m15x Hinge Repair

m15x Hinge Repair

Bought my m15x in February 2008

1st Hinge Repair within Warranty in August 2008
2nd Hinge Repair outside Warranty in October 2009, I complained a lot to get this done – I’m in the UK and when talking to the AW rep ( now the Dell rep) I often quoted the sale of goods act and insisted on talking to a manager.

It’s now Feb 2010 and I can feel the hinge movement again, by movement if you press or pinch the plastic hinge you can feel and hear it. Okay so maybe everything was in fact ok with the hinge but I couldn’t wait again so I opened it up to see if there was any tell-tale signs.

There were the initial signs that the hinge plastics where eventually going to give out again, you can see hairline cracks in the plastic surrounding the bronze screw holder things. – hinge1.jpg, hinge2.jpg



I decided to act and attempt a fix using epoxy resin in a similar way to people have attempted already, I used a general purpose 1 hour cure epoxy resin (from Maplin). That’s 15 minutes to set, 1 hour to harden and 24hours to reach full strength – putty.jpg

Tips
Use a match stick or similar thin stick to dip and then drip the epoxy into the wells surrounding the screw points. Don’t let the resin drip into the screw holes - matchstick.jpg
For the screw holes where half the hole is outside the well then try and drip resin up against the side wall to build a support
Keep the following gaps clear of resin as part of the metal hinge needs to fit in here - keep_clear.jpg

It’s not perfect but I hoping it will give me at least another year - that is if the graphics card or MB doesn’t give out before then


The rest of the pics are in the following post

 

More Pics, Showing what to keep clear and the fully fitted result

 

2 more pics showing the hinge screwed up


I've used the laptop for a couple days now and the hinge feels much more solid than before!

 

Good job. I would have done the same thing.

 

i did this 5 months ago and my m15x is still holding up so this should at least last you 5 months. there doesnt seem to be anything wrong with my hinge yet so time will tell.

 

nice work. I ordered a replacement top panel/hinge from ebay...it's the skullcap design. how difficult is it to replace the panel? will it be sturdier than the ripley design or is it the same cheap plastic that'll eventually break into pieces.

this is ridiculous..we should all get together and start a class action lawsuit against AW. it was obviously a faulty design.

 

^^^ yeah it not the shell that is the problem. its the connect point from hinge to shell thats the issue. so once you get the replacement shell its best to reinforce the screw point like the op. btw the panel is a pain in the butt to replace because of the light ring around the panel.

 

right,I'm going to replace the top panel.I bought a new panel But I dont know how to remove Hinge Cover Plastic http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...Category=16145&_trkparms=algo=LVI&its=I&otn=2 Can somebody give me some instruction how to remove this part of m15x?please help

 

No idea, for my fix I didn't have to touch that bit

 

sorry man, can't find any thing on that. i did my repair without taking that off too. can you take a picture of the part from underneath for us to see how it would connect. from the ebay pictue it doesn't look like it has a place for any screws.

 

are you talking about the alien light? or the light tube surrounding the panel?

 

^^^^the light tube because they are held in place with like plastic rivets, no way to take it out with out cutting the plastic rivet support. i wish i took some picture when i still had the older m15x.

 

Does anyone foresee this happening with the M17x/M15x? From what I can tell, the hinge seems pretty top notch (save perhaps a macbook pro's). Horror stories like this are why I sold my m1730 only a few months after owning it in order to buy this aluminum beast.

 

This seems really pathetic to me... just ordered my first alienware and these stories of absolutely terrible support make me wish I'd passed. I dont think I'll risk buying another no matter how my personal experience is.

They should've eaten the cost and fully recalled every single unit in this model, it totally sounds like a design flaw.

 

these are for older non dell models. new dell models are built real solid. i guesed they learned at least one lesson from all of this.

 

this only happened with the first gen m15x as far as i know. The problem usually surfaces within a couple months of first owning one. since the M15x doesnt have a post regarding this matter im pretty sure AW fixed this problem in their new M15x