Fixing bent tablet

[David]

My wife managed to somehow bend the hell out of her Transformer Prime. It still works fine as far as we can tell. Anybody have any tips for bending it back into shape? Should I even try? I've never seen anything like this.

Pictures! (Ignore the Pokemon and Invader Zim figures. Found them while helping my parents clean their garage recently.)

This is the top. On a dim setting you can see light bleeding a little where the glass and frame separate a bit.


Even with the port broken the cable still fits without forcing. Charges fine. Also gives a really good view of just how bent it is.


One thing you can't really tell in the pictures is that the glass also bent. No cracking at all. That's my primary concern as far as trying to bend it back.

[grantmeaname]

That is honestly amazing. I wonder if this has ever happened before.

[Waco]

Jesus...I'd say just use it as-is unless you can afford to replace it. If you do want to try to bend it back I'd do it on the edge of something firm right at the bend point.

[just brew it!]

You're probably almost as likely to kill it unbending it as the original bending incident was.

If you really want to try bending it back, I would press the bend against the padded corner of a table or desk.

[JustAnEngineer]

To be more gentle with it, I would probably leave it sitting on the table as shown on the lower photo and then stack large books on it until it flattened out against the table. I might then let it sit overnight.

[ludi]

Don't know how ductile Gorilla Glass might be on the second bending attempt, but I've seen both aluminum and soft steel crystalize and then fracture like sliced cheese. Any bending action creates tension on the outside of the arc and compression on the inside, and permanently weakens the material at that point unless the stresses are removed.

If you go through with it, I would suggest removing the battery and then heating the rest of the unit to 120F in a warm oven (NOT a toaster oven obviously), then use JAE's suggestion with the books.

[Jigar]

To be more gentle with it, I would probably leave it sitting on the table as shown on the lower photo and then stack large books on it until it flattened out against the table. I might then let it sit overnight.

This might work, if i were you, i would give it a try, but not putting all books at once, try one by one...

[DancinJack]

I honestly would leave it as is. Maybe when you're thinking about upgrading to a newer tablet give the suggestions a try, but at this time it works and that's that.

[David]

The leave as is have it. I figured we were incredibly lucky it didn't fracture on the original bend. I know metal tends to break when bent and rebent, but I've never heard of glass just bending like that without being heated.

[SecretSquirrel]

Apparently Gorilla Glass is quite flexible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcGieF15lO0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4xCB1TN ... re=related

In the second linked clip, even the iPad 1 front panel is bent well past what yours is before it breaks. Still, I'm surpised that the display is still functional. It may be that there is enough empty space in the case that the display itself is not flexed, only the front glass and digitizer.

Pretty amazing though.

--SS

[Welch]

WOW... I was so focused on the port that I didn't even realize the entire freaking tablet was curved. Hell... If it still works albeit with a curve in the glass and all... I'd just leave it the way it was unless its unusable.

I'm sure you'll get some odd looks with that one, just tell people its the new Asus Transformer Curve. Let them google the hell out of that!