LCD Panel Frame From Laptop Lid

My Luggable PC display was a LCD panel I had salvaged from an old laptop, which I'm doing again for this external monitor project. When I pulled the Luggable PC panel out of the old laptop, I left most of the associated mounting hardware behind. During the Luggable PC project I wished I had also preserved the old mounting hardware.

The first reason is dimension data. When I mounted the screen to my Luggable PC, I had to measure the panel and design my frame to match. A Dell engineer did this work years ago, and when I threw away the mounting hardware, I threw that away as well.

The second reason is strength. A LCD panel is fragile, but when backed with its sheet metal frame, it becomes quite a bit stronger. This is usually a worthwhile trade off against the increased size and weight.

The third reason, less obvious than the previous two, is to manage heat. The back light assembly across the bottom of the screen would get quite hot when the panel is just sitting by itself. However, when the panel is mounted in its frame, the frame served a secondary purpose as heat sink.

The metal frame I want to reuse is attached to the plastic outer cover of the laptop lid. The attachment is done via small plastic rivets: bits of the plastic lid cover melted into the metal frame. Pulling off the frame with brute force is likely to bend and damage the frame, so the assembly is put under the drill press. After cores of all of the plastic rivets were drilled out (above), the metal frame easily pops off the plastic lid cover (below).

The metal frame can now be used to build the rest of the enclosure. The frame can be cut, drilled, and generally manipulated in ways that I would never do to the LCD panel itself. And when I'm done with all the prep work, the panel itself will drop right in to the frame. This should be much easier than what I had to do for the Luggable PC screen.