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I noticed yesterday that one of my CCFLs was flickering pretty badly. I pulled it out and discovered that the wire coming out of the tube had a small burn hole in the insulator. Somehow the wires made contact and shorted out. Heres what I did to fix it.
The CCFL was a sunbeam style one with the clear acrylic tube covering the element and with the little clear cubes on the ends.
First off, I twisted the end cap with the wire coming out of it gently until it twisted off. Then I pilled the element out of the tube and slid the wire side block down towards the connector.
The element has a VERY thin wire going to the end of it and it had burned off the wire it was connected to.
I carefully stripped the insulation off the wire endsand heated up the soldering iron. I de-soldered the other wire free and made a note of which one went where.
I then cut 2 1" pieces of heatshrink tubing and placed one both wires and I slid the other one over the wire going to the element.
I then soldered the element wire back into place and heated the HS tubing over the joint. Next I soldered the other wire back to the ultra thin wire. This was the most difficult part. (Be sure that after soldering, both wires are the same length and that the thin wire is not having any tension put on it because the other wire is too long)
Then I just heated the other piece of HS tubing over the thin wire joint and Viola! One repaired CCFL saved from the trash can.
The CCFL was a sunbeam style one with the clear acrylic tube covering the element and with the little clear cubes on the ends.
First off, I twisted the end cap with the wire coming out of it gently until it twisted off. Then I pilled the element out of the tube and slid the wire side block down towards the connector.
The element has a VERY thin wire going to the end of it and it had burned off the wire it was connected to.
I carefully stripped the insulation off the wire endsand heated up the soldering iron. I de-soldered the other wire free and made a note of which one went where.
I then cut 2 1" pieces of heatshrink tubing and placed one both wires and I slid the other one over the wire going to the element.
I then soldered the element wire back into place and heated the HS tubing over the joint. Next I soldered the other wire back to the ultra thin wire. This was the most difficult part. (Be sure that after soldering, both wires are the same length and that the thin wire is not having any tension put on it because the other wire is too long)
Then I just heated the other piece of HS tubing over the thin wire joint and Viola! One repaired CCFL saved from the trash can.
But this time it was saved!! Yay! I might just buy sunbeams and do this fix before I need to ans save about $10 (The cc's I get are $14 at a local computer store and good quality