Make Lightscreen From Old LCD Display

Hi everyone, this is a tutorial on how to make Lightscreen (Backlight) by taking an old LCD display apart and then modifying it

It is very practical if you have an old/broken LCD screen, and you want to make something useful out of it, instead of just throwing it away. It can be used as a pure white light source panel, suitable for studio photography or videofilming.

Parts needed for this project:

1x old LCD screen (19'' LG Flatron L194WT)

2x screwdrivers

2x pliers

Some wires

1x good Will

First thing to do is to disassemble the display. It is important to notice that display is not connected to the main power source, and also that it elapsed enough time from last use, in order to empty all of the capacitors.

Removal of the front panel is not very easy, because of the internal plastic clips, that's way it is important to be patient here.

After disassembling of the display, it is time to modify electronic circuit to for the backlight to work properly.

There are two boards, green is main unit for display, and brown one is just a power suply. Since green is for data and image creating, it is not needed, but it also controlls power suply, so it is important to override it.

This was pretty easy because pins on this interconnecting cable are labeled. All that is needed is to connect pin ON to 5V pin and also to connect DIM (dimming) pin to 5V in order to get maximum brightness out of it. It is also posible to connect potentiometer to DIM pin, to control brightness of a screen.

This circuit contains HIGH VOLTAGE and it should be handled carefully, because it can be DANGEROUS.

After putting jumpers on the connector, and asembling whole display back together, it is time for testing.

Screen is very bright and it emits pure white light. It consumes 32 Watts of electricity.

This modified display can be used as a backlight for a photography, or as a lightscreen for drawing on, or just as a regular white lightpanel.

I was really satisfied with an end result, it didn't took much time, arround 1 hour, but it will be very useful for me, since I needed a good light source.

Now I got one for free.