Broke My New Laptop - Arg

[vurt]

My plan is to build an exoskeleton frame container for this Thinkpad out of steel plate, wood, Perspex, and rubber-fabric, whilst housing motorised fans for cooling and possibly an audio interface housed in there also. It might be a bit heavier but then it will be bullet proof too.

Something like this?

If you left it on a desk / table instead of on the floor, you had not stepped on it.

[seafire]

Hope it didn't destroy all the code for your 5th dimension presets

[THE INTRANCER]

My plan is to build an exoskeleton frame container for this Thinkpad out of steel plate, wood, Perspex, and rubber-fabric, whilst housing motorised fans for cooling and possibly an audio interface housed in there also. It might be a bit heavier but then it will be bullet proof too.

Something like this?

If you left it on a desk / table instead of on the floor, you had not stepped on it.

It was on a desk prior to me leaving in a place I thought I wouldn't stand on it, I had moved it and it took very effort, I.E pressure for the laptop lid to bend. The screen didn't crack, the case didn't crack, the screen was simply pushed down to the point where the LCD crystals were damaged. It doesn't take much force and considering that these laptops are supposed to be highly durable and gone through durability tests, this one failed. Therefor I'm going to need to identify where and how I'm gonna prevent this happening again, because it will happen again in some way or another, by hand in daily usage or an object hitting it from above whilst closed as it was.

Today I went outside in the garden and found 5 millimeter Perspex sheet that will cover the outside of the lid which is 33cm in length and 22.5 cm wide. 4 mil thick MDF boards (I've 7)and 3 steel corner brackets, square nuts with bolts, plus large strip velcro pads in which to attach the protection board to the back of the screen which will allow it to be removed if necessary. The protective board will held in place with additional clips to the laptop screen itself. Now because the hinges are all metal, it should support the weight of the new back panel of the T480S.
The bottom part of the laptop will take a bit more work. My plan is to integrate this cooling station into the bottom section. It has a solid metal grill with 3 large blue illuminated fans to support the laptop with a switch at the back. I'll have to figure out how the lower section will be constructed but it shouldn't be too difficult and to finish it off, I've got some black spray paint although given that missed it in the dark when I stood on it, I'll probably opt for something brighter and maybe attach some solar lights to it.

[THE INTRANCER]

New screen arrived today, just 7 days of shipping from America from day of ordering last Wednesday. Not going to install it till I've built a new case for it which, I started yesterday.

Started with reinforcing the lid with a back panel and testing it all out before moving onto the lower section. Cut the MDF and perspex sheet to the correct size, taped it together with black masking tape and put it into a black laptop sleeve and stapled it together. I found some steel tent rods in which to hang the backboard onto and to clip into place whilst held on with making tape and velcro pads.

Whilst the lid is now near bullet proof and strong, it does add a bit of eight to the hinge mechanism which has some adverse effects when the lid is tilt at a certain angle and making the lid drop in an instant to a complete flat state. It also raises the lower keyboard section to make it tip at a certain point also. I'm not sure about how safely I can attack the new back section I've made in not being a detriment for the new screen I have, which wasn't cheap and therefor risky to use it with the risk of the panel bending in any way. It sure can't be used if the lid is able to be slam down in any way either.

There are 5 tent pins, 3 up, and 2 across which are light enough for the laptop lid to be able to support at the back. so I may mean that I'll need to find a much lighter solution such as a thinner plastic sheet, the only problem with that though is that it will possibly bend. If that's the case,' I'll probably need to add more steel pins across the back of the lid area. How many, I'm not sure, but they are all hooked at one end. If I had a lot of them that spread across, say like 50 in my estimate, I'm not sure how much weight the lid would tilt before slamming down. The 4 mil MDF sheet is probably light enough to test out with the 5 pin on the back atm, so that's what I'll test next. The 5 mil perspex sheet can be used for another part of the new laptop frame. I forgot to mention that I have 4 steel L-Brackets that I tried to use to elevate the back panel and as a riser for the lid and fan system the laptop sits on.

It's a fun project but it's quite a critical one to get right.

[pekbro]

You can just glue the metal hinges with jb weld apparently that works well.