I recently picked up 4 broken monitors on craigslist, two of which were Acer AL1916ASD monitors. They are a 19" monitor with DVI and VGA inputs and CCFL backlights.
Opening the monitors is pretty much like other monitors. You don't have to remove the stand, although doing so will probably make opening the monitor a lot easier. There are two screws on the back, after which you need to pry the two halves apart. I got to try something new with these monitors. A friend just ordered some metal spudgers from ifixit.com. I opened on monitor the old fashioned way (flat blade screwdrivers) and the other using the spudgers. I have to say I'm really impressed with the spudgers. They were much easier to work with, and didn't really leave marks on the plastic. I'd highly recommend them for anyone who works on monitors/TVs a lot. I know I'm ordering some.
Once you get the monitor apart you can access the metal cage on the back with the circuit boards. Remove the wires and some screws to remove the cage. Important - to remove the power/inverter board from the cage you MUST also remove the video board from the cage at the same time. Instead of a wire bundle connecting the two boards, they are connected by a hard link between the boards. If you try and remove one board without the other you will break this link.
With the circuit boards removed it was easy to spot the problem - bad caps, and lots of them. There were six obvious bulging caps in each of the two monitors. The four along the top of the heat sink and the two green ones between the backlight inverters. However, my recommendation is to totally racap the entire board (except the really big reservoir cap). All of the smaller caps on the board, when I removed them they we bulging on the bottom of the cap. Maybe only 1 or 2 caps on the entire board were still good.
Unfortunately I cannot tell you the specs of each cap in the monitor. I placed one large order of caps for a bunch of monitors and I forgot to write down which ones were for this monitor. I replaced them all with Panasonic FM series (or FC series when FM was unavailable). After soldering in the replacements both monitors work perfectly.
One final note, the picture of the power/inverter board, I had to desolder 4 caps from the board in order to see the writing on the cap to order the replacements. The picture I took was at this stage - so there are 4 empty capacitor slots that were original populated with caps.
Opening the monitors is pretty much like other monitors. You don't have to remove the stand, although doing so will probably make opening the monitor a lot easier. There are two screws on the back, after which you need to pry the two halves apart. I got to try something new with these monitors. A friend just ordered some metal spudgers from ifixit.com. I opened on monitor the old fashioned way (flat blade screwdrivers) and the other using the spudgers. I have to say I'm really impressed with the spudgers. They were much easier to work with, and didn't really leave marks on the plastic. I'd highly recommend them for anyone who works on monitors/TVs a lot. I know I'm ordering some.
Once you get the monitor apart you can access the metal cage on the back with the circuit boards. Remove the wires and some screws to remove the cage. Important - to remove the power/inverter board from the cage you MUST also remove the video board from the cage at the same time. Instead of a wire bundle connecting the two boards, they are connected by a hard link between the boards. If you try and remove one board without the other you will break this link.
With the circuit boards removed it was easy to spot the problem - bad caps, and lots of them. There were six obvious bulging caps in each of the two monitors. The four along the top of the heat sink and the two green ones between the backlight inverters. However, my recommendation is to totally racap the entire board (except the really big reservoir cap). All of the smaller caps on the board, when I removed them they we bulging on the bottom of the cap. Maybe only 1 or 2 caps on the entire board were still good.
Unfortunately I cannot tell you the specs of each cap in the monitor. I placed one large order of caps for a bunch of monitors and I forgot to write down which ones were for this monitor. I replaced them all with Panasonic FM series (or FC series when FM was unavailable). After soldering in the replacements both monitors work perfectly.
One final note, the picture of the power/inverter board, I had to desolder 4 caps from the board in order to see the writing on the cap to order the replacements. The picture I took was at this stage - so there are 4 empty capacitor slots that were original populated with caps.
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