I’ve made a nooby mistake when assembling the bezel, not sure what I did wrong though. The clips connecting the Framework bar to the rest of the bezel are now broken after I tried to open the laptop (pic), and although I’ve been able to assemble it correctly now, the back no longer sits fully flush with the case when closed.
Do I have any options to return the bezel as it served me so shortly (it came with my first purchase) or do I just buy a new bezel?
Talk to support, but if you broke it yourself, they’re not required to accept a return, it would just be them being nice, unless there was a manufacturing defect making this area particularly weak.
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I’m quite sure this is my fault/inexperience, I’ll see what I can do then, thanks.
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I had literally the exact same problem. They really need to fix the bezel installation guide. I wish there was an option to have them assemble the laptop and just install the OS on my own - it would be so much easier! Alas, nobody does that anymore after ZA Reason went out of business a few years ago.
I bought a Framework Laptop 13 Intel Core Ultra Series 1 and ran into issues when setting up the bezel. I tried to install the bezel on my new laptop following the instructions, thought I had it right, and ended up destroying it when I tried to open the laptop after setting it up. Now my laptop is stuck open, and part of the destroyed bezel is trapped and unable to be removed (and my attempt to do so just resulted in a horribly crooked bezel that can neither be removed nor put back into place; I can’t even close the laptop now). How do I get it out and fix this?
Quite frankly, this section of the guide is woefully inadequate.
Pictures and diagrams, please! A four-second video that I can barely see anything before it finishes does not cut it. I can’t even tell how it’s supposed to sit, because I clearly got it wrong. Very disappointing after spending $1400 on a useless laptop. I’m very disappointed in Framework, and this has been a very bad first experience. There isn’t even a phone number to call support, and I’m just stuck with this saga going on for who knows how long. I wish there were other places one could get a laptop without Windows pre-installed; I prefer to just install Linux Mint on my own, but after ZA Reason went out of business, it’s Framework or nobody on that.
I couldn’t even comment on the guide because for some reason that part of the site doesn’t recognize my login, even though my account clearly works and I can sign in to it. Very strange.
Sorry to hear that. Hopefully you can return it. FWIW, the pre-built with windows 11 home is only $36 more, so if one is not comfortable, eating the cost of the windows license isn’t too bad. Ideally a pre-built eventually might be offered with no OS, but that would increase inventory hassles, and likely is a small enough market not to be worth doing.
Best of luck getting things resolved.
Installing that bezel without breaking it is HARD! That thing took me longer than the entirety of the laptop by far
To update my situation, they managed to guide me through extracting the broken bezel, and are shipping a replacement one. The display seems to work fine. I think what happened is it got caught on the display cable; the adhesive that is supposed to affix it to the screen isn’t sticky, so it just kinda hangs around. Is there a way to stick it on without the adhesive being properly sticky? I was told they can’t send new adhesive strips separately from new displays.
That’s great to hear. I don’t have the adhesive in use on any of my machines. I just left the backing paper on. My recollection is that the adhesive is attached to the bezel, not to the display. but I could be wrong. On re-reading your post, maybe you are talking about adhesive on the display cable? I bought a new one in case I needed it with the mystery boxes and can take it out to see what’s on it, if that would be of any help. I’ll just have to find the darned thing…
Yes, the display cable. Although now I’m wondering if I could re-purpose some adhesive off the broken bezel…
I was able to find the cable. It looks like there is adhesive in three places: at the end of the cable by the connector to the display, on the silver grounding piece, and at a point a little less than halfway from the display panel end where it has extra fabric, presumably to allow it to be stuck down to whatever. I will dig out one of the displays from the mystery box and see if I can figure out what it is supposed to stick to.
You might be able to use regular double-sided tape, but I’m not confident that that would hold up. Contact cement might work, but could be messy. Or you might be able to use “regular” tape of some sort to tape over the cable and to whatever it is that it supposed to stick to. Maybe the display panel itself? Apologies that this is a lot of guessing. I’ll reply back when I have looked at one of the displays so that I have a better sense of how it goes together.