How to ship a monitor chassis/How to fix a cracked chassis

modessitt

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How to ship a monitor chassis/How to fix a cracked chassis

The names have been withheld to protect those who didn't know better.


First let's talk about shipping. This is the box that the K4900 arrived in:

SDC12011.jpg


Now, it's very possible that the dents and creases were caused by a careless USPS system, and that this was not the fault of the shipper.

When I opened up the box, I took off the padding and found this:

SDC12004.jpg


SDC12005.jpg


Okay, so what could have been done to prevent this? While not fool-proof, I have never had a chassis that I packed get damaged during shipping by following these simple steps:

a) Use a new box. I know that a lot of people reuse boxes. It's cheaper and easier, but many of them have dents or creases that will decrease the integrity of the box. If you must reuse the box, use some stiff cardboard bracing around the sides.

b) Make sure the box is several inches larger than the chassis you are shipping. The box above measures 11" long, and the chassis that was in it was 10-3/4" long. That leave 1/8" on each side for padding. Any impact on the sides would quickly damage what was inside. The Large Flat-Rate box would have had enough room for the chassis and additional padding that was necessary.

c) Pack it well. Wrap it up in bubble-wrap, put in peanuts or extra bubble padding, whatever you need to give you at LEAST an inch of separation between the chassis and the sides of the box - all sides (top & bottom, too).

d) Make sure you put insurance on it. Not only will you (eventually) be reimbursed if it gets too damaged, it seems they take a little more care with it if they know they'll have to pay if it gets damaged.


Next up, how do we fix the damage?
 
Okay, let's fix it.

The first thing to do is unbend the frame. I desoldered the HOT, then removed the screws holding the side wall to the PCB. Next up was removing the 4 screws holding the screw-mount bracket to the side wall, then remove the screws holding the flyback bracket to the side wall, and remove the side wall. I then used some pliers to rebend the metal frame back to as close to straight as possible. Doing so revealed some additional cracks around some of the flyback pins. I put it all back together, and now have a straight frame again:

SDC12006.jpg


Next up, I did continuity checks around the flyback pins, and used clipped capacitor legs (which I keep for this purpose) to bridge the cracks:

SDC12007.jpg


Then I used some gel super-glue to get the broken piece back into position. I used another K4900 for reference, and did continuity checks to find all the broken traces. Shorter traces were bridged with clipped leads and longer traces were repaired with insulated wire:

SDC12008.jpg


Once I had it back to the way it was supposed to be, I did another quick perusal for additional damage. Not seeing any, I threw it on a tube and:

SDC12010.jpg


It was sent to me for a recap, due to it being brighter on one end than the other, which can be seen in the photo. I can now get on to rebuilding it now that I have it back to where it was before it was shipped.

Thought these two items may be useful to someone at some point....
 
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