Hi I picked up a steelseries akari as the buttons on my old MS mouse were dying (Well the left one was). Sealed box in the local boxshifter so didn't get a hands on before I bought. It's a lovely mouse "technical" but the shape is awful, you can't get a grip on the damn thing to lift it up which even with the best will in the world you have to do occasionally. I thought why don't I just take out the guts from the Ikari and load them into something else? (I'm not looking to replace) Or maybe I could just take a hot chunk of metal and burn a thumb grip into this damn thing! As you can tell, the mouse and I don't get on. Funily enough when gaming it's never an issue, it's just in desktop mode. Any ideas on how to mod? Anyone seen the inside of a steelseries?
Update: It's been ghetto modded. I remembered I had some super strengh adhesive velcro in a draw. A couple of thin strip of the loops attached to the sides and I have a mouse I can reposition. We'll see how it goes!
Why not make a custom mould, similar to the way racing bucket seats are created? Get a plastic baggie and some expanding foam, fill the bag partway with the foam, seal it, and place you hand on it in a comfortable position so it expands and forms around it. Might take an hour or so, but at the end of it you'll have a block of foam that fits perfectly to your hand. Carve it out and fit the mouse's guts to it as-is, use it as a form for a plastic sheet, mould carbon fibre over it, etc.
That's kind of what I was thinking, you can also get those plastic pellets that will melt at under <100c, be good for some rapid prototyping. The only reason not to do it, is I don't know what shape the circuits are inside (especially with the base mounted display in there). I don't want to trash the mouse only to find I can't get the guts to fit anything else
Polymorph? It's fun stuff, but difficult to work by hand. If you get it hot enough to work with for more than a few seconds, it's hot enough to scald. If you wait for it to cool, it's to stiff to mould accurately. Not a problem if you just squidge it roughly to shape and tool it though. If you're building a custom case then you can build it around the guts. I'm not sure you'll have much luck fitting them unmodified into another mouse's shell though, the internals are usually very customised to each mouse. Taking the mouse apart shouldn't damage the internals if you're careful.
