On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 21:52:35 -0700, Ned Konz
wrote:

I have a Sony Clie PDA with a tear in the ribbon cable that goes to the LCD
screen (this cable also serves as the substrate for the row decoder/driver
IC). It is a relatively fine pitch cable; I would estimate that there are
about 20 conductors in a 3 or 4mm wide piece of this cable. You can see a
magnified view of the damage at http://nedkonz.dhs.org:8080/Ned/48 .

Although I have a good soldering station (a Metcal with a variety of tips),
I am at a loss as to how to fix this. Note that the end of a small sewing
needle looks large in comparison to these traces, and my smallest soldering
iron tip is at least as large as 3 of the traces.

I could probably stabilize the back side of the ribbon using epoxy or Kapton
tape, but then I still don't know how I'd actually do the connection. I
don't think that conductive epoxy would work here, as it would be hard to
avoid bridges.

Does anyone know if this kind of damage is repairable? If it takes more than
about 2 hours to fix, I would be better off buying a used PDA on eBay...

Well, I used to have such problems with a similar type of cable,
only more in the 'visible range' :-)

The solution I came up with:
Take an appropriately fine needle. Solder a small wire with one
end to the needle and the other end to the appropriate contact on
the stationary connector.

Pierce the needle through the insulation, through the center of
the flexible connector. Test for proper conductivity and fixate
it with araldite or the like.

Good luck !

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok