Gameboy pocket LCD backlight + bivert mod + LCD repair Part 1

This project started with me finding my old Gameboy pocket. It was still working, but the LCD had developed a dark spot in the middle.

Kind of like this one, the picture is not of my gameboy. Booting up games with it results in this.

Looking around for solutions to this issue, it seems like

1. Gameboy pocket replacement LCDs are hard to come by.

2. You could do some really cool stuff now with backlights and biverting (more on that in a moment).

I went ahead and ordered a backlight module off nonfinite electronics (which should come with a spare polarizer).

http://nonelectronics.com/

My thinking was that there was something wrong with the reflective layer or polarizer and that since I would be getting rid of those layers during the backlight mod, all should be good.

I pulled the LCD module out of my gameboy pocket and set to work.

Look at the discoloration on the rear polarizer + reflective layer.

Putting in the backlight module, I realized that the issue was not just contained to the rear layers, the front polarizer on the LCD had also suffered damage (I think the glue has breakon down in the middle spot).

I tried removing the front polarizer, which was fairly difficult. Not only did the front polarizer pull off, another semi-shiny layer of the LCD also peeled in some places as well, figuring I had nothing to loose, I removed everything and stuck on the replacement polarizer.

Eventually after a few hours of mucking around, the LCD did work, somewhat, in the process of doing all of these and trying to remove all residues, I had to use acetone to clean up the LCD, I suspect some of that seeped under the LCD connectors and compromised the connection. I was now missing some horizontal lines.

Next I tried the age old tested method of using a soldering iron to try and re-bond the connections, the Gameboy pocket has a slightly different kind of ribbon cable though.

Even with a fast swiping motion, the whiteish ribbon cable was over-melting and that was the end of my experiment of fixing that particular LCD.

Crap.

Part 2 will follow after I find another Gameboy pocket and pull some parts off it to fix my existing console.

Blogger returned the following error "NotFound: Not Found"

Using Windows Live Writer and find that you can’t publish your blog entries because of this error?

You’ll get a popup just like the below and then a login prompt will come up, nut even the right password doesn’t work.

According to here:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?hl=en&pli=1#!topic/blogger/lw_sNsyySKI

Essentially Google has upgraded their authentication systems and because Windows Live Writer wasn’t being maintained there’s nothing they could do about it.

However Microsoft has made Windows Live Writer open source and the team has updated it to work.

Just download the new application here:

http://openlivewriter.org/

It still looks and feels exactly like what Window Live writer was like so I’m not complaining.

Vitamix blender motor repair

Windings on motor rotor were damaged, I think the chaffing on the insulation led to a breakthrough and subsequent failure.

I had to completely unwind the rotor and rewind it with the same diameter enameled wire (the damage was on one of the innermost windings). Here we have a 220V mains, so the motor might be slightly different from the more common 110V US units.

Blender is pretty old, Vitamix wants a serious chunk of $$$ for a replacement motor. Admittedly I had to spend quite a bit of my free time to get this fixed, but it really only cost me $40 in raw materials.

Breakdown of the vitamix blender. Should've taken more photos.

What a new motor will look like, inside is essentially an open frame universal motor.

The rotor out of the motor and me unwinding motor. I had to remove the center insulation pieces all around and document how each winding was interconnected.

Another shot of the old windings.

I drew a little diagram to sort out what goes where. The motor had 22 commutator segments and the same number of slots for the wires to wind around. Each winding was 22 turns of enameled wire.

The motor partially wound, I elected to solder every end onto the commutator for a more reliable electrical connection.

Cleaning the completed motor to prepare for application of red enamel.

Red enamel applied on one side.

The original bearings on the rotor were made by NMB, 608SS. SKF does the 608RS that's also a rubber sealed bearing.

After the enamel has cured, this is what the rotor looks like.

Replacement bearings side by side with the existing ones.

I had to grind and cut off parts of the bearing to remove it piece by piece to get them in. There was insufficient clearance to pull them off.

Bearing inner race still left on shaft, for this challenging location I ground 2 flats on the inner race and used a vice to apply pressure until the inner race cracked and separated from the shaft. Usually this works quite well because the races are super hard.

Replacement bearing now on.

Motor assembled together, sans the 2 brushes.

Motor assembled into the blender.

The ass end of the motor/blender. A plastic impeller that moves air for cooling the motor goes here.

The blender finally together. It was tested out and it really kills ice cubes (we tried blending a bunch of ice).

On a side note. Happy new year everybody 2015 went by really fast for me, here’s to 2016.

Update: 17th April 2016

The Mechanic has kindly went ahead and did up a professional looking diagram of how the motor is wound up. I hope the motors he has get fixed.

Note that the commutator is not shown in the top down view, only the windings are.