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Casting a phone screen using fiberglass resin?

Engineering Asked by teneyed on April 29, 2021

My phone is pretty smashed up and I won’t be able to buy a new one for quite a while. I know you can buy a phone for ~$30, but I’m in an extremely tight situation and I just can’t afford that right now. I do, however, have some Protite (clear-casting/embedding) fibreglass resin and catalyst. So my question is, if I were to cast a (temporary) new screen, how safe would it be to use? Would I even be able to attach it to the digitiser without losing functionality? And, if anyone could even approximate, how long could I expect it to last? I know an epoxy bond would be stronger but aside from that I’m not sure how it would go enduring heat from the phone, or if it might pose any other risks. I live an hour out of town and rely on my phone greatly, it’s kind of essential, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

NB: I posted here because I felt this query pertained most to ‘a specific engineering problem’ and didn’t fit the criteria for the electrical engineering site, nor do I believe it is specific to a particular type of device e.g. iPhone or Android. I apologise if that is not correct. I’m new to SE and definitely no expert in such matters.

One Answer

I'll be assuming that you are talking about a "smartphone".

To be honest, if your phone is marginally working, and you are strapped for cash, I would avoid doing so.

Having said that, I'd be very interested to hear what the results of this experiment is.

To be honest, I'd expect that you would probably brick the phone if you tried that. The heat from the phone is not the problem (if its a resin, its most likely a thermosetting one, so there is no worry about it having a problem).

The main problem (IMHO), is that you'd be adding an very stiff layer on top of your screen. Even if its a tenth of a mm, it would be orders of magnitude stiffer than the film you use. The end result would be, that you'd be applying the force over a bigger area. So the responsiveness of the phone would degrade - a lot.

Having said that, you'd probably encounter other problems should you try to go down that road. e.g. Chemical reactions. you might find that the resin, bonds to the screen.

Also something another question is, how will a capacitative or resistive touch screen behave in this scenario?

Correct answer by NMech on April 29, 2021

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