[Jakob] sent in his method of dealing with broken laptop hinges. Broken hinges are a plague. We have no less than 4 laptops lying around that are beyond repair with broken hinges. Some are just propped up against things, some have had box hinges glued to them and some are just waiting to die slowly from non use. [Jakob] has a nice neat conversion where he basically made a tablet. We’ve seen that before as well as picture frames. His version, while being quite possibly easier than most of the others, has a neat design aspect. An extended lip at the bottom fits in a groove in a plastic slab. All in one PC becomes a tablet in an instant. Not too shabby for a broken laptop. It looks like he needs to pop a touch screen kit on it though.
Very interesting. This would be a fun project with an Acer Aspire 1 netbook I have that has broken hinge mechanism. I tiny 8in tablet minus the keyboard.
NEATO!
I know it’s pretty common but I just can’t stop being thrilled seeing stuff like this. I mean, what better way to recycle a broken laptop than to make a tablet with it? It’s still portable
Nice hack
I’ll have to remember this, my Laptops hinges appear to slowly breaking
I have plans to take an old laptop and convert it into one of those digital picture frames that you see in the store. Except this will cost nothing and not have a depressingly low resolution.
I’ve done the picture frame thing, works great. Use geexbox, it supports photo slideshows, as well as dvd’s, movies, music, etc. I have mine set up w/ a wireless card and I stream music, photos and video to it.
I was going to do something similar to this and build a basic carputer.
i like it. it looks has a sculptured, artistic look to it.
it reminds me of the computers on capt. archer’s enterprise i saw during a time*cough*travel mission to investigate a temporal*cough*abberation in starfleet history.
Not a bad idea…
*eyes the crappy brick of a Dell laptop sitting on the desk*
This would be great if my fading laptop could actually handle XP and its tablet edition.
I have a few with cracked hinges, but they don’t bend much past 180 degrees. Was there some unmentioned cutting involved?
this is elegant. touch-screen capability would upgrade it to brilliant.
Easy enough to do. Obvious question, though: replacing most laptop hinges is trivial. Why would you have laptops lying around that you don’t use simply because you can’t be bothered to get a second scrap one on ebay or buy a replacement hinge?
^That. If you know what you are doing, most laptop hinges can be replaced in about 20-30 minutes, start to finish…
I just built mine into an aluminum suitcase. Works very well and it now has locks. I wouldn’t take it to an airport but it works for what I need it for.
Is that an acer travelmate 2410 ressurected it from cupboard the other day hinges are brokengood idea mate lola must try :0 really like the hackaday website good projects and interesting people
I’m trying to turn my labtop into one of these new tablet pc’s I keep seeing around any body know an easy way of converting them. I trying to get it to function like the Lenovo yoga. Hit me up with an email if anyone can help jerseyking187@yahoo.com