aarongough
Stainless
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2014
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
Hey guys!
The screen on one of my Fadals died a few weeks back, luckily I have another machine I use less so I was able to borrow the screen from that to keep running. When I looked into buying a new screen the prices were all a bit nuts, given that we're just talking about a simple monitor here...
So I spent some time digging around for another option. I found a Chinese company that makes embedded monitors, they have an AliExpress store that is not very well organized, but eventually I came up with the perfect solution: 12.1" LCD monitor at AliExpress
It's a 12.1" LCD with BNC inputs as well as HDMI and USB. Powered by a simple 12V wall wart. Given the price I took a chance and bought one...
It showed up about a week later, well packaged and quality seems good:
It came with a wall-wart power supply, but I didn't want to do something sketchy like soldering the 120V leads in the pendant to the wall wart, so I bought a 12V switching power supply from Digikey: https://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/mean-well-usa-inc/RS-25-12/1866-4140-ND/7706175
I probably could have just taken power from the 12V rails in the pendant, but I don't know how close to capacity that 12V power supply is and I didn't want to risk it, installing a separate power supply is not a big deal.
Installation was pretty straight forward: I removed the steel bracket inside the pendant that was used to support the CRT as it's no longer needed and takes up space. With that out of the way I re-routed the 120V power lines to the new power supply and simply double-side tape mounted it in the bottom of the cabinet. You could drill a couple of holes for mounting screws but I didn't think it was worth the hassle... I cut the power cable off the wall-wart adapter and wired it into the power supply, then drilled a couple of extra holes in the mounting brackets that were supplied with the monitor and used those to mount the monitor in the existing hole, after removing the CRT bezel:
The BNC inputs worked perfectly with the Fadal's video signal. No flickering/jumping or any other issues. The screen automatically turns on and remembers the correct input when power is applied, and you can change the background of the monitor to either blue or black.
Additionally it has a USB input and can play many different types of media off a thumb drive, so if you get bored you can always watch something on the display while running the machine
Total cost was about $130 USD, and the installation took less than an hour!
The screen is not perfect. It would be better if it was matte, and the viewing angle on the screen is not great. But it's about 1/6th of the price of the other 'Fadal' options so it's great from that perspective! I'm going to talk to the chinese company that makes them and see if they'll do a version with a matte IPS display for a bit more.
The fit of the screen inside the pendant is also not perfect relative to the hole. I plan to have a steel sheet laser cut as an 'adapter plate' to get the fit perfect and make it more secure. I will share the DXF of the plate once it's done!
Anyway, hopefully this is helpful for someone else in the same position!
-Aaron
The screen on one of my Fadals died a few weeks back, luckily I have another machine I use less so I was able to borrow the screen from that to keep running. When I looked into buying a new screen the prices were all a bit nuts, given that we're just talking about a simple monitor here...
So I spent some time digging around for another option. I found a Chinese company that makes embedded monitors, they have an AliExpress store that is not very well organized, but eventually I came up with the perfect solution: 12.1" LCD monitor at AliExpress
It's a 12.1" LCD with BNC inputs as well as HDMI and USB. Powered by a simple 12V wall wart. Given the price I took a chance and bought one...
It showed up about a week later, well packaged and quality seems good:
It came with a wall-wart power supply, but I didn't want to do something sketchy like soldering the 120V leads in the pendant to the wall wart, so I bought a 12V switching power supply from Digikey: https://www.digikey.ca/product-detail/en/mean-well-usa-inc/RS-25-12/1866-4140-ND/7706175
I probably could have just taken power from the 12V rails in the pendant, but I don't know how close to capacity that 12V power supply is and I didn't want to risk it, installing a separate power supply is not a big deal.
Installation was pretty straight forward: I removed the steel bracket inside the pendant that was used to support the CRT as it's no longer needed and takes up space. With that out of the way I re-routed the 120V power lines to the new power supply and simply double-side tape mounted it in the bottom of the cabinet. You could drill a couple of holes for mounting screws but I didn't think it was worth the hassle... I cut the power cable off the wall-wart adapter and wired it into the power supply, then drilled a couple of extra holes in the mounting brackets that were supplied with the monitor and used those to mount the monitor in the existing hole, after removing the CRT bezel:
The BNC inputs worked perfectly with the Fadal's video signal. No flickering/jumping or any other issues. The screen automatically turns on and remembers the correct input when power is applied, and you can change the background of the monitor to either blue or black.
Additionally it has a USB input and can play many different types of media off a thumb drive, so if you get bored you can always watch something on the display while running the machine
Total cost was about $130 USD, and the installation took less than an hour!
The screen is not perfect. It would be better if it was matte, and the viewing angle on the screen is not great. But it's about 1/6th of the price of the other 'Fadal' options so it's great from that perspective! I'm going to talk to the chinese company that makes them and see if they'll do a version with a matte IPS display for a bit more.
The fit of the screen inside the pendant is also not perfect relative to the hole. I plan to have a steel sheet laser cut as an 'adapter plate' to get the fit perfect and make it more secure. I will share the DXF of the plate once it's done!
Anyway, hopefully this is helpful for someone else in the same position!
-Aaron
