Does anyone know the size of the rivets on Lian Li cases? I need to the case top. What size drill bit should I use to drill through them?
a rivet will have a ball on one side and a hole on the other. drill from the hole side and you want the bit to be bigger than the hole, but smaller than the outer diameter. of course it probably doesn't matter too much how big you go, all you need to do is seperate the rivet into two parts and it pops right out.
You don't need to drill through the rivet at all, just separate the head from the body. I use a 1/4" bit that I reground to have a very shallow rake angle. Alternatively, you could use a larger bit, but you'd have to be more careful. Center the bit in the hole and slowly spin up the drill till the rivet head pops off the body and viola!, you're done. The problem with trying to drill through the rivet is once you hit the steel "nail" that compresses the rivet during installation, the drill bit will seek the path of least resistance and tend to wander crookedly. This will wallow out your mounting hole and present problems when you go to rerivet the piece back on.
I drilled out the rivets that held the bottom drive cage inplace a few days ago. I think it was a 3mm drill bit and went through no probs at all.
I went a bit mad when taking the rivets out of the window panel, and I've burnt the surrounding metal... so word of warning, go slow. the burn marks look horrible
