Custom Plasti-Dip Steelseries Sensei

[Aviarius]

Hey everyone, long time lurker and first time poster, and I'm here to share a little modding experiment I've been working on the past couple of days.

Backstory: I got a sensei a little over a year ago, and love it to death. My only complaint, as well as a lot of peoples was the smooth painted top. I lived with it with no problems, until the silver started gettting a copperish tinge to it, as well as have parts of the coating chip off.

Recently inspired by Linus's DIY "painting" video he recently uploaded, I decided to take a crack at modding the mouse myself. I looked around a lot on forums and such, but couldn't find any tutorials on Plasti-Dipping a mouse, so I went in blind, and documented (essentially) every step I took to help out anyone else who might be interested in it.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

-Mouse

I used the Steeleries Sensei

-180-grit sandpaper

Higher or lower grit depending on the coating of what you want to plasti-dip if you want to make it "permanent"

-Plasti-Dip

I used black, and a clear to help ensure the black wont peel of the custom logo (more on that later)

Starting off, we have the mouse. You can see in this picture the off colour of it, as well as the knicks it has. ( http://i.imgur.com/8nzVzAB.jpg )

(I'll be using imgur links directly due to the quantity, and size of the images. Sorry for the inconvenience)

Start by removing the teflon feet, and four screws at the bottom. After doing this, you shoudl be able to remove the top half from the bottom, and it'll look something like this ( http://i.imgur.com/M7SQ2Y5.jpg )

We don't need to play with the bottom part for this, so lets turn our focus to the top. Here you can see two board; one for the DPI control button, the other is for the LED in the rear of the mouse, the larger one being the DPI control one. ( http://i.imgur.com/CcsTVQJ.jpg )

Remove the DPI control board first, making sure to store the screws in a safe place. You will then see three screws, the smaller two holding the top plate to the top frame of the mouse, and the other larger one holding the LED plate to the top frame. I'm not too sure if you need to remove the LED plate in order to remove the top plate, so I did it anyway. ( http://i.imgur.com/Q27qFIb.jpg )

Once we got the screws out, you take off the top plate by grabbing the bottom of the mouse, and pulling it out and away from the frame, and then sliding the top plate towards the front of the mouse. ( http://i.imgur.com/opCkCbe.jpg )

Congrats! You are now ready to proceed to the next step. ( http://i.imgur.com/HkjZoYW.jpg )

Welcome to easily the most painful aspect of this modding job: THE SANDING. Because the whole point of me attempting the mod was to replace the top coating, I sanded off the old silver paint to make sure the Plasti-Dip has a good surface to bond to. Nothing else much to say other than swap your paper frequently, as it makes a lot of dust, and also to watch the edges.

Starting off! ( http://i.imgur.com/Hm0nTX8.jpg )

PROGRESS ( http://i.imgur.com/rlFuN96.jpg )

Change of location as mosquitoes were too much for me to handle ( http://i.imgur.com/v9472s7.jpg )

Notice how I'm also sanding the edges, because I'm planning on coating those too ( http://i.imgur.com/LIcDKMz.jpg )

OOOH, WE'RE HALFWAY THERE ( http://i.imgur.com/WodLRKX.jpg )

Living on a prayer, also sandpaper casualties in the background ( http://i.imgur.com/QV8MHSI.jpg )

Completley sanded. The grey parts in the middle and bottom sides are on the inside, so I didn't worry about those ( http://i.imgur.com/FgvNuLQ.jpg )

Another shot, showing all the edges you have to hit ( http://i.imgur.com/JN3ZI08.jpg )

All the sandpaper. Dead. ( http://i.imgur.com/mFdORFO.jpg )

Ran