated considering that I had never done anything like it before. It does work very well and does not overheat (I've had it one for about 3 and a half hours and it's been fine), there is a 20" box-fan on high cooling the LCD down. I took some pictures of the end product using my cameraphone. (The first picture shows the size comparison between the original 15" casing and the size of the screen I'm using with it now, the casing is in the lower right.)
The mod took about four hours, which mostly went to taking the LCD apart. The cost of the components was as follows:
15" LCD - Free (Relative upgraded to a 19" and gave their old one to me)
LCD Power Brick - $20 (Unfortunetly it did not come with the power brick)
Overhead Projector - Free (My dad is a teacher and they upgraded to a better overhead projector. I still want to get a better one though, it's a bit dark.)
4 hours of my time - priceless (Come on, it was asking to be said