Salvaging the iPad 3, Part 1

For the Acer Cyberdeck I would want to add an optional screen. A small LCD would be best, and I spotted that you can get LCD / EDP Driver boards for iPad displays. iPad 3's seemed to be the best fit for my skills / use: it's a wonderfully crisp 2K screen, but the iPad 3 is not yet so complicated on the inside so as to make it incredibly hard to disassemble. There's also a generous size battery in it (15600 mAh at a standard 3.7v output!).

So I ordered an "activation locked" iPad off eBay. The good thing about these is that they are usually entirely intact electronically; with having forgotten the passcode they are "simply" soft-bricked. £9.99 incl. shipping is really really good.

But the screen came broken.

The iPad came in a stiff cardboard box; well wrapped in tape, and inside it was jiffy bag. As I opened the jiffy bag I knew there was trouble ahead: tiny shards and gorilla glass dust fell out of the envelope.

=> Bad news. | Very bad news. | Sad, sad news.

This meant two things:

• 1. Potential refund
• 2. A screen removal job that will really, really suck.

But it still turned on and under the broken touchscreen the LCD module seemed intact: no bleeding, no tearing, no streaky lines. It was only the glass. I wrote to the guy on eBay (who, eventually, refunded in full), took a deep breath, and I opened the iFixit tutorial for iPad 3 teardowns. ¹

Glass shards and glass shards and glass shards.

So out came the heatgun, and following the tutorial I worked my way around the edges of the screen. I cut up an old membership card to use as extra wedges, and finally used the suction pad to pull the screen off. Which, of course, shattered further as I did so - once it's broken, it will just keep breaking. And when I got to the broken parts... It was a really terrible job; and I ended up having to pull hair-thin bits of glass from my fingers at the end of it.

=> But I managed to get it off, eventually. | I stopped and took my medication.

I lost the touchpad, but the screen was out.

What else to salvage?

As it turned out, nothing. I wanted to get e.g. the wireless module out, or to salvage the antennas, but they all seemed way too proprietary to be feasible. Non-standard board connectors, antennae glued to plastic parts... It was really unpleasant.

I tried to salvage some of the switches, at least: but to not much success; they did come out, but they didn't prove as useful as I thought they might.

The neodymium magnets that are used to attach the screen protector were fun tho. I kept those.

=> And I also ended up with about 9223 tiny screws.

The only thing that was left was the amazing looking battery.

Getting the battery out

I did read that the battery is glued down and takes a lot of effort to remove; but my goodness, this was as horrible a job as liberating the screen from the glass shards. I broke one spudger, and I was really worried I would end up breaking / bending / shorting the lithium panels. The battery pack is 3 cells, but connected up in parallel (I think). It's a smart battery, meaning that the battery controller is embedded.

The problem is that, while this is glued, you cannot go near it with the high heat of the heatgun. I had no clue what type of glue it is so I couldn't really go for solvents (plus I didn't have any at home). iFixit in the teardown just advised to prise it off. So I got the thin opener tool underneath, then the slightly more rigid one, and broke the glue bond all around the battery pack.

=> Another really messy job.

And you just cannot win with glue. The battery pack's lining tore:

=> Hello, shiny and highly flammable metal

To make it obvious that this is a DIY project, I wrapped it all in soothing red electric tape. Better safe than sorry...

=> Best not take this on an airplane.

Success

So after all that, in about two gos, I managed to liberate the battery and the screen. Pretty cool that all this was free, essentially. Given that iFixit gives this machine a reparaibility score of 2/5, I was pretty proud of myself that I managed to do this with minimal damage.

=> Behold.

And I did end up saving quite a bit of money, really - not just the £9.99 that I was refunded, but if I look at purchasing a 10" 2K screen off eBay, I am looking at something between £44-120, on eBay only. If I went for buying the parts on AliExpress that I salvaged, a new iPad 3 battery is £12.31; the screen is £19.41 cheapest. So I saved anywhere between £31.72 and £120. Not to mention that there's less in the landfill!

All that was needed in the end was a little bit of cleanup: the fine glass dust got EVERYWHERE. The screen needed brushing down with a fine dusting brush; but the worktop I used needed to be "wiped" with some sticky tape in about 5-6 passes to gather up all the fine dust... A horrible job. Nedt time I don't want to buy a broken iPAd screen.

=> Not tasty

But that's it for tonight. Next up: figuring out the pinout and ordering more parts.

=> ¹ iFixit: iPad 3 4G Teardown