How do you guys keep your screws organized when disassembling?

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11fingers

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Hello Technibble. When I disassemble a laptop, I find it's helpful to have a little, clear plastic, compartmentalized little box, probably made for fishing lures, for putting my screws into. This keeps them from rolling around, but also I keep the screw sizes in their own compartment, so that I can keep the sizes straight. However, it would be even better if along with screw size, I was able to keep track of where each screw came from (on the motherboard for instance). Does anyone out there on the forum have a really quick way of organizing screws as they take things apart, so that when you reassemble there is no guesswork as to which holes which screws came from? Thanks, love this forum!
 
If you search you'll see quite a few discussions on this. In short, nobody has a perfect solution. I do what you do mostly and note the place where they come from on a piece of paper which relates to letters on the box compartments. E.g. compartment A = screws from the screen bezel.

However sometimes it's not enough for annoying laptops and for those I might need to draw out the laptop outline on paper and label them that way.

For the motherboard I mark the board with coloured pen and mark the box compartments accordingly.
 
I ended up going to the dollar store and getting some little plastic containers and I seperate them out by size then I follow the service guide as it usually tells you the size of screw to use on each slot, then I reverse the process.

Once you get used to taking them apart, you will be able to do it just by memory, i have disassembled i dont know how many hp dv9000 for example...
 
My favorite method, which takes a bit of setup time, is a great way to keep screws organized and in place.

If you take some duct tape or masking tape, connect them together to be about the size of a piece of paper, and place it on the table next to your computer (sticky side UP) you can place the screws, head down, so they stick nicely to the tape (and are easier to pick up.) You can then use a permanent marker to circle the screw groups and label them to where they go on the PC, for example, "under battery" or "left side of case".

You can also use a small piece of tape in each corner to keep the whole piece in place, just in case you accidentally touch it and it sticks to you or something. lol.

Hopefully this made sense and helped. It does wonders for me when I have a complicated build (laptops, game systems, etc.) ahead of me. :)
 
remove screws diagram

I use believe it or not paper plates and clear tape, draw a diagram of each section on paper plate then tape the screws, then put each paper plate on top of each other in the order the screws were removed then when putting them back together, top layer is always the first set of screws and so on.

www.allinonecomputer.com
 
I just lay the screws next to the component they belong to. Major areas like the entire back or a plate inside go in their own piles. After a while it isn't hard to remember what goes where.
 
I shell laptops sometimes all day long and whether its a model I've had apart for my first time or I've stripped down hundreds of times, it's always the same. I just semi-subconsciously lay the screw pattern out on the bench and lay the part near it. Anything else just wastes time or is not a habit for me. Just as easily as I remove the screws and set it on the bench, I can pick the screws up and put them back in without speculating. It helps having anti-static mats on all of our benches in case the screws get blown all over because with the mats there's a better chance they will stay on the bench instead of rolling everywhere and going on the floor. But that barely ever happens.
 
This is what I use: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4580

It costs $2.98 - I bought a couple of them and number each compartment, then just keep a little bit of paper with numbers and quick description next to it. bargain!

sku_4580_1.jpg
 
I use a pill box like monday tuesday kind. The first box for all screws in the bottom, the second box for the keyboard, the third box for inside, etc.
 
Tackle box and stickers

I use a tackle box that came with my sons spongebob fishing pole and a sheet of small stickers my wife made me at work. It has 5 rows of every letter in the alphabet and 5 rows of 1-99 on another page I mark a compartment on the tackle box with a letter or number and put that sticker next to all the screw holes on the laptop for screws of the same size. works very well for me.
 
Re:

You can make a sketch on a paper of the laptop's screw layout, set aside from your working area, so you don't know them out of place while you work.
 
kevyn said:
This is what I use: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4580

It costs $2.98 - I bought a couple of them and number each compartment, then just keep a little bit of paper with numbers and quick description next to it. bargain!

sku_4580_1.jpg
Click to expand...


I'm gonna buy these.

For documenting which screws go where I'm gonna do pretty much the same thing.
I can label the boxes with a number and have it correspond to a number on a piece of paper that gives
a simple description and a simple drawing of where the screw goes
 
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