{"id":1594,"date":"2014-12-03T20:30:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T20:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2014-12-03T22:25:33","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T22:25:33","slug":"cutting-lcds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/2014\/12\/cutting-lcds\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting down LCDs"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been looking for a new LCD for my old watch project<\/a> but nothing I’ve come across has quite the right specifications, they’re usually just a little bigger than I’d like. So I thought I’d look into cutting down existing LCDs to suit my application. It looks like this has been done in some contexts before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This was the LCD I started with:
\n\"lcd6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s the 2 line alphanumeric\/matrix display I’ve talked about before<\/a>. Here’s a pic of the rear side:<\/p>\n

\"lcd1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You can see the tape over the LCD controller and just about see 3 sets of traces, going left, right, and straight up into the glass. When I look at the traces under a microscope, I could clearly see the left and right sets of traces going to the top and bottom rows respectively.<\/p>\n

It seemed logical that the central traces were going to each row in the matrix and the left and right banks to the columns for the 2 lines. I decided to cut the display down such that one line was disabled, making the LCD thinner.<\/p>\n

\"lcd5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Breaking some of the traces confirmed that they were driving only one row of text (the bottom row in the above image). So I proceeded to cut the LCD down. First removing the reflective material on the back, and then the (I guess polarizing) plastic on the front.<\/p>\n

\"lcd2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"lcd3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I scored the glass with a glass cutter and carefully snapped it, after installation everything worked perfectly!<\/p>\n

\"lcd4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next I’d like to try preserving the bottom rather than the top row. I also understand that it’s a good idea to seal the LCD. I may also try milling the glass<\/a> rather than snapping it, as I hear that can work pretty well.<\/p>\n

Update: trimming off the other side also works.<\/p>\n

\"lcd9\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been looking for a new LCD for my old watch project but nothing I’ve come across has quite the right specifications, they’re usually just a little bigger than I’d like. So I thought I’d look into cutting down existing LCDs to suit my application. It looks like this has been done in some contexts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1RRoU-pI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1598,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/41j.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}