Restoring an Altimeter Watch to Former Heights

What happened

Restoring an Altimeter Watch to Former Heights, according to Hackaday. Finding inexpensive broken hardware for sale, buying it, and restoring it to working condition is a long-standing tradition for hackers on a limited budge. But there are some devices that are so difficult to repair that it’s usually not worth the trouble.

[Vintage560] is braver than most, though, and restored an internally-damaged Casio AW-330-AT altimeter watch . The exterior of the watch was in good condition, other than missing a readily-replaced strap, but the battery had leaked into the interior, and the watch didn’t respond in any way to new batteries.

Cleaning out the guts with isopropyl alcohol, repositioning a plastic insulator, and bending some contacts back into shape at least got some segments of the LCD display to activate, while over two days of turning the crown smoothed out resistance in the analog train. Actually getting the LCD to work properly required disassembling the watch, taking particular care with the altitude sensor.