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I have removed the stand from my Thunderbolt monitor to place a touch overlay device on the sceen (needed to lay the screen flat facing up to attach the overlay)

Now I am trying to re-attach the stand and the flange that holds the torx screws has gone back inside the monitor. It seems to be locked in the "closed" position at this point.

I can release the latch at the top with a credit card but the flange doesn't come back out. I can't figure out how to get the flange that the torx screws screw into exposed again so I can re-attach the stand.

Any help? I see several other people with this question on the web but no answers. It seems the flange locks in two positions "open" which exposes the screw holes and "closed" where mine is stuck now.

Thanks

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I just experienced this and I had a heck of a time finding anything online about it, so I thought I would answer.

The flange probably isn't properly stuck, it's just very, very highly tensioned. I threaded two relatively thick pieces of twine through two of the torx screw holes. I then actuated the release mechanism and pulled really hard on the twine. Like, really hard, harder than you probably imagine it should need. The twine broke when I only had one piece threaded.

This should be sufficient. Once you get it out, it should lock back in place and you can continue as normal

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  • Thank you so much for this suggestion! I ended up using 4 of cable ties (2 broke on me). Using needle nose pliers to help pull the wires through the holes, then regular plies to pull them all upwards after twisting them together. – fent Jun 2 '19 at 22:49
  • Cool. It's good to know it worked out the same for you, and sort of reassuring that 2 of the cable ties broke. I remember pulling on it initially and thinking "it can't possibly be this hard, I must be doing something wrong." I think that since the hinge operates over the curve of the stand, the stand exerts a massive amount of leverage, and the spring needs to be under really extreme tension. – WildGunman Jul 2 '19 at 4:39
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I ended taking it to an apple store for support and they gave me no help. It was the first time I have been throughly angry by apple support. I would have expected more from them.

They claimed that removing the stand is a non-standard use of the montior which invalidates the warranty and wanted to charge me $250 to try and fix the problem. They would have needed the display for 3 - 5 days and couldn't explain to me how they were actually going to fix it....

Awful customer service imo.

So I fixed it myself. I found this explaination on ifixit of how to take apart the screen http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple+Thunderbolt+Display+Teardown/6525/1

I went to home depot and purchase two heavy duty suction cups (these: http://www.homedepot.com/p/QEP-4-7-8-in-Suction-Cup-for-Handling-Large-Non-Porous-Tile-75000Q/100119050#.UZG_7CtAR90)

Within 10 mins I had the display opened. I was then able to fit the stand through the opening in the back of the display and screw in two screws to secure the stand. (I screwed them in from the inside of the display.

Then I could relase the latch and move the flange using the stand (since it was attached with the two screws)

The whole process from opening the display to closing it back up took 20 mins. This should have been incredibly easy for the Apple store to do I am sure seeing as how they open these types of screens (iMac screens work the same way) often I would think.

Anyways, hope this helps someon else that is stuck in the same place I was.

Note: that opening the display voids your warranty (howver, Apple claims that taking the stand off of mine voided my warranty already so.....) 

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  • The warranty pays for the labor and parts. If the shop has several Macs in for repair before yours, that would explain the quoted time for yours to find bench time. Perhaps your anger got in the way of receiving the information you needed or you missed what the quote covered and if it was a "worst case" instead of getting things broken down. I've seen many repairs come out far less than the quoted amount. +1 for the good technical info, -1 for the unrelated side story. I would blame the overlay instructions if it didn't prepare you to prevent losing the stand attachment into the device... – bmike♦ Jul 16 '14 at 16:28
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Thanks WildGunman! I found myself in the same situation when I tried to mount my Mac monitor to a new third party stand, and found that after I got the original Mac stand off, the flange was caught inside of the monitor. It's important to get it locked into this position BEFORE removing the screws if you want to avoid this problem yourself. Using the same technique that WildGunman describes I was able to get it out. I threaded two heavy duty pieces of string through two of the holes in the flange, one on each side. To do this I had to first get a bit of fishing line through the hole, tie that to a piece of string, and then pull the string through. A small needle-nosed pliers helps with threading the holes. Once I had two holes on the flange threaded with loops of string, I pulled up on the string while activating the flange release with a plastic card. You have to pull slowly but very firmly to get the flange out. Eventually, it should lock into the expose position where it will stay. Remove the strings and you should be all set.

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