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Anilim Wizard 411 backlighting

Wagspe208

Plastic
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
My dro has no backlighting. I guess that is what it is called. The contrast works. Just a very dark screen. I have googled and not found an adjustment for brightness.
Side note… I had a fire in my shop. The dro had been off for a few years. The dro had no damage (visible anyway). The mill was not in a hugely hot area, however, the paint at the top of the mill (near dro mount) is slightly discolored... so... any ideas?
Everything else works, reads, buttons, no visible issues with dro externally.
 
I don't know anything specific about that DRO, but character LCDs are all pretty much plug and play. Just get one with an LED backlight and a resistor.

Pictures of the face of the display and possibly the connector to it if you can get to it would help.
 
Looks like don is the guy. He is on vacation today. I also called anilam support... they said call don.
The backlight "bulb" is burned out causing the issue.
Here are pics just so it makes sense.
Thanks for the help.
 

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I shoulda mentioned he was on vacation all week. He will definitely be able to hook you up. And Jerry does the CNC side of the house. But dont worry, Don will hook you up. He is a good buddy and has done countless of these.

Jon
 
Well, before don returned my call, I ripped the thing apart. It was about 10 to 15 screws total, and found the backlight panel. It works like a fiber optic thing, but it is a single plane. On one end is a miniature fluorescent light. (CCFL) with 2 wires, which plugs in to the circuit board.
By the time don called, he said he could repair it, ship the readout to him, it was hugely difficult, etc.
I paid 13 bucks for a bulb, soldered 2 wires on the bulb, and it is up and running.
Don was very nice, I just did not have the time to ship it to him, and return shipment.
If anyone gives a damn, I can post a couple pics... if not, no reason to.
 
Wagspe208, I am having the same issue as you had and have a couple questions.

1 Do you have information on where you got the bulb?
2 I'd love to see a couple pictures of what you did.

Thanks for the help!
 
Wagspe208, I am having the same issue as you had and have a couple questions.

1 Do you have information on where you got the bulb?
2 I'd love to see a couple pictures of what you did.

Thanks for the help!
I'd love to help out... but my experience with a couple pricks on this site precludes me from helping anyone... as I am not a job shop machinist. I'm so beneath those experts, the fact that I disassembled mine, replaced bulb, and it works perfectly for about 15 bucks shows how stupid I truly am. I could have paid someone a couple hundred bucks to fix it, plus shipping, plus down time.. but an idiot like me just fixed it.

OK, rant over... and the only reason I knew there was a reply was it popped up in email.
Email me directly, and I will share everything I know..
PM sent
 
Wagspe208, Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately I didnt receive the PM Not sure how to see them. I'd love to connect with you on this repair. I did send you a friend request on this site that appears to be pending. Not sure how that would allow us to communicate. Either way I will include my email address here if it allowed. Thanks again for your response.

[email protected]
 
Oh boy. I saw this thread a while back. The responses that could have been so helpful were so unhelpful.

SO, I made an account here to say I made a video, I just have yet to edit it.

Would anyone be interested in a YouTube video with step by step instructions on replacing the backlight? I will work on it if so.
 
I just bought a new to me Bridgeport. It's a 1981 2J head. The machine is in excellent condition, except the DRO backlight is burned out. The DRO is an Anilam Wizard 411. Searching the Internet to see if the DRO is easily repairable lead me to this thread. And what can I say? On the one hand it shows that the DRO is fixable. On the other hand it's everything wrong with the internet.

So I fixed my DRO and came back to fix this thread. But before I get into the how, here is the what. The exact what is not very important, as I will explain.

LED backlight kit ($15.00 on 12/09/23):
(Sold as: "Highlight 10-24'' Dimable LED Backlight Lamps Update Kit Adjustable Light Board +2 LED Strips for LCD Monitor")


DC-DC boost converter ($8.99 on 12/16/23):
(Sold as: "Dorhea MT3608 DC-DC Step Up Boost Power Converter 2A Module Adjustable Step Up Voltage Regulator Board Voltage 2-24V to 5V-28V Output Voltage (Pack of 10)")
 
Disassembly of the DRO is not very interesting, so I'll skip that. The LCD is eventually removable with 4 screws and looks like this:
 

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The backlight is a ccfl (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp). The power supply for the DRO has 4 pins to the main circuit board. The outside pins provide ground and 5v DC, not sure about the other 2 pins, but they do not appear to be useful to this repair. The main circuit board has a built in boost circuit to supply the ccfl with 300v. The choices for repairing the DRO are roughly:

1) Replace the entire LCD.
2) Replace the ccfl tube with a new ccfl
3) Replace the ccfl with LEDs

Option 1 looks doable, but expensive and will burn out again. Option 2 seems doable, but I had a hard time getting the right replacement (I did get one and it does work, but it's too long). Also,it will burn out again. Option 3 seems harder, but should last a long time.

I went with option 3. In the end it was pretty easy. If you purchase the items I listed in the 1st post, you will have enough components to fix 4 displays. There are two tricky parts to using LEDs for this repair. What LEDs/LED assembly to use, and how to power it.
 
The principal of operation for the backlight of an LCD might seem complicated to the uninitiated, but it's actually pretty simple. The LCD itself needs light to be transmitted through it. The backlight is just a couple of layers of plastic, one of which is opaque white. When you shine a light on the side of it, the light diffuses and omits from the front; basically it glows. That sits behind the LCD, hence backlight.

It is NOT necessary to take apart the LCD assembly to replace the backlight on this DRO screen. But I didn't know that when I started, so here is a picture of how the backlight works:
 

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Note that I am just shining a flashlight light where the ccfl tube would normally go. The ccfl is in that discolored white plastic carrier in the assembly. CFLs work by emitting ultraviolet light that causes a powder on the I side of the tube to fluoresce. Which is super interesting. But if the tube is not constructed perfectly, ultraviolet light will leak out and destroy plastics.
 

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Reusing my plastic carrier wasn't a great option anyway, so onto LEDs. For whatever reason, backlight LED assemblies appears to big business. While I could make my own assemblies, the kits are cheap and produce the proper color temperature light. And since it's all surface mount, you get nice even lighting in a very small package. Here I am just driving the assembly with the little DC-DC power supply it came with using 12v DC.
 

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The DC-DC power supply it came with is just a buck converter. It uses a buck converter circuit to buck the input voltage down to 7-10v DC. And you could add a potentiometer to vary the brightness. The issue with using the supplied converter is that it can only buck voltages down, which means you need a minimum of an 8v DC power supply. You could use an external power supply for this, but I want to use the power supply in the DRO. And it's 5 volts. I'll come back to that later.
 
Obviously we don't want a 20" light bar. So what to do.... Well, the assemblies are constructed with every 3 LED in series and every set of 3 in parallel. So the PCB for the assembly has two bus bars that power each set of 3 LEDs. And the kit I bought has two solder pads at each end of each assembly. So as long as we cut the assembly is groups of 3 LEDs, they should work just fine. 18 LEDs fits well for the assemblies I bought. Because each assembly has solder pads at each end, you could make 4 assemblies to fix these DROs using the kit I listed.
NOTE: I used red and grey wire to make my assembly, and I got it backwards. So on my assembly the red wire is ground and the grey is positive.
 

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A bit of double sided tape on the back, and the LED assembly fits right in the pocket for the ccfl.
 

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