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February 2

Cutting or bending Electronic paper displays

I'm trying to build a basic smart watch for fun, basically just hooking up a small electronic paper display to an Arduino clone, nothing too fancy. The problem is I can't find any e-paper small enough, and ordering a custom size e-paper display from a manufacturer is outside my hobbyist budget. So I'm thinking of re-purposing a larger off the shelf e-paper display:

1. Do e-paper displays still work after cutting them? Obviously I will leave the connector intact and try my best to minimize the damage while cutting it.

2. Do e-paper displays still work after bending them >=180 degrees? Googling "bending e-paper" shows that e-paper is fully functional even during bending, but in my application it's more like "folding" rather than "bending", since I would need to fold the excess portion almost 180 degrees to reduce its size. Would the display still function (the unbent portion of course) after folding it like that? Johnson&Johnson&Son (talk) 03:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No,, chopping bits off displays will not work. The bezel contains the data lines for addressing the pixels. Never mind the problems from exposing the innards of the sheets.

Plastics tend to be brittle when bent like that and I can see nasty things happening to the wiring but you could always try it.

Circular epaper or other displays for watches are becoming available now and should be amazingly cheap. I don't know what the situation is for one-off quantities but it is definitely worth checking around more. Dmcq (talk) 09:59, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not to recommend one site over any other, but such displays are on sale and (depending on one's definition of cheap) are not prohibitively expensive. See here which shows several small ePaper displays in sizes between 1-2 inches all for less than $40 US. --Jayron 32 16:14, 2 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]