Can a bad monitor be fixed with a magnet?

My monitor is starting to go bad in the upper left quadrant of the screen. A long time ago someone told me the way to fix the problem, was to take a strong magnet, start from the middle of the screen and move outward towards the edges. Supposedly this was supposed to do something magical and mystical storing your monitor back to normal. Has anyone ever heard of this?

 

I don't know if there's anything magical but it called degausing. A lot of newer monitors have a built in deguaser. It basicaly clears static electricity. I've never done it with a magnet before. When I was in high school (I took electronics in a vocational school ) we used to use a soldering gun on color TV picture tubes, just held the trigger and waved it in front the screen. You could see the color bluring wherever you held it. That was more than 35 years ago and a lot of things have changed since then.

You might want to do a google search for "degausing" and get lots more information before trying it.

HTH

 

See if there is anything here:
http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/monfaq.htm
Read the disclaimer.

Matt

 

Hi tcd2000.

Can you describe exactly what is going wrong.

If you're experiencing color divergence then the monitor needs alignment.
If you're getting large smudges I would look around the monitor for something that has a magnet or transformer, like a speaker or power converter. Rearrange these items and that might clear it up. There's a lot of people with large speakers near their televisions (same as monitors) that are getting these smudges because of the magnets in the speakers.
If it's just getting bent out of shape then it also just needs alignment or adjustment via the on-screen-display or controls.

giles

 

Just to clear a point....

"It basicaly clears static electricity "

the degaussing function referrs to neutralising the magnetic field on the tube.

As electrons are very light (ie. low mass) things that move they have magnetic properties.

Magnetic fields are affected by others.

The electrons naturally have a field as they are a moving charge, this is how the scanning coils move the electons so they scan the field.

If a part of the tube (screen) gets a stray field then the electrons get shifted and dont land where they should.

The degaussing function is a coil that is draped over the back of the screen so that makes the whole screen have the same field strengh.

The word "degausing" comes from the word "Gauss" pronounced 'gauz' which is a unit of magnetic field strenght.

If there was a function to remove the static from a screen it would probably be called "decoulombing" as a Coulomb is a measure of charge. This term does not actually exist but would just be called "discharging ".

A screen would not work without static as its this charge that attracts the electrons to the screen so they strike at close to the speed of light. Its this force that releces energy in the form of light on the phosphors.

_________________
Origional queston:

You can try waving a magnet and it does work, TV engineers to it for in home repairs to TV's etc when kids stick fridge magnets to the screen.

An other one is to sit the Monitor next to another for a day or two, the fields will average out and the knackered one will recover.

If its TFT.... ignore all ive said

Hope this helps... print if u cant sleep at night

 

stuartsjg

Thanks for clearing that up, as I said it's been over 35 years since I learned all that and my memory isn't quite what it used to be. I haven't worked in electronics in quite a few years either.

 

If you know an audiophile who has a head demagnetizer used on Cassette and Reel to Reel tape heads then that *may* have a strong enough magnetic field. Basically you switch one of these gadgets on around 30cm away from the affected area (with the monitor turned on) and move it in small (ish) circles slowly towards the affected area up untill it touches the tube glass, and then slowly do the same in reverse, but make the circular action slowly larger. When 30 or more cm's away switch the demagnatizer off.

You may need to repeat this a few times.

Switching the Monitor on till the screen lights and then off after around 10secs from the source power (power point) should activate the built in degauser. Doing this several times may also be enough provided as giles said you have no magnetic problematic source nearby.