Capacitor Plague - it could happen to you...

Anybody accuses me of not doing my part to keep the government from spending money on new stuff. I am going to seriously hurt them. Back in the late summer of 2007 when I was working for the Las Cruces BLM one of my last assignments was to research new LCD monitors. So I did this assignment and made my recommendations. Just before I left the monitors showed up but to my surprise not the ones I recommended. No big deal because these were better. I like them so much that when I moved to Roswell to work for the BLM as a full-time GIS specialist - I put in a request to have 2 monitors purchased. What I did not know was how much they were until the Field Manager came and asked me if the price was actually correct. I told him that I didn't know they were that much - about $500 each. When I heard this I informed him that I would find others. But he bought them anyway. Which I did truly appreciate.

These monitors are Samsung 215TW and are indeed very nice. I like them because they are bright and show great detail when the resolution is set very high. So one might asked - as did the current Field Manager - why not just replace them with new ones. Well for personal fundamental reasons - I felt like I have not gotten their worth out of them yet. I also figure that this would be a simple repair and I would be back up and running. True, I could have bought new ones that are comparable that are less money. But I do not like throwing things away if I know it can be fixed for relatively little money.

About three months ago I started to notice a flicker in the screen when I brought the monitors up in the morning. At first this wasn't a big deal because it eventually worked and I went on my happy GIS way. But eventually the monitor just would not work. So I started changing out power cords and video lines from the computer. But these didn't work. I did some research on the Internet and it turns out that my monitor was suffering from

CAPACITOR PLAGUE!!!

Oh the horror! What shall I do and will I get it?? Ok back to reality. Turns out all I needed to do was change out the capacitors on the power circuit board and all will be better. I was lucky enough to find a web page that went through the process of taking the monitor apart and showed which capacitors to remove. Well at least what the bad ones looked like. But it didn't show how to remove the capacitors. I figured that the solder could be removed, then the capacitors, and then replace with the new ones and solder them back in.

But wait I am not an electrically inclined - so I placed an email to my dad. Who is very much electrically inclined. I had the basics correct but they needed refining. At this time I told dad that I had two monitors and if I should replace the capacitors in both. He said not to because the others are probably okay and would work for a long time to come. But he did say to replace them all.

My research showed that the monitor had 5 capacitors and figured they all needed replaced. So I talked to my boss and told her what needed to be done and that I felt like I could do this. She approved the plan and asked for a purchase request. So I research what capacitors I needed and filled out the proper paperwork. The very next morning I turned on my working monitor and guess what. Yep it also suffered a case of CAPACITOR PLAGUE. Must be catching - should I worry about my laptop?? I changed the purchase request to order double the number. Luckily they had not been ordered yet.

Today was surgery day for ridding the monitors of CAPACITOR PLAGUE. Here is the evidence of such tragedy.








The capacitors are the brown cylindrical items in the picture. Notice the buldging at the top. This is the sign that they are coming down with CAPACITOR PLAGUE. Sorry the images aren't better I took them with my phone and I was too close. Here is a picture of the underside where the connections are made.



After removing the solder and then the capacitor a new capacitor and then re-solder it back on. This is what it looked like after the replacement was made.




Here is my relatively decent solder job.




I am very glad to report that both monitors recovered very well from the surgery. They will be promptly put back into service tomorrow morning.

So how much were the parts? Including shipping about $12 - so this little adventure saved the government and the public $988. Most excellent.

Thanks for your help dad - greatly appreciate it.

I did not go into the detail on how to take the monitor apart because this web page does a great job.

http://wcoastsands.blogspot.com/2009/11/samsung-syncmaster-215tw.html

I ordered the capacitors from www.alliedelec.com This project was not that bad to do and a person of normal intelligence should be able to pull it off. Heck I did...

So if your monitor starts to flickering - it could be the dreaded CAPACITOR PLAGUE. It sure is good to know that I won't catch it. I just learned I don't have capacitors.

Have fun...