Thinkpads Forum

Here among the East Anglian wheat fields we suffer from seasonal swarms of minute flying insects known as thrips (Wikipedia: ‘Thysanoptera. Other common names… include thunderflies, thunderbugs, storm flies and corn lice’). These mites embark on doomed missions behind the glass of apparently well-sealed pictures – and between the layers of LCD displays.

My T23 was invaded long ago but there have been no problems apart from the appearance of some highly idiosyncratic punctuation in on-screen documents. So far I have been luckier with my T60 but it is only a matter of time. Meanwhile my wife’s old Toshiba Portégé R200 seems immune.

When thrips are around I seal my T60 in a plastic bag and go back to my faithful T23, with its random . , ¡ ` ‘ flecks behind the screen. But bug-ridden hardware seems less than ideal; I would like to know:

a. Have other sufferers found a way of removing these tiny corpses?
b. Is the screen of a T60 different from - and perhaps less vulnerable than - that found in a T23?
c. Can one seal a T60 screen against insect infiltration?

Strange but true: it is possible to ‘herd’ a thrip towards the edge of the display with your mouse pointer! But they invariably head for the most inconvenient, central location in which to die (from hypoxia? radiation? electrocution? excessive herding?). Above all, resist the urge to press the screen while a thrip is still on the move…

Welcome to the Thinkpads forum! This problem is a first for here, I think...

I'm going to watch this thread here on the T60 forum. If you get no bites, I'll move it to General Hardware or another appropriate forum.

By the way, I found this this video that demonstrates what Simrod described.

It's funny watching that guy smack the daylights out of that LCD trying to kill the little bug. Inevitably he'd cause more damage to the LCD by the banging than the bug would ever do .

Oh wow, that is definitely an issue that I have not seen or heard before. I am watching this thread for answers, if any.

All I'm going to say is O M G...and I thought I've seen all problems anyone ever had with a ThinkPad LCD....

This has got to be the strangest thing I've ever seen on/in a display! It might be possible to herd the little buggers (:lol:) to the lower right corner of the display (assuming that's where an opening for the CCFL leads are) by displaying a black screen with a white blob there. That's also assuming they're attracted to bright lights and are crawling around on a layer of the display where they can see what you're seeing.

I can add that the T60 machines have screens that are put together tighter than earlier models. I would be surprised if and bugs (even small ones) could get inside.

Remove the panel from the bezel and seal all the edges along the sides and back with tape. Most LCD panels seem to use foil tape to seal edges, you can find it in the plumbing section of a hardware store. You could also use that yellow non-conductive tape that's often used for laptop mods.

I took a couple of pictures with a panel I had in my box-o-parts.

Front: http://i35.tinypic.com/2w6cpkh.jpg
Back: http://i38.tinypic.com/15ryw76.jpg
Edge: http://i35.tinypic.com/14box2d.jpg

The front overlapping edge probably is too tight for the buggers to get in... and taping up that edge would reduce visibility. However on the back, there are gaps in the frame that they could probably crawl into. I took the back picture so you could see the different layers of the panel where they get in between.

Ron, the guy on that video is hilarious.

Here's a taped edge: http://i33.tinypic.com/veufdv.jpg

Notice the gap in the frame above the tape.

Many thanks to all for these useful responses. This is my first experience of the thinkpads.com Support Community and I’m most impressed.

Amazing that Ron was able to find that footage – fortunately English thrips are smaller and slower than their Dutch cousins (also interesting to note the universality of English swearwords).

As for protecting my T60 with tape, there is the usual dilemma: ‘if it ain’t broke…’ vs ‘a stitch in time…’. Also ‘if in doubt – do nothing’. This last maxim seems persuasive, especially after richk’s comment about the tightness of T60 displays. However should a thrip so much as show its face (?) inside my screen I will have sparta.rising’s excellent advice and pics to fall back on.

Then there is the question of cleaning my infested T23 screen. Am I right in assuming that replacement would be the only option? Or can one squirt air between the layers of an LCD?

When the thrip-season is over, you can be adventurous, and take the T23 screen apart. It consists of various layers that open up like a book.
See this PDF with pictures: http://www.lcdpart.com/images/TX41D56VC1CAA.pdf

You would need an extremely clean work environment.
You probably can blow the dead bodies away with a blower, such as are used for cleaning camera lenses.
Don't touch anything on the layers, don't leave fingerprints etc.
When reassembling make sure all is as clean as a whistle!
Then apply sparta.rising's advice.

Simrod wrote:Many thanks to all for these useful responses. This is my first experience of the thinkpads.com Support Community and I’m most impressed.

Amazing that Ron was able to find that footage – fortunately English thrips are smaller and slower than their Dutch cousins (also interesting to note the universality of English swearwords).

As for protecting my T60 with tape, there is the usual dilemma: ‘if it ain’t broke…’ vs ‘a stitch in time…’. Also ‘if in doubt – do nothing’. This last maxim seems persuasive, especially after richk’s comment about the tightness of T60 displays. However should a thrip so much as show its face (?) inside my screen I will have sparta.rising’s excellent advice and pics to fall back on.

Then there is the question of cleaning my infested T23 screen. Am I right in assuming that replacement would be the only option? Or can one squirt air between the layers of an LCD?

>> should a thrip so much as show its face (?) <<

Something in there must be its face, so I think you're safe using that idiom. I won't report you to the Idiom Police, anyway.

Andy

This is my first post and I had the same problem, a dead ant on the LCD, but I managed to "fix" it with a little trick I hope will be helpful for others.

Initially the ant died like 3 inches from the bottom of the screen, i was able to make it move the corpse with little taps on the screen, but it got stuck at half an inch from the border. So after many tries with different methods, I found that using one suction cup near the place where the ant is located, pulling it in order to make room below the glass for the ant to move while tapping the screen, made the dead ant fall by gravity, but got stuck a little down. I inverted the laptop (screen top to the bottom) used the suction cup again in order to make the dead ant move a few steps back. then tried again with the screen on the correct position, now the ant is at the black border and is not a visual distraction anymore