Soot damaged LCD HDTV screen - please advise!


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Hi there guys. Recently my mum had a house fire (don't worry, all humans escaped alive!) But unfortunately my HDTV which I left for her basically got caught on the soot radius, and while the TV itself has been strenuously tested and its working fine, the screen has been soot damaged somewhat. I purchased some LCD TV cleaner which I usually use on the screen, but didn't remove the soot. Do you guys have any suggestions to remove the soot or is the screen buggered for good?

Oh, and before anybody asks, no, she didn't have home insurance :-P

Many thanks for any replies guys!

Hawkman - let's just say she had to make some very hard financial cuts and the insurance didn't make it.

Brian - I'll see if I can get some. Do you have any specific wipes in mind? Most of them come with BS on the box saying they're super strong when most of the time they're not.

I've seen this before. What you need is a degreasing agent to remove the remaining soot. there are a few industrial strength ones that are available but here's a consumer brand that should work:

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3MNovec/Home/ProductCatalog/?PC_7_RJH9U5230OOA50IEKHCMDN11H0000000_nid=FLK8MBG33TbeCLNXKDTJMNgl

Soot is not so typical like dust as it has far more chemicals in the soot that make it difficult to treat. Thus alcohol based cleaners/wipes seldom work.

Isopropyl Alcohol, the cleaning solution used to clean thermal paste off CPU works to clean almost anything off anything. Ive used it to clean motherboards from spilt drinks on it amongst other things (cleaned off with distilled water after of course), but it should remove the soot from screen. I use a few drop to clean my lcd screens of stubborn dirt and stains that seem to accumulate on there.

http://www.ebay.co.u...=item257983b5b9

Something like that should do the trick.

If you try the alcohol and it doesn't work, you will need a strong detergent based cleaner. This can ruin/dull the screen though. Castrol degreaser/cleaner is very strong but may be only found in the US. Wear gloves, exposure will dry out your skin.

Is the soot on the surface of the glass or does it appear to be behind the glass? How close was this to the fire. What you might be seeing (Depending on how hot it got near the tv) is heat damage to the screen... If all it is is soot, it should clean without much trouble... But before a recommendation can really be made, knowing what it actually looks like would help tremendously... I understand that this is a tough thing to catch in a picture sometimes...

You know, I'm surprised I didn't think of degreaser considering how often I use it at work haha.I'll see if I can track some down and try that. Thanks!

I would be very careful of that and make sure that it won't harm the glass / screen... I generally recommend looking for "green" products in cases like this in particular because they are generally less abrasive...

Is the soot on the surface of the glass or does it appear to be behind the glass? How close was this to the fire. What you might be seeing (Depending on how hot it got near the tv) is heat damage to the screen... If all it is is soot, it should clean without much trouble... But before a recommendation can really be made, knowing what it actually looks like would help tremendously... I understand that this is a tough thing to catch in a picture sometimes...

I would be very careful of that and make sure that it won't harm the glass / screen... I generally recommend looking for "green" products in cases like this in particular because they are generally less abrasive...

I would presume it's on the glass rather then behind the glass, although unfortunately it was in the room that was mostly heavily affected by soot damage (sans plus fire damage)

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