Replacing R2 Touchscreen

Disclaimer- This is extremely involved and not for the timid. If your under warranty get it fixed by them if you are uncomfortable . The pictures I took are quick overview, I was not going to do a thread on this due to the complexity and how easily broken parts are, but @mark tomlinson thought it would be a good idea to put the information out there for you, I still do not recommend you try this unless you are confident in your ability to perform this swap.

@WheresWaldo sourced this touch screen (Amazon Prime) I bought and installed on my R2 unit when my touch screen failed

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TIA0PMQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It is a direct replacement for what is in the machine now.
A word of warning: if you are a troubleshooting your touchscreen and think to push in the hdmi cable to the touchscreen you are risking actually unplugging it, do not do that. If you think it has come unplugged you need to remove the bezel and plug it back in.

SO! the new touchscreen installed looks no different than the original


Start by Rasing the plateform all the way to the top, then shut off power and unplugging the printer from the power supply. Openg the door, there are 2 small phillips head screws (all the screws are phillips for this project so keep it ready) in the hinges (1 each). Remove them and the door will come off. Then remove the magnets. There are 2 per hinge, you want to remove the magnets so they dont fall out while you are working.

Then you want to remove the cover for the electronics bay, after that is removed start to remove the main cover on the bottom by gently pulling up on it in the back by the leadscrews and z motor. It is not screwed down (at least mine wasn't) it has snap fittings that keep it in place, be gentle as when it releases you can easily scratch your windows and other plastics in the printer.

Pictures of the main bottom cover/tray's snap fittings.


Then you will want to start removing all the screws from the inside of the machine that hold the bezel (front face-black part ). There are a bunch of them and all different sizes. Pay attention to which ones came out and go where to save yourself some headache.

Picture of the R2 unit with the bezel removed so you can locate all the screw holes that hold the bezel on


Once all the screws are removed (I left power on so you can see everything better in the pictures- dont do that!) you can use a plastic putty knife to push between the bezel and the white case, this will pop the clips that are part of the bezel out of their home and you can start gently pulling the bezel out towards you. Be gentle are pay attention, if it doesn't come out easily there is likely a screw you missed. The bezel will only come out so far because the USB (2 screws) and touchscreen (4 screws) are mounted to it, unplug the USB cable from the Raspberry Pi and the HDMI and ribbon cable from the Raspberry Pi. This will allow you to fully remove the bezel and start the swap.

Swap the touchscreen out, remove the plastic film before installing so you actually can remove it.

When you hook up the ribbon cable pay attention to get the connector correctly seated into the new touchscreen. Inside the connector there is enough room to be off a set of pins in both directions. The way I did this was to install the ribbon cable to the touch screen then route the wires to the Pi. It was much easier than working the other way .


Reassemble everything backwards from how you took it apart, power up and you should be good to go! It is not a bad idea once the ribbon cables are hooked back up before you reinstall everything to power on the R2 unit to ensure the new touchscreen is doing everything its suppose to.

I am told new R2 units have the metal cut away so you can access all 4 screws on the touch screen to replace. If your machine is like this please document your process for others in the forum.

Ask questions if you have them I'll do my best to answer them.

 

@Geof , thank you for the instructions on getting the bezel off of the R2. Not all of the screws need to be taken out to get the front bezel cover removed.

Screws to leave in place:

4 screws on the left side:

one above the top hinge
one below the lamp bezel, outer screw
two - above and below the bottom hinge​

4 screws on the right side:

one - bottom-most outer screw
two - above and below the lamp bezel, outer screws
and the one screw securing the camera module to the back bezel frame.​

Skip the above mentioned screws and remove all the rest of them. As @Geof has stated, the screws are different length, so do note which screw goes in which hole.

Next, unplug the data and HDMI cables from the Raspberry Pi. Then starting at the top, pull the front bezel cover away from the frame (just like a C2 printer). In addition to the screws, the front bezel cover also uses snap-in holders. SO.... it can suddenly pop away from the frame and possibly damage the data and/or the hdmi cable if you did not unplug them.

 

And this might be the reason my R2 printer lighting performs so poorly.

 

Backwards with the ribbon cable would have been my guess It is easier to do than folks might imagine.

 

A suggestion: Use the phone camera to take pictures before and during the process. That way you have reference images to look at when deciding which way the cables should be seated as you re-assemble it.

 

If anything is limiting it, it is the heater itself. They didn't use the best heaters on any of the printers.