Replacing a cracked LCD screen from my Panasonic DMC-​​TZ15 Camera

Prob­lem Description

One day i was hold­ing my DMC-​​TZ15 cam­era when sud­denly it slipped through my hands and dropped onto a metal rail. The result was a cracked LCD screen. I was very lucky that the cam­era was off as this reduced the chances of break­ing the lens package.

The pic­ture to the right shows a cracked screen that is pitch white ren­der­ing the cam­era unusable.

Rem­edy

The solu­tion to my prob­lem was sim­ple, find an LCD part com­pat­i­ble with my DMC-​​TZ15 and order it from ebay. With my screen hav­ing arrived from Hong Kong i can now per­form the dis­man­tling process.

This arti­cle shows how to dis­man­tle a Pana­sonic DMC-​​TZ15 in order to remove/​install a LCD screen. The same pro­ce­dures could be fol­lowed to replace the CMOS/​CCD/​Lens pack­age of the cam­era as well. With all my instruc­tional arti­cles, i do not delve into safety pro­ce­dures, so please use com­mon sense if you wish to attempt any elec­tri­cal DIY(Do It Your­self) projects, oth­er­wise it may be worth your while to pay a qual­i­fied work­shop to con­duct the repair.

[View with PicLens]

Here is what my cam­era looks like when it is turned on.

If you inspect your cam­era care­fully, you will notice that the body divides in half length ways. We shall start by remov­ing only the screws that are located on the half where the screen side of the cam­era is posi­tioned.

You shall now be able to eas­ily lift the screen side of the cam­era. This side of the body has no clamps.

As you can see there are two flat cables that are con­nected to the main board.

The thick cable is the data cable, the other con­trols the back light of the LCD, con­trol­ling the bright­ness.

Each of these cables are secured on the main board via a clamp. Sim­ply lift the long black clamp up for both cables. You should be able to slide off the cables from the main board now.

Here is the screen side of the body sep­a­rated from the main board.

You shall now need to unclamp the LCD frame from the body by lev­er­ing it off with a flat object such as a swiss army knife like what I did.

This is the LCD screen and its frame that was lev­ered off the body.

You will now need to pre­pare your new LCD screen by remov­ing the thin plas­tic pro­tec­tor from the back side of the screen.

You will also need to lever off the old cracked screen from its LCD frame with a flat swiss army knife.

Once you have lev­ered this off, you will need to peel off a bit of the cop­per shield­ing from the LCD frame so that you can slide off the data cable as shown in this pic­ture. Your cracked LCD screen is now free.

All you have to do now is snap on your new LCD onto the LCD frame. Feed the data cable back under the cop­per shield­ing, recon­nect the cable back onto the main board as shown here.

It is now a good idea to test your new screen to deter­mine any faults whether it be from the man­u­fac­turer or dur­ing tran­sit in the post. As you can see, the screen is per­fect!

Now it is time to remove the final plas­tic pro­tec­tor from the front of the screen. Sim­ply fin­ish off by re assem­bling every­thing, that is, snap­ping the LCD frame to the body and screw­ing back the body onto the cam­era.

It also a good idea to clean the front of your screen with sticky tape so that you can install a new LCD screen pro­tec­tor for your cam­era! This shall pro­tect it from scratches!

My new LCD screen inside my DMC-​​TZ15

Con­clu­sion

Don’t drop your camera!

All up, the screen cost me 39.76AUD (34.49USD) to order a Sony branded lcd screen from Hong Kong. Instal­la­tion took me less than 10mins and now i have a usable cam­era! Be care­ful to han­dle your new screen with care when installing it!

5 Comments

• 

  By Reg Mason, March 14, 2010 @ 4:03 pm

  Who did you buy the replace­ment LCD from?
• 

  By edmond.dendekker, March 14, 2010 @ 4:15 pm

  I searched for the part on ebay and found this seller http://​myworld​.ebay​.com/​s​h​i​o​y​u​a​n​m​i​n​g​s​h​u​ma/ Screen works perfect.
• 

  By Cavin, March 17, 2010 @ 10:18 am

  Dear Edmond, Thank you for this post­ing! I man­aged to revive my tot-​​to-​​be-​​a-​​lost-​​case Linux tz15! Some bumps ini­tially due to e screws, it was almost a breeze after that! Again, my deep­est appre­ci­a­tion! Best, Cavin
• 

  By Cavin, March 17, 2010 @ 10:21 am

  Reg: I got my LCD from ownta​.com. It’s slightly more expen­sive at almost US$50 includ­ing ship­ping. Hope it helps!
• 

  By francesco, July 25, 2010 @ 4:27 am

  hi! very good, I greatly apre­ci­ated your work! Unfor­tu­nately I’m inter­ested to the front part of my camera! The e-​​zoom but­ton is stuck and it is acces­si­ble only by dis­as­sem­bling the front cover! how do you sug­gest to pro­ceede? it looks to be clamped by somewhat…

Other Links to this Post

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment