I bought the Anova Precision Cooker Pro almost 3 years ago.
Several months ago the touch screen started going haywaire,I even made a post about it here, jokingly asking if my cooker was possessed.
The problem only got worse and it was completely unusable. I was past the warranty, and I understand that sometimes a defective unit ships out. I made peace with spending $60 or so on getting the unit repaired. When I reached out to Anova and asked what they’d charge me to fix it, they simply said they wouldn’t fix it and that I’d have to buy a new one.
That left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, obviously, so I don’t plan to buy any Anova products again, but I did figure out how to salvage it and wanted to share the solution incase anyone else has this same problem.
This is best for someone who’s not afraid to take stuff apart. My solution involves removing the touch sensors completely - the unit can only be controlled via the app, but that’s better than having to throw it in the trash.
- Using something like an xacto knife, cut between the glass touch screen and the base of the unit, you’re cutting through the adhesive all the way around. Be very careful here, don’t cut yourself! Also, there’s a black coating on the back of the glass, if you care about how the device looks then be careful not to scratch that like I did. You shouldn’t need to go terribly deep, but you do need to go all the way around the glass face. Then you should be able to pry it off. There are no ribbon cables or wires attached to the glass, so you don’t need to worry about that.
- Unscrew the 4 plastic screws and carefully lift the circuit board/display out of the unit, but go slowly because there’s a ribbon cable and speaker wires connected to the board.
- Rotate the board up to expose the ribbon cable and speaker wire.
- Carefully remove the speaker wire (it can only go in one way, so no need to remember its orientation).
- Remove the ribbon cable, the grey portion of the socket holding the ribbon cable will rotate upward, just use your fingernail to do that, then the ribbon cable comes out very easily. If you feel like you’re having to force anything, then you’re probably doing it wrong, this should be very easy.
- Separate the white plastic portion from the circuit board. This is the hardest part, but with patience it’s not too bad. There are two clips on opposing corners, you’ll want to gently lift the board above those clips and maybe wedge something in there so they don’t clip back in. The board is still held into place with plastic stubs that were melted over and stamped, similar to rivets. One at a time, moving from one side to the other, use a lighter to gently heat the flattened plastic stub, and gently pull the board upward, which will reshape the plastic stub to a cylinder so that it’s no longer holding the board in place. Do this with all plastic stubs until none are holding the board in place anymore. Now you can gently lift the board off of the plastic piece.
- Now with the 6 touch sensors are accessible you can remove them. Use wire cutters to gently snip each of the three connecting points of the 6 touch sensors from the board. Each touch sensor looks like a square aluminum face with a large hole in the center, and they’re positioned right where all the 6 touch functions are on the glass screen. They should be fairly obvious.
- With all the touch sensors removed now, you can re-assemble everything, which shouldn’t need instruction except for the following two steps.
- After you’ve put the circuit board back on the white plastic piece, one at a time, use a lighter to soften the plastic stub, press the circuit board down around the stub using the back side of a pen or something, then flatten the softened plastic using something like the tip of a spoon, or whatever you can find.
- I used a very thin line of caulk around the perimeter to adhere the glass back to the circuit board/base.
That’s it! Aside from not being able to use the touch screen, my anova cooker is now working great.
“This cooker is clean” (voiced by Zelda Rubinstein)
