Chosen Solution

Here it is: my Nexus 7 accidentally bathed in capuchino because I put take-away capuchino together with my Nexus 7 in a bag. I open my Nexus 7 and make some cleanning and assemble again. When I plug in the power cable, the screen was on and what I saw was just a dark yellow screen. Can I do anything to make my LCD alive again? Should I seperate the glass and LCD display to take a look inside if any coffee capuchino get inside? I do some researchs and it would cost me 130$ for a new LCD display, I would rather buy new one. Anyway, I want to try before giving up. If you have any idea, please advise me. Thank you guys.

The LCD doesn’t come apart from the glass and digitizer. If you’re seeing the LCD being sold by itself, then someone is trying to pull one over on you. You’ll have to replace the entire display assembly, as per our guide.

To answer your question, the simple answer is yes you can separate the lcd from the glass. Let me explain: The lcd and glass are fused by an adhesive called loca. It cannot be heated up with a heat gun. In order to make the adhesive workable, you will need to get a special machine called a lcd separator machine that has a sort of hot plate used to heat the screen so you can take it apart. I used a tutorial on lcdseparatormachines.com to take my screen apart. The machine proves itself very profitable as the glass replacement is one third of the price then the hole assembly so you can make a lot of money doing the repairs.

It can be be done:

  1. Tear down the Nexus 7 until you have the digitizer/ LCD combo
  2. Fix the combo by the glas on a heating plate / or a copper or aluminium plate you can heat with a hair dryer. Alternatively fix ist somewhere and put it in the full sun to heat up.
  3. Heat it until the combo has 50-70° Celsius
  4. Take a ultra strong fishing line or something similar (people proposed E-Guitar strings), attach it to two handles and start sawing carefully through the glue to separate the LCD from the digitizer
  5. Remove the glue carefully with LCD Glue remover (lcdglue.com) or Orange Glo Before trying that, read all the information and watch all the videos in he following posts, so you know what it is all about. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthre… http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthre…

Hello, I was able to separate digitizer from lcd, my digitizer cracked so I buyed the diditizer eBay and after one hour figurating the best way do it I did repaired my Nexus 7…. now is like new….. but is not really easy and you can damage the lcd doing the repair. good luck!

Has anyone been successful yet? I’m going to attempt to use a heat gun and remove the glass from the LCD. Then reheat the glue and hope I put it back in a good alignment. It would be encouraging to here that someone else has already done it. Update: After using a heat gun to melt the adhesive between the digitizer and LCD and failing miserably I’ve decided that it is near impossible to separate the LCD and the digitizer. After melting the adhesive I began to pry the digitizer from the LCD and it became immediately apparent that there was no way I would be able to properly attaché the new digitizer to the LCD without creating air pockets. However I pressed on and removed about half the screen with a plastic flathead tool but then the glass of the LCD busted free and was still stuck to the digitizer and that was game over. So if you’re thinking of replacing just the digitizer forget about it. I like the idea of buying a cheap nexus 7 8GB with a good screen/digitizer and just swapping the mother board for the 16/32GB. Hope this helps someone else!

I managed to repair a Nexus 7 with cracked digitizer. I used it with an USB or a bluetooth mouse, until I recived the new digitizer, so I was sure that all other things was working correctly. I separated digitizer from screen with a hair dryer, and a thin guitar cord tight on an arc (in place of the blade of a metal saw - I have a picture of this setup). Than I removed all the glue from the LCD, cleaning it with a little bit of alcohol. I tried to mount all without fixing the digitizer to the LCD at all, just to ensure that all was working. Unfortunatly there was a black hole in the display near top left corner, about 1 cm of diameter). I have no idea about wat it was due to, but I am sure it was not due to the alcohol I used to clean the display, since it was there before. The digitizer was not working very well, sometime it did not sense the touch, or it sensed it discontinuosly, so it was basically impossible to draw a continuos line. Probably because LCD and digitizer was not fixed togather, I thought. Undecided on how to proceed (buy a complete screen with digitizer, or buy a new screen to stick to the actual digitizer), I tried to stick the digititizer with just 4 small spot of glue, at the 4 corners. Now I am using the tablet in this way. The digitizer is usable, once you learn the right sensitivity, and the black hole has gradually disappeared, so the LCD is completly ok. The only defect is one row of the digitizer which is completely unsensitive (a couple of cm from the top edge): if I draw a vertical line, it result interrupted, and if I try to follow that line, the sensed point appear sometimes in the line above, and sometimes in the one below. The result is the a button positioned in that line is very very difficolt to be pressed! I really have no idea what it can be due to, but it is a very reproducable effect (it happen always - I have never managed to see that point touhed, at any position in that line). Basically the unanswered question is if LCD and digitizer interact in any way, and how. Now I would like to well stick screen and digitizer, hoping it results in improved touchscreen usability, but I do not know which glue to use. And first of all it would be great if I could discover why that row is not working, and maybe how to make it working. But I am a bit afraid about loosing what I currently have, that is a usable device, even if not exactly as a new one. Any suggestion is welcome.

here’s how it’s done https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndgBUhYI…

hot air gun is for professionals only. you warp or deformed the glass casing if you applied so hot air on it. if you haven’t use one before then don’t. there many kinds of heat power for this tools i suggest you use hot air gun with low wattage a little hotter than hair dyer. try the low setting first. but first before doing it. i suggest buy on ebay where LCD digitize r and front casing are sold together its brand new and much safer or look for someone who are selling their nexus 7 with a broken motherboard.

Hi all, I read your posts and wondering if you can help me take this a step further. I am making a DIY beamer (HD projector). The Nexus 7 is a FULLHD display and is only 7 inches. Perfect for my application. But, I would like to separate the LCD display panel from it’s backlight! I want to be able to have a 100 watt LED beaming through the panel. I imagine this will be quite hard to do, but I imagine it is do-able. Any help would be appreciated!!

Sadly, my attempt to separate the LCD and digitiser ended with me pulling off and cracking the LCD’s polarising layer. Suggest buying a whole unit it you want to replace