Salvaging a TV: Building a miniature particle accelerator (part 1)

I've (not) been watching television from a CRT screen up until 2009. Hey, at its time, 29" was THE thing OK. Then one fine day a decade later, it started to 'cast shadows', and a while later, it no longer showed any images.

One heavy bugger to carry.

It wasn't that difficult to find the part responsible for the damage. With some lighting examination, I easily found the electrical component that burned out. Without a multimeter, my first judgment tells me that the damage is pretty localized - definitely repairable. It has a standardized rating imprinted, so I can easily find a replacement and solder it on if I wanted to repair the TV.

Culprit: An overheated capacitor.

A closer look at the high voltage circuit board. (Above: burn mark; below: HV warning)

But you see, the topic of this post is Salvaging a TV, not Repairing a TV. So I'll repair the high voltage board, THEN salvage the electron gun! Television sets are relatively affordable nowadays anyway, and repairing this set wouldn't yield any monetary profit. And it is definitely more difficult to find huge CRT screens with powerful electron guns nowadays than it is to find big LCD or plasma screens. The obvious thing that occurred to me was to salvage the thing for future use.

A particle accelerator, videlicet electron gun. Now we're talking business.

Warning for X-ray radiation and implosion of vacuum tube on the radiation shield. Confirms what I needed to know.

The pictures that follow basically tell one story: essentially every part is made in Japan.

Electron gun, made in Japan.

To be honest, I can't explain this phenomenon. The graphite(?) coating seemed to have become some sort of sticky paste after prolonged irradiation.

Firstly, I had to dispose as much of the system mass as possible, because of the limited space in my apartment. Fortunately, I am good at removing redundant weight, you see. Besides removing the back casing, I could detach the speakers. Promptly disconnected the speakers, then unscrewed their plastic casings. Took the casings apart, and isolated the sound systems.

Port for side-mounted speaker.

Original location of the right speaker. Notice the handmade detail: windings of insulation tape and masking tape are all they're using to keep the wirings neat. The tapes are effective - outlasted the function of the TV, definitely.

The Phillips head screwdriver was all I needed - I have a smaller one for trickier angles, but I prefer the large one because it gets the work done fast (I don't have a very good physical explanation though). I realized that I needed the slotted head screwdriver as a secondary weapon to cut open and pry apart the PTFE seals that held the casings together (alongside with 2 small machine screws). I guess they needed to keep contaminant particles away from the sound systems. Good idea; not written on standard Physics textbooks in the electromagnetism/electromagnetic induction chapters, certainly.

PTFE seals, pried open.

Everything taken apart.

Again, a decade ago, it was all made in Japan...

Made in Japan.

Made in Japan.

Made in Japan (except for the Mag Instruments torchlight).

Made in JPN.

Made in JPN.

Well, I don't have time for analysis of the fanciful details on the sound systems. The bulk of the weight comes from the radiation shield and vacuum tube behind the screen. I didn't remove it yet, seeing that it was a dangerous job and I didn't want to risk the thing breaking (apart from safety issues). I have to slowly hoist the TV down onto its screen surface, then unscrew the shield and vacuum tube from the main casing.

I also have to analyze how the electron gun works, because I can't put the TV down on its front side unless I disconnected the rest of the circuit boards from the electron gun - a hassle to work out afterwards if I didn't remember how they were arranged. I could only recognize the electric and magnetic field (copper coil) components.

So, I'll probably take apart the rest of the TV some time this week, when something depressing has happened to me, and thereby I would have a greater disregard for my life. After which I estimate that I need another 2 days of work to finish up isolating the electron gun, buying a new capacitor, and getting it to work (safely). So, 3 more continuations to this topic should follow (supposing I don't die anywhere inbetween these 3 installments).