Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

[skienstein]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

ok thanks tom. i will see if i can reseat the bonds. i will keep you posted. thank you so very much for your time and help!!! so very much appreciated!!!

[debom3]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

yea i put the rubber like you had your foam. probably 1/4" high on all bonds. it wouldnt close cause the rubber was not as giving as the foam i guess. i cut it in half, put the metal frame and it was still giving me the lines.
i took them all out and started to push each one individually. the middle right is probably the culprit. i put the rubber and secured it with electrical tape and it works but i get a single line now that i can't get rid off.
i reseated the t-con again and pressed the other connections, but nothing.
any advice?

I had this same issue. I would fix the large lines that distorted most of the screen, but I was left with really skinny colored lines. You can see mine in this picture, as well as the large lines. The small lines are purple.


I could easily get it to a point where the large lines would go away, but the small purple/red/green lines would be there. If I put no pressure at all, the skinny lines would go away, but the large lines would be there.

This is what I meant when mine was really touchy. I used electrical tape to "hold" the tab bond flat to the metal frame. I ended up having one tab bond that I did not use the pads on, because I couldnt get rid of the skinny lines. Try holding the tab bond flat on the metal frame and see if that helps. If it does, then maybe try electrical tape to hold it in place. Essentially it seems you have found your problem, now its all about trying to seat that bond PERFECTLY so that you fix your TV.

On mine, I could get the skinny lines to go away when I removed the foam pad. I hope yours is the same.

[debom3]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen



I just looked at this picture, what I did to mine that fixed it was basically keep the tape how you have it but remove the rubber padding all together. You have to play with it and see how to seat it and make it work. Once its seated correctly, dont touch it again!

[bldearmo]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Hello Gents. First off I wanted to thank all of you for the great information on this subject. I had the very same problem with my TV and was hoping it wasn't the LCD panel that was bad. Following what I found in this forum I was able to fix my TV with no issues. And I only had 1 extra screw left over when I was done. I had one outer tab and one in the middle that were the problems. I found that the way mine were fixed was to prop something up under the tabs so they made better contact with the metal frame to dissipate the heat. With a little redneck ingenuity I had my set in working order in a little over an hour. Once again thank all you for the great info. Surely saved me a lot of time and money.

Brad

[SeanRiley]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Hey, I just wanted to thank everyone who posted in this thread and also budm for his original guide. I was able to do this repair in about 4-5 hours total. I would describe myself as someone who is always willing to tackle a project but often gets in over my head. Anyway, I thought I would post about my experiences in case there were people like me in the future who come across this thread and want to tackle this fix, and wanted a little hint of what they should expect.

