Nevr-Dull & LCD Reconditioning

Well following a good tip from Cap. Dogfish I went to Wal-Mart and bought a can of Nevr-Dull Wadding Polish. My CF-29 screen was discolored where the glare resistant finish had been rubbed off and it had a few scratches. It has been the biggest defect of my Toughbook.

I applied the polish with a small piece of wadding. While watching the Mighty Boosh I polished the screen, rubbing small circles for about 30-40 minutes. It was hardest to get the finish out of the edges of the screen, but really no big deal. I then rubbed the screen down with tissue paper and then a clean T-Shirt till the there was no visible residue left.

Anyway, it came out looking great, almost like new and for less then $4! I highly recommend this to anyone that has a similar problem. Thanks Captain!

Now it is time to get busy with the Automotive Touch-up Paint!

 

Pics!!!!!!

 

isnt that just sanding away the top anti-reflective layer of the laptop scren??

much like the other LCD 'cleaning' thread one id think twice about...

 

Agreed someone should work on doing a DIY walkthrough of this!

 

Well yes and no...

Yes, you are polishing away a reflective coating, However when that coating is as scratched and in as overall bad shape as mine, it has to go!

The other post is removing a layer of a laminated surface, thus exposing the substrate and is an altogether different proposition.

And I did think twice about it, but there is more to progress then thinking so I went to the next step and did it! My next step is a new anti-reflective screen protector.

If your screen is in good shape, there is no reason to do this. But if not, mine now shows 94.6% as good as new, on my new digital refurbishment meter...

I will post a before and after picture in a bit.

 

There is no abrasive, or almost none, involved. In my original post I pointed out that you need to use a very specific product, not just any metal polish to do this. I discovered this procedure as a last resort to save my bifocals, worth about the same as a loaded MK-5 CF-29. The reasoning was, if the Nevr-Dull had a chemical that could take the scratched ant-glare coating off eye glasses without damaging them, it might work on a badly damaged screen coating. I tried it out on a junk MK-1 CF-28 first. I wouldn't post it if I hadn't tried it on my own machines first. Rick used to use rubbing alcohol I think. It works but there is much less elbow grease involved with the Nevr-Dull. End of this "hints from Heloise" segment.
CAP

 

CAP you are the most pragmatic person I know.

Thanks for sharing !!

 

Well as requested, here are the pics! The first shows the screen damage.


And here is the newly polished and reconditioned screen.

It looks almost as good as new, though a little dusty in this picture. So, for four bucks and 45 minutes, I am happy!

BTW, this picture shows off my decal artwork, soon available for any interested in a water proof decal.

 

Looks great, love what you did with you fn keys decal.

 

Thanks KLonsdale!

You know, as I was drifting off to sleep last night the old neurons were letting off a little steam by randomly shooting up the inside of my cranium, I had an idea... If it works, we will call it an epiphany!

I was pretty careful when doing my polishing to make sure to do the majority of my polishing in a pattern of small overlapping circles. I did not want to have fine lines running in any noticeable direction. I was pretty successful in this, as the good Captain has pointed out, it is very fine abrasive.

But, back to the idea, what if you were to use a straight edge and try to make sure that all those ultra fine polishing marks ran vertically?

As the axis of polarization is normally parallel to that of the reflecting surface most of the glare we receive is polarized horizontally, if we deliberately caused a pattern of fine vertical lines in the screen would this change the polarization axis to vertical? This would effectively make the theta of refracted light as close to 90 degrees as as possible.

Could we reduce glare as effectively as the original chemical coating, or even enough to give this simple idea any practical validity?

Please report back if you decide to try this method!

 

Az -

You'd never get the surface uniform enough to look like anything other than brushed stainless/aluminum. I've tried; the problem is making the lines so they're polished, not flat. What you're trying to do is make oodles of little prisms all on a common axis; that doesn't happen with abrasives.

Good job on buffing out your screen; I've been meaning to do the same thing on my 28/Mk3.

mnem
No, Marcus, you can't take my eyelids off - I'm using them.

 

I take it this only work if there is not a scren protector on the screen?

 

Connor -

The Toughbook LCD has an antiglare coating on the screen; when it's healthy, it looks like a slightly bluish mirrored finish. When it ages or sometimes when you remove a screen protector that has been left installed for too long, some of that coating will come off the LCD and it looks like Azrial's before pic. The buffing project he was describing is how you REMOVE that damaged coating to restore it to pristine appearance; albeit WITHOUT that gnarly blueish finish.

mnem<~~~ Buffing~~~<<<

 

Gotchya, is there any way that you can buff out the plastic LCD film cover when it gets worn or scratched? Something similar to this process?

 

Too much is being made of the abrasive aspect of this product. The coating comes off primarily because of the chemical that's in the polish. You would be a long time trying to restore an old screen protector.
CAP

 

There have ben a few times on old CF-28s that I used a product that as made for headlight polishing.... Slightly less abrasive than semichrome polish. I did this to a few CF-28 a few years ago. It took out some mild scratches but made the screen so shiny that it was annoying.

I'll have to get a can of Never Dull and try it out... I have a few pair of scratched glasses too. My older set I plan on dying the lenses yellow for night driving.

 

Rick, I have only used it to remove the anti-glare coating from my glasses. I suppose it might take scratches out, but the lenses, plastic or glass are a lot tougher than the coating which will scratch if you look at it, or in my case clean some mud off the lenses with a paper towel.
CAP

 

I would guesstimate the abrasiveness as close to that of Toothpaste.

I have used toothpast to polish plastic in the past, but the resudue needs water to be desolved easily.

 

Azrial - wowzers, yes that is one hammered LCD you had there! and I csn see the logic behind your cleaning!

does removing the anti-glare affect the colour in anyway? and is there a maked difference in glare when outside??

Ive now noticed that ive managed to smudge the coating off in one spot on my new MK5 which is a tad annoying, i think where I or someone has picked it up by the display with greasy fingers...

 

Hey Matt, it may be a little brighter, but not enough to really matter, Also, the old screen coating was missing in places and this caused some minor color variation and that has disappeared. I see no discernible difference in the color or even the colour...

Glare, well I can not say as I have been mostly using it at night of late, my dusk lately has begun at dawn, but it would stand to reason that there will be more. I am planning on a anti-glare screen protector prior to my departure. HTH!

Yeah, a lot of that was my odd ball techo-humor, however, the pattern imparted to the material here would be more a function of the tool that you used to apply the paste. A good example would be the "jeweled" racecar dashes and rifle bolts that I used to do with no more a child sized pencil eraser dipped in abrasive and chucked in a drill motor, with an indexing head. The rubber pencil eraser clearly did not cut the steel!

That said, I think that the idea is impractical and would have limited effect in the real world. I was just having fun, theoretically.