So, I am completely new to this whole mod thing, but I have realized this is my niche. My 13 inch broke on me the otherday(harddrive and superdrive) So, i disassembled the whole entire thing and decided to paint it. My problem is that I don't know how to remove the keyboard/trackpad from the top case. Any suggestions? thanks in advance Jamison
make sure you don't splash anything like isopropyl around the paint, I accidentally got a drop on the paint when cleaning grease, it starts to melt the paint slightly.
for the top case, the easiest thing is masking. Check with sign shops, custom paint places, etc. Kustomshop.com is good too. You can get rolls of medium tack masking tape that are ten inches wide, by about 50 feet long (its what I use) which means you can get a good coverage, without tons of overlapping tape, which sucks.
As far as painting itself goes, heed eulaca's warning. Always keep your cleaners, solvents, chemicals, etc, AWAY from your surface, or your painting area, unless you are using specifically THAT product for a specific reason. Likewise, clearcoat your work when done. That way you can wet sand it to a mirror finish, and the clear will protect the paint from blemishes, etc.
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Electricity tastes good. No, seriously.
I'll add another warning. Using ordinary auto paint and clear coat, my colleague removed the sleep magnet from his display (so he could use it headless). It overheated in his bag and the paint stuck the lid to the topcase. He'll need a new top case and bezel.
this is typically why I usually only paint the bottom case and the display housing. When you start painting the top case and display bezel, you get into the possibility of so many secondary problems.
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Electricity tastes good. No, seriously.
so, i joined just because of this post... well besides that, when i was a kid we used to take white peices of plastic and (sounds funny) put hot glue in random designs all over, and then hang them in a tub of a choice of RIT dye... when you take them out and rinse them the original white plastic would change colours, but after peeling off the hot glue, those spots would stay white... where am i going with this? well if your macbook is already apart and you want to do something trick, then take your hot glue and "mask" the underside of all the buttons, and dip them... im not sure if it would work, but i think the lighting would still shine through... now im not sure what you could do about the mousepad, except getting a black macbooks mousepad... i guess im done now... if you have any questions... i may still have a few peices laying around i could take a picture of... just e-mail me.
OK, I am stuck here. I have painted my bottom case and display bezel. My rear housing is coming in tomorrow and will be started swiftly. I have also done my top case, but I removed the keys beforehand and I just can't decide what to do with them. These are the options I have worked out so far: Leave them as they are in white with grey text; Swap them out for a set from a blackbook; Paint them green too, then use stencils, transfers or stickers to put the text on in my choice of colour (I was thinking silver); Paint them with a tinted varnish or similar leaving the grey text but changing the key colour slightly; I do not trust myself to do the text by hand, I want it to look good when its done and the case parts I have painted look fantastic so far. Very professional for a first go. I suspect I will struggle to find good quality stencils of the correct size and acceptable font. I would also struggle to do the specialist keys like shift, tab, apple etc, though I guess I don't have to use the Apple symbols for them. Any advice, opinions or suggestions welcome.
This is my first post. I painted my g3 a nice blue purple (from the inside, of course) I dyed the keys the same color with RIT, if you would like a pic just ask for it in a post, but the result was great.
Dying the keys is sounding pretty good to me.Though I still have to pick a colour. Does anyone know a chain that stocks Krylon paint in the UK? and can I get metallic Krylon? My auto paint stuck together just leaving the laptop powered off on a shelf. I still don't have a good screen for it so its not in use yet. I might need to start again......