The Glass is Half Full

Mi Problema

My wife dropped her (beloved) iPad2 a week before Christmas - which was unfortunate to say the least. On the bright side, it gave me the opportunity to tear open an iPad (and there is nothing an engineer loves more than to tear things apart), so I ordered a replacement screen & tool kit from iFixit.

Mi Solución

The repair was straightforward, but some of the advice in the iFixit tutorial didn't apply well to this repair because the glass was already shattered. For example, the plastic tool for releasing the glue had trouble with broken bits of glass; I found that a sharp knife worked better in those situations. The iOpener was worth it for the heating pad alone, because that definitely helped (especially in the beginning & in places where the glass wasn't shattered).

I blogged about it http://readabilitycounts.tumblr.com/post...

And there's a time lapse video up on YouTube: http://youtu.be/RBACxpiXwCA

Mi Consejo

(1) WEAR SAFETY GLASSES. If the screen is already broken, glass gets *everywhere*.

(2) Pay close attention when you first start trying to separate the screen from the body; the goal is to separate the glass from the small plastic strip between the glass and the aluminum frame, *not* to separate the glass & plastic from the aluminum frame.

(3) Affix the adhesive strips to the screen before you attach the digitizer to the body. It is hard to get it into position if you wait until the end.

(4) If the adhesive strips don't hold well enough (I believe the impact bent the aluminum body in my case), Loctite Stik'n'Seal Extreme Conditions adhesive worked well for additional adhesion.