• After reading all the other posts about the ridiculous number of screws, I bought a pack of post-it mini labels that had five different colors, and I left a label by every single screw I took out and this was tremendously helpful in re-assembling everything. I think there were 7-8 different types of screws as I progressed so I ended up drawing symbols as I ran out of colors.
• The back cover is definitely the biggest pain to remove. Lots of long narrow tunnels to get at the screws. I had a magnetized screwdriver and that came in really, really handy.
• Definitely recommend having a lot of space available while working. I had a couch and a couple of chairs as my surfaces and that seemed to work pretty well.
• I'm going to describe the steps I went through in order to give you some idea of what to expect. This is all from memory so I'm sorry if I forget something. My tv is a Samsung LN52A550.
• Alright! Step 1 is going to be to take the back off. I did this by having the tv face down on a couch. There are four screws at the bottom middle that hold the stand on; once you remove those you can slide out the stand. There are a couple screws hidden amongst the inputs with little arrows pointing to them that you might miss at first. Once you get everything off you can take the back off and set it aside.
• Now that the back is off, there are a bunch of circuitboards and sensitive stuff all exposed. Don't worry, you aren't going to have to unscrew anything near any of these components. All your work is going to be around the edges.
• Step 2 is to remove the front plastic frame. Basically you want to circle around the outside and remove screws that appear to be holding it on. Here's where labels are especially important because there's a lot of unused holes and things that I think would have messed me up later. At some point during this removal I decided I would need to have the tv flipped to face up - here's where the two chair idea someone in this thread suggested came in really handy. There are a lot of delicate looking parts in the middle of the tv but you can balance the left and right edges of the tv on chairs. I took out a bunch of screws while lying on back under the tv. Once you get all the screws holding the front cover on you'll be able to lift it off. There's a thick and a thin wire still connecting the front cover to the tv, but I was able to set the cover on the couch and keep things connected (Thanks to someone else in this thread who suggested that)
• So now you should have a metal frame going all the way around the tv, step 3 is to remove the screen-side of this frame. (The metal framing around the tv is in two parts, the main frame in the back and then a big metal frame piece that fits around the front of the tv and around the main frame like the top of a donut box.) There are a bunch of really small screws around the front (I think 4 each on top and bottom, 3 on sides) and then a couple of screws on the side, and 4ish on the bottom that hold the piece in place. (the ones on the bottom connect this metal chunk to the frame.) My tv had some silver tape keeping the top of the metal frame connected, I was able to just sort of tilt the metal frame up out of the way while leaving the tape connected and still get to the parts I needed.
• I ordered the exact part from digikey that budm suggested in the thread that is linked to in the beginning of this thread. I found it very easy to work with. You can cut it with a utility knife and it is sticky on both sides so easy to position. My vertical band only showed up after about 5 minutes of having the tv on and I had read in this thread that I shouldn't leave the tv on for too long, so I wasn't able to do all the fine tuning people were talking about having done. I just put the gap pads on every tab and hoped that the heat dispersion by connecting to the metal frame would do the trick.
• I initially cut my gap pads way too huge - I ended up using only about 3/4s of a 4"x4" pad in order to cover all 8 tabs. I cut them into 2"x 2/3" rectangles and enveloped each tab.
• I put everything back together - that actually went very quickly thanks to all my labeling.
• So I turned it on, no more lines, woo-hoo!... until like 15 minutes later when the same stripe started flipping out. It was changing, distorting, coming in and out, different that the largely static stripe it had been before. After many expletives and pretty much giving up hope I kind of angrily squeezed my tv where I knew the tab was, and by some miracle this fixed everything. I theorize that my gap pads weren't adhering well, or were straining the tab bonds in some manner that the squeezing managed to jar loose? I don't know. I feel like my tv might still fail, but it has been running fine for approximately 6 hours now over a couple of days so I hesitantly have hope that things will stay okay?
  (That's probably what no one who is fixing their tv wants to hear, but hopefully this info will still come in handy to people looking to make the fix.)

I'll try and update this post in a couple weeks with whether or not the fix is still working.

Good luck and thanks again everyone!

[debom3]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Glad to see you were able to get the TV apart, back together, and it is now working!

The first time it is hard, but I bet if you have to do it again it will be much easier. Keep on using the TV and if the symptoms come back. Then, you can do it again and try to get the bonds to connect.

These things seem to be VERY sensitive. Once you get it just right, don't touch it!

Thanks for posting.

My TV is still working strong if anyone was wondering!

[budm]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

It will be 1 year for me next month for the SAMSUNG and SONY.

[SeanRiley]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Just reporting in, as promised... I'm happy to say that after a month, even after heavy use, my tv is still working great! Thanks again everyone!

[rlega]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Hello everyone. Thanks to budm that gave me an idea

I purchased a Samsung LN52A550F3FXZA TV (cheap price ) that had lines on the screen. I did a lot of searches online and came up with my own solution. Perhaps my solution might work for you and others.

I have seem everyone talking about putting thermal pads over the chips-on-film that you can see when you remove the frame from the TV. Those chips-on-film control the colors on the screen, one board is for the left, another board is for the right. When you look at the t-con board on the LN52A550F3FXZA TV, there are two connectors, those two connectors have a flex cable, and those flex cables connects to another board with bonding tabs, one connector controls the right side of the screen, the other connector controls the left side of the screen. Before I removed the frame from the TV, I was able to wiggle the screen a little and noticed that the black line got smaller in size, or instead of being a black line, I got colorful vertical lines, if I continue to wiggle, the lines would sometimes disappear and re-appear as well as lines would completely be gone, but the black line would remain. I also noticed, that the chip-on-film close to the t-con flex cable connector on the bonding tab was VERY hot, hotter that the rest (I do not own a digital temperature meter), but I was able to tell by touching them.

