Webs’ Random Ideas

So one thing going on at work is an LCD monitor that the other Lab Tech and myself use.  Well it's not the best monitor; unfortunately you have to wiggle the power cord to get it to work.  The other Lab Tech rigged it so that we wouldn't have to wiggle it.  He put some folded up paper between the outside case of the LCD monitor and the housing for the power cord.  This worked until recently when the problem came back again.  So I opened the monitor up to take a closer look and found the printed circuit board (PCB) below.

What you see is a small simple circuit that gives power to the LCD monitor.  There is the housing for the power jack (Located at the bottom of the picture), a capacitor (located at the left edge of the picture), and a plug that gives the cicuit an easy way to interface with the power of the LCD circuitry (white thing located at the top right of the picture).  I am pretty sure that the capacitor in this circuit is acting as a filter, taking out the occasional power spikes, making sure the LCD has a constant signal.  The white thing just allows a technician such as myself to have an easy way to disconnect the circuit from the LCD monitor.  With the pictures I have provided it is difficult to tell where the problem lies, but in the picture below I tried to point them out.  The picture below is the reverse side of the PCB.

 The black arrow points to a crack that runs from one side of the circuit to the other (and it runs perpendicular to the screw holes).  When the circuit was screwed into place it wasn't tightened down properly or over time it became loose, or it was tightened down to tightly and when it cracked it became loose.  Either way it has caused a crack to form across the circuit board, and unfortunately the crack crosses one of the copper traces on the PCB.  FYI: the copper trace is the path signals travel down in the PCB.  So my first guess is that this is the cause of the problem.  And if I was a bettin man I would put my money on it. 

The red arrow points to a poorly done solder point for the positive lead of the the power jack housing unit.  There still appears to be a connection, but this certainly doesn't help the situation any.  Well sometime next week I think the MacGyver in webs will come out and I'll fix this bad boy up.

Happy Easter All!!!