Technology

Fixing my MacBook Pro

kendall
So, about a week ago the the plug from a set of headphone broke off in my MacBook Pro. Well, it didn’t really seem to break off, but more like the very last bit of the plug just the sort of came unscrewed and came off inside the jack. So, I had about 1/4″ of the plug stuck all the way down inside the jack. There wasn’t enough room and it was too deep to grab with a pair of tweezers or needle nose pliers. I was about to take the whole laptop apart to see if I could get to the jack from another direction, but it didn’t take long to see that I was going to have to completely remove the logic board, and even then it appeared unlikely that it’d be any use. So, after several days of reflection on the situation and a bit of googling, I came upon a solution that sounded better than sending my laptop in for a logic board replacement–a repair unlikely to be covered by my AppleCare. This is what I decided to do…

  1. Take a large paperclip.
  2. Straighten it out.
  3. Wind a bit of electrical tape around it so that it would fit neatly inside the jack, leaving about 1/8″ of the paper clip exposed.
  4. Put a tiny dab of JB Weld on the tip of the paperclip.
  5. Slide the paperclip carefully into the headphone jack, being careful not to touch the insides of the jack with the JB Weld. I stood the laptop up on its side so the paperclip was perfectly vertical inside the jack.
  6. Let set for 6 hours.
  7. Gently pull the clip out with the broken off piece attached.

So that’s what I did, and it worked! Thanks Internet for saving me several hundred dollars and several days sans laptop.
My Special Tool.
My Special Tool.
Setting Up.
Setting Up.
It worked!
It worked!

The little bugger.
Here’s the little bugger that was causing all the trouble.

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