one of the hardest parts about removing
the glass screen on an iPad is the
leftover shards of glass all around the
outside edge my name is Zach from the
YouTube channel jerry-rigged everything
and here on iFixit today we're gonna
attempt several different ways of
removing this glass one important thing
remember
your eye protection so the first tool
that we're gonna try is just this
generic and metal spudger it's got two
different ends on it as we try to scrape
off the sides of the glass on the iPad
we can see that the glass just kind of
sputters off in every direction
the adhesive is holding it very securely
onto the metal frame so the next one
we're gonna try is this the metal razor
it's got a super thin edge on the tip of
it hoping to get underneath all of the
glass and the adhesive at the same time
so we'll have less sputtering as the
glass comes off the iPad and so far it
looks a little bit neater than just the
thicker metal spudger but we still have
some glass popping off in every
direction one of the main issues though
with this razor blade since it is a
sharp piece of metal you have to watch
out for the individual components like
the buttons and the Wi-Fi cables as
you're scraping along because it's very
easy to slice through any of the
sensitive ribbons along the edge so the
third tool that we're gonna try is this
I fix it I open er it's all warmed up
now in the microwave and it's actually
very very warm we're gonna see if it'll
soften the adhesive underneath the glass
so when we lift it up with the razor
blade it doesn't pop off in every
direction one of the perks of using this
iFixit eye opener tools that the heat is
very concentrated in one area so it
doesn't get as hot as say a heat gun
will but it's also making sure that the
heat doesn't spread over all of the
internal components like the batteries
or anything else fragile inside of this
so now that we've lifted off the eye
opener we'll see if the glass comes away
any easier
looks like we still have a little bit of
glass popping off but it's coming off
and relatively one piece still attached
the adhesive which is actually pretty
convenient but already the glass is cool
to the touch and the adhesive is
hardening again because it's cooled down
okay so right now we're gonna try using
a heat gun so we're gonna use a lot of
special care to make sure that the heat
does not get onto the battery we don't
want to warp that plastic casing at all
so using a little shield to help
dissipate the heat off into other
directions
and once the glass is just too hot to
touch you can take your razor blade
slide it underneath down the camera unit
this is actually coming up a lot easier
than with the eye opener tool it still
manages to cool down pretty quick though
so you'll probably have to do this every
30 seconds
that came right off that's actually
easier than I thought was gonna be so
we've had some success using the heat
gun to soften the adhesive underneath
the glass so it doesn't splatter in
every direction as we try to remove it
now we're gonna try something from the
opposite end of the temperature spectrum
dry ice so instead of softening the
adhesive it's actually gonna make it
more brittle dry ice is extremely cold
and if you don't use gloves that can
actually burn you because of how cold it
is one of the nice things about using
this dry ice as well is that it's just
it's pure carbon dioxide so as the mist
comes off of it it's actually not liquid
it's sublimating into a gas so it's safe
for electronics it's not gonna liquid
damage anything so now the dry ice has
been on there for about a minute cooling
down the glass the frame and the
adhesive let's see what happens when we
take our razor blade to it
so as we can see it's actually still
pretty hard to remove the adhesive so
this particular type of adhesive doesn't
seem to be affected much by the dry ice
it's actually still really strong
holding the glass down the dry ice
probably works a little better with the
optically clear adhesive between the
glass and the LCD of iPhones as that
works to separate the two but in this
particular case the adhesive around the
frame of an iPad is more affected by
heat than it is by cold so the victor in
this highly scientific iPad glass
removal video is the heat gun and the
thin metal razor