Guide Drive Face Plates Painting (Images Fixed)

SiL3nT - Drive Face Painting​

Alrite a quick guide painting your drive face plates .

I plan to rewrite my guides propertly and post on my site in a few weeks but heres wot I have for now .

Alrite lets get out victims .

Lets Begin.....



To make it easier ( i used my test powersupply) Eject your cd rom while its still in the pc and remove the front face plate . Its simple as gently tilting towards you and lifting up .
Heres a pic of what the Lugs look like .



Okay if you look around the front of your drives you will see tabs that click in . Simply remove using a standard screw driver by carefully lever them out .





Carefully getting a standard screw driver lever out the little clear plastic windows . Dont be affraid to apply a little pressure . (glue them back in later) .





Okay everything removed .



Using a piece of wet and dry , Im using 1200 grit sand the face smooth .

Moving on .

Get yourself some vynil paint from your local automotive store .
Its pretty expensive paint but it's really worth every penny .

Alrite lay your faces out and give them I light coat of spray , Remmeber patience is the only way your going to get a good finish .

I think I did like 10 coats .

Each coat lighy sand back to make it nice and smooth with wet and dry 1200 grit , using a bucket of water .



Okay everything painted , After a few hours (took me 2 days cause I like things perfect ) .



All thats left to do is glue your little plastic windows you removed at the start back in .

After many hours of wet and dry sanding and light coats I ended up with a perfect finish in the light . If i kept going probally could have got it to a mirror finish .

 

How do you recommend painting the volume dial on the drives?
(I just painted my drive faces, but still have to do the dials.)

I don't know how yours are attached to the board, but mine are permanently fastened on, so there's no getting them off without wrecking things. Do you recommend just taping everything off around them, and going from there?

 

yeah, how did you get the volume dial off?

 

I just used a very small horse hair model brush with some plastic model paint. That stuff sticks like a *****. Just be careful you can both A: match the color and B: don't paint the pcb!!!

 

I've just done this with 2 spare DVD drives and some silver paint - so simple and yet they look so much better!

I didn't paint the volume dials though but because they are grey it doesn't really matter

 

Howzit,

I'll be doing this tomorrow. , will just spray the volum dail, i don't use it anyway.

 

sanding isnt nessasary u get a better finish if u dont u just have to clean it with alcohol. vinal die is ment to cover textured surfaces

 

thats exactially right, vynil paint is ment to soak into the plastics to keep the texture and only 2 coats are necessary to have a perfect finish

 

The absolute simplist way to do it - use Citadel spray paints and Varnish. Remove the fascias and wash them. Then spray them with about 4 or 5 light coats of your chosen colour ensuring even coverage. When happey apply 3 coats of matt varnish for that perfect finish. Dead simple and no sanding.

I figure that as the paint is designed to be used with either metal or plastic miniature figurines which are covering in jaggie bits and take quiet a battering that for something as straight forward as a drive fascia it is ideal. Done it a few times and it works well and lasts. You can paint the volume control by hand using the bottled version of the spray colour. Only downside is having to go into the Games Workshop store to get the paint!

 

Games Workshop is a complete ripoff though. They overcharge on everything.

Last time I looked it was about two quid for a tiny bottle of paint!