Wow, as I said earlier (I think) really good paintjob! I must get that spray! Why are you spraying the underside of the mouse? You can't see it!
^ I also came across this, a Dell external USB FDD. I don't use floppies myself - but I think my fiance may need it at some point. So it may turn pink soon, if I can establish if it needs drivers, or if XP will recognise it?!?
Very good question - and one that isn't obvious from the pics... I'm not spraying the whole of the mouse, just the main part of the shell. If you look at one of the pics it shows the mouse dismantled in sections. The main section will be pink, the others will remain black/grey. I did spray the main section completely though, but that's due to the fact that the underside lip of it is visible, and I wanted to make sure there were no obvious spray lines - if that makes sense!
3M wet/dry = Coarse(240) Medium(400) Fine(600) The numbers in the brackets are (I believe) the grade of each piece. Hope it's of use to you - the difference is definately noticable between the grades too!
sweet dude.....im gonna go down to halfords/B&Q asap....im gonna love doing my log...cant decide on colours tho...
This morning I examined last night's efforts... + The cd-tray and drive fascia are finished - 1 coat of primer, 2 coats of paint, 2 coats of lacquer. + The keyboard is now drying its third coat of paint. + The mouse is awaiting its first coat of paint - I've sanded down the primer layer as it was too thick in places. The mouse proved to be tricky to prime last night, so when I return home I'll hang it from the ceiling and give it its first coat of pink. Tomorrow I'll hopefully put in an order for the rest of the hardware, and I'll report back here with what I chose... expect an update tonight with how the painting is progressing.
When doing the final sand before laquering I would suggest you use 800 grit and then after laquering use 800 and then 1200 or 2000 grit then polish for uber shine.
Pink PC Project Log 05 - 2nd September 2005 A (reasonably) long update for the log... ^ Priming the mouse proved tricky, so it is now hanging from the roof of the garage... ^ The mouse pinkified! ^ The keyboard after 3 coats of pink - ready for lacquering (note how shiny it already is!) ^ All the parts of the CD-RW/DVD drive ready for re-assembly... ^ First off, slide the tray back in (easier said than done!) ^ Pink tray now housed inside the drive... ^ Before I went any further, I tested to see if the drive mechanism still worked by hooking it up to my rig... ^ Once I was sure the mechanism worked properly, I fitted the cover... ^ And secured it... ^ And fitted the front fascia... ^ Then I realised I hadn't removed the masking tape on the drive eject button... ^ That's better... ^ Finally the front of the tray. ^ I forgot about the volume control - it's still beige... ^ The finished (pink) Samsung CD-RW/DVD Combo drive. ^ Again I connected the drive up to ensure it worked properly... ^ But I encountered problems - after about a million attempts to get the drive to eject, it looked like the excess paint had messed up the drive. Though I later realised that the drive needed to be horizontal, not at a tilt, to eject properly! All the messing about trying to get it to eject left battle damage on the pink areas. ^ More battle damage (small areas of beige where the paint had been chipped off by my screwdriver) ^ And yet more... ^ So I went back to the drawing board - masked off most of the drive and set about touching up the damage areas... ^ One perfect pink drive. Tomorrow morning I'll add another layer of lacquer to the Keyboard, along with a bit to the touch-up areas on the drive. I'll also sand down the mouse and add another pink layer to it... In the afternoon I hope to put in the order for the rest of the hardware. So stay tuned!
A few interesting facts... - Yesterday (Thursday) the dump section of my webspace where all these pics are stored, received over 2500 hits... - 1200+ of those hits were from Firefox browsers - Whereas only ~900 of the hits were from IE - Which means the majority of Bit-tech members are Firefox users - I'm afraid to say, only 56 of those hits came from Linux users - And a poor 27 hits being Mac users - Which probably equates to one Mac user and 2 Linux users - The majority of viewers are from the USA (78mb of traffic) compared to UK (2.9mb) and Australia (11.7mb)
The figures for viewing are incorrect. 2.9MB from the UK? The total size for your pictures is nearly 4MB, I (and many others probably) have viewed all your pictures so my viewing bandwidth off your site is bigger than 2.9MB!
I figured that too, not all the webstats are wrong as the bandwidth total makes sense - 2500 hits @ 50kb or so a hit = 125mb, and it's reporting 144mb. I guess the UK/USA part is wrong.
nice work, sorry, i might of missed out, did u change out the CD led with a pink one? apart from that very nice work, if i was any more confident I’de do a pink pc as well.
If the LED was pink I'm not sure if you'll actually be able to see the lights as it would blend in with the rest of the case too much!
willywonka kindly posted me this link. I am most interested in painting my plastic keyboard etc. Over the weeks I have learned that you cant just use any spray paint and it has to be specially formulated for plastic otherwise it won't last long. All vinyl dyes come in boring colours and not pink or fluro yellow like i want. I have been to BnQ a week ago and had the lad go through the entire range of platikote paints they stock and not one of them were for plastic Is the one you used in this pink mod for plastic? If not has it worked ok lastable wise? Great mod by the way Mickey
aditionall to my above What primer and what laquear are you using? Can I just say thanks for your detailed log re this mod. It makes it so much easier for a novice spray painter like moi Mickey
dun me saying, but i feel your pink is too "strong", maybe a pink of lighter shade would be better, other than that cool mod you're having
Why are you using a skrewdriver to tighten the skrews? My advice is to do it by hand, if that machine slipps you might just destory the skrew you are fastening.
The paint is 'Plasti-Kote', and I know what you mean about the Pink not being there - we only found the one can @ B&Q and after 30 minutes of looking none of the staff could locate any more. It was also mis-labelled as Violet I seem to remember, due to staff error. As for how long it will last, hopefully a while. The paint is intended for plastic, metals, woods etc. One thing that's worrying me is that I'm nearly out of Pink already, and I still have the case to do! Think I'll ring B&Q later... Same stuff, but a white primer and a clear finish Plasti-Kote. It's down to personal taste I guess. My fiance chose the shade of Pink - not that there was much choice! Sorry for the confusion - I originally posted about using pink LEDs, but I've since decided not to for two reasons: A) As WillyWonka says, the PC will be so Pink, normal coloured LEDs would stand out: B) I've not done any electronics for the past 8 years or so, in terms of soldering and LEDs. If I sat down and focused on it, I'd be able to choose the right resistors etc. So it may be a future addition to the project. Right... now that I have the questions out of the way, on with another Log!
