A few months ago the screen of my work iPad cracked. Although it had a large protective cover around the edges, it appears something hard was pushed directly against the screen itself. The cracks form a lovely 4-pointed star shape:
Things look even worse on this angle:
Resin to the rescue
I happened to have spare resin left over from a Rain-X Windshield Repair Kit that I’d used on our 4WD and car windscreens, which reduces the appearance of cracks and minimises the chance of bull’s eyes from spreading. These repairs went quite well so I thought this might do the trick on the iPad screen too. It was definitely worth a crack!
After cleaning the screen carefully, I pushed the applicator base onto the screen so the centre ring was directly above the central impact point. I then positioned the applicator and adjusted the suction cup legs to ensure the suction cups were not covering any of the cracks:
The resin chamber was then screwed into the centre ring, so the rubber mouth sat directly on top of the point of impact:
A few drops of resin were then squeezed into the resin chamber and the pressure driver screwed on to apply resin into the cracks. Additional resin was also applied directly from the bottle into sections of the cracks that hadn’t been filled from the resin chamber. I actually ran out of resin in the end, but it was enough to do a decent job.
The applicator was removed as per instructions, and curing strips applied to cover all of the cracks:
The iPad was then placed in the sun, as the resin is cured by Ultra Violet (UV) light. I actually had to take it out of the sun a few times because the black screen overheated in direct sunlight, and iOS showed the high temperature warning until it had cooled down again.
When the resin had hardened, the curing strips were removed and excess resin scraped away using a razor blade.
A cracker solution!
Overall I am quite happy with the result. The cracks have changed from a distinct line to a dotted and dashed line which is much harder to see – and harder to photograph!
My mother in law was using this iPad recently and didn’t even realise the screen was cracked until she went outside! The photo below was taken outside in the sunshine to show how the crack is still visible under very bright light at the correct angle:
Although the cracks are still slightly noticeable, it’s a vast improvement over the original condition. I might not go out and buy a windscreen repair kit just to fix a cracked tablet or phone screen, although it’s definitely a viable option if you don’t have the time to replace the screen yourself or the money to have someone else fix it.