Posted on 11/22/2009 11:44:00 AM PST by Justaham
Need help in repairing my broken laptop power cord. I have tried many techniques to figure out how to open up the adapter box. The plastic is too weak to crack open w/ just a screwdriver. It just scratched with pressure, while the seam remained firmly bonded.
Any advice on how to open the adopter box without throwing the adapter to Obama's face? BTW, I have an HP laptop. A new one at Best Buy costs $139.00.
I made a plastic “case cracker” for opening up plastic cases that have had their seams ultrasonically welded.
Basically, you need an 1/8 inch thick flat, rectangular piece of hard teflon-like plastic about 2 inches long by 1 inch wide. Cut/grind down the edges with a file to make a “V” shaped knife-edge (I usually do this to one of the long edges and one of the short edges, leaving the remaining two edges untouched).
To use the case cracker, just place the “V” shaped edge into the seam you want to split, and give it a twist. The seams usually pop open pretty easy, but some of them require a little more patience and work.
Cheers
Try Tigerdirect.com. They are very cheap on everything and the prices on their laptop power cords run from about $45.00 on up, with most being in the range of 60 to 70 bucks. Good luck.
OK. I’ve been there with an HP adapter. Here’s how I got mine open: Get a hacksaw blade and while holding the blade exactly parallel to the seam, thin the seam out until you JUST see the silver shield beneath the plastic. Do the three sides that don’t have the power cable receptacle. After you’ve thinned out the seams, just crack it apart. You’ll find that all that’s wrong is just one of the leads coming off the transformer has fried or broken. Cut the lead back a little, tin the freshly exposed wire, and solder both leads (may as well do both) to their corresponding terminals. Test the unit, and then glue the case back together with either super glue or epoxy. Took me about 1/2 hour to fix mine.
Besides...it's a test designed by the engineers who made the transformer box.
If you cannot open it, then you do not have the skills to repair the components inside. Buy a new one.
My wife tripped over her cord and the whole thing hit the floor and broke the receptacle on the motherboard. That was a bugger to fix let me tell you. Of course I couldn't find the right size receptacle so I had to change the plug on the cord to match the replacement and the whole thing was a constant headache. I finally gave up and just bought her a new laptop and gave her old one to my brother. He is not so mean to it and the power cord setup doesn't give him any trouble at all.
Those power bricks come from the lowest bidder though. A few feet of something like robotics cable would have made a heck of a difference.
Justaham - is that ham as in radio operator? I have been one for 31 years and made Extra Class just this past spring.
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