I went ahead I put thermal pads on the right side bonding tabs over the chips-on-film, (I purchased the thermal pads from Digikey as specified by budm - http://www.digikey.com/product-searc...ords=BER165-ND), and I put the frame back, the lines were there, but when I wiggle the frame, the lines would not disappear at all, they would be steady, so what I did was, I put the thermal pads UNDER the chips-on-film on the right side bonding tab. That did the trick. The lines and the black bar disappear completely after I put the frame back. The TV has been working for three days without vertical lines or black bar. Ready for a movie tonite

[dosh]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

My Samsung 52" LCD bought Jan 2009 (LN52A550) developed similar symptoms (vertical lines start a couple minutes after turning on the TV after some flickering, then they settle on similar colors to what's showing on the TV):

(1) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...330_194016.jpg
(2) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...330_193726.jpg
(3) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...330_193652.jpg

I have not tried to follow the fix instructions described in this thread but will try and report success/failure accordingly.

[dosh]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Spent about 2 hours taking apart the TV back cover, LCD front frame and release the metal frame, exposing the 8 LCD caps at the top of the TV. Used the Thermagon T-Flex 6100 highly Compressible Gap Filling Interface Pad (47mm x 66mm) which I cut into 8 narrow strips 1.25" by 0.25". The 2-sided sticky strips were placed on top of the caps, compressed against the LCD metal frame which help to hold it in place. Upon turning on the TV, the vertical colored lines seem gone, I'll report if the problem ever comes back. Thanks again for everyone who contributed the detailed tips on this thread.

[edgardeguzman]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

I apologize for resurrecting such an old thread, but I seem to be having the same vertical line issue on my LN52A550. Is there an instructional on removing the front panel from a Samsung LN52A550 or similar TV. I was able to get the back off without any issues but the front seems to be trickier. There seems to be a metallic piece of tape holding the front panel to frame and I'm not sure wether I'm suppose to remove it or not.

Thanks in advance

[freakaftr8]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Yes. Just cut through the metallic tape, they always put that on the frame bezel

[nams5t]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

akai lcd 32 tv ,,,lta320ap02; lc320wue , need frimware any help ...?

[jeremymulder]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Hey All -

Just wanted to say thanks to all of the folks who gave feedback and instruction on this forum. I recently picked up a 52" Samsung (LN52A550P3F) from the Recycling Center near my house that exhibited symptoms of this issue. I'm not a technician, so input from folks that know more than me is the lifeline and inspiration for cracking into something like a 52" TV...

Anyways, I finally braved it the other day and HOLY COW, the thermal pad on the Tabs worked!

In the event anyone else is looking for instruction or a tutorial, I filmed myself doing it and uploaded it to Youtube: https://youtu.be/8l5ORKjQF5U

Also, I purchased the thermal pad from Amazon for 10 bucks (it happened to be on sale). Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UYTTLI4...ing=UTF8&psc=1

That is NOT an affiliate link...but if you want to purchase it and don't mind helping me out, you can find an affiliate link in the YouTube description.

Thanks again for everyone who posts their input on this forum. I know this was an older thread, but it was still useful for me.

Jeremy Mulder

[budm]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Glad to hear you got it working.
Just FYI, my Samsung and the SONY are still working.

[vinceroger69]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

Glad to hear you got it working.
Just FYI, my Samsung and the SONY are still working.

budm can you confirm something ive just re read this whole thread am i correct in saying the tab bond issue is where the cof chip bonds to the flex cable and not where the flex joins the lcd glass as i have looked at the pictures and see the thermal pad is added to the center area of the flex cables

[attainteddragon]

Re: Samsung LN52A550 Vertical Lines on 1/3 of Screen

i see a tab bond patch as when pressure is needed either to the cof, the panel connection, or the driver board connection. in all cases it is connection issue that causes signal issues.