Adventures in Fluke 8020B LCD MacGyver land....

[MartolFart]

I have this pretty old DMM that developed LCD issues; a splotch in the middle of the screen was making the digit underneath pretty hard to read.... And replacement LCD is not easy to come by. So I took it apart anyway and tried to get the reflector off in one piece, but it just shredded... And it turned out the blotch was in the polarizing film somehow too, so it needed to come off which was a tedious task.... Once I got it off and tracked down some film on amazon, I cut it to size (making sure to get the correct angle 90 degrees to the front polarizer), it worked pretty good! My wife gave me some shiny paper to use as backing which worked a lot better than foil, but plain white paper worked pretty good too. I didn't bother with trying to seal everything back together since it looked fine to me as it was (but I might go back to plain white paper!) Had to do some futzing with zebra connector and clean the pcb contacts along the way as well.  Here's a couple of pics.

[lowimpedance]

Usually the digits start to  ' leach' ,so good that it's only the polariser etc as you could save the original LCD.
My 8020A  display was totally black and needed full replacement, luckily its a simple display with only a BAT. Low indicator. These types are readily available with leads attached. With some slight mechanical mods to the display holder and some small gauge wire soldering this retrofit looks the part and performs perfectly and will see out the remaining life of the meter.
Search the forum for my first post here on what I did, but for complete instruction see MrModemheads website for a good write up.

[MartolFart]

Yup, I happened on MrModemHead's 8020B tear down (I hope he found a replacement AC/DC button!) which got me motivated to see if I could do something about that splotch.... I thought others might be interested the polarizer and reflector replacement since replacement options are limited and/or more involved. Fluke would prolly charge a small fortune anyway....