My laptop hinge just ripped its screws right out.
My laptop hinge just ripped its screws right out.
I've just finished getting my laptop set up the way I like it, including maximising the RAM and upgrading the screen. I opened it up to use it, and the screws on the hinge tore through the plastic.
To top it off, the plastic on the bottom of the laptop, the side that's been removed here, has also broken.
My wife definitely didn't drop the laptop while she was tidying up though...
EDIT: Apologies all, I'm having trouble with Lemmy today, and it's not letting me reply.
I'll try to reply tomorrow, but in the meantime;
It's a Stonebook branded Clevo n751BU, a 7th gen i5. It's held up respectably well until it appears to have been knocked in the corner where the hinge is. The plastics on both sides of the hinge have given out.
I've ordered a replacement base, but the palm rest which is pictured is not available anywhere that I can find. I'm going to dismantle the hinge to clean and oil it, then reassemble it slightly less tightly, and epoxy the screws into place. The reason for taking it apart in the first place was to add a third hard drive. It has an nvme drive, and I had two HDDs going spare that can hold my documents and music. They're being synced now as I was having problems doing it remotely, but once they're in they can be managed with Syncthing. The laptop shouldn't need to come apart agin afterwards :)
I've been building and repairing computers and laptops for about 30 years, so I'm comfortable with completely stripping it, and can use it as an excuse to give everything a clean again. Short of replacing these HDDs with SSDs, there's nothing else that can physically be upgraded, so I'm half tempted to glue it shut so that I don't get tempted again :D
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I used to work in a computer repair shop. Unfortunately this is a lot more common than you might think, and it's almost always due to poor quality plastic and nothing to do with the end user. Sadly I've yet to see a case where this is covered under the warranty either, but it's worth a shot if you want to go through the headache of their customer support.
You can try epoxy like someone else mention, but it comes with a few problems you might encounter. First you can't put too much epoxy or it'll spill over onto the computer components (which could damage them) and as a result it may not hold. Second, even if it does hold you're putting it over screws, which means you most likely won't be able to remove those screws down the road if you ever have to repair or upgrade it.
You could also just leave the laptop permanently open and never touch the hinge. Some people already this anyways with their devices so for them it's not worth the hassle. As long as nothing else is damaged and you're careful with it, this can work too.
Ultimately, the best solution is to just replace the plastic casing part where it ripped out of, which is usually either the housing around the keyboard and track-pad, or the one behind the LCD. Sadly because all the parts are likely made with poor quality plastic this is likely to happen again down the road. In your case it looks like the former, the housing around the keyboard. For some devices the keyboard isn't easily removable from this housing, so it's probably going to require you replace the keyboard as well, unless you like dealing with tiny rivets.
Oh, and you probably don't need to replace the hinge itself. like I said it's usually the brittle plastic in the housing that's at fault, not the hinge seizing and refusing to move.
This is years out of warranty, it's a 7th gen i5 :)
The photo is of the top part of the laptop base, so where the keyboard is, but from underneath. The base below it was already broken, which is what put the extra strain on the top.
As you say, I should be able to put some epoxy on and hold it together, as none of this needs to be removed again. I've got a new base coming, so as long as the pictured piece doesn't move, it should be fine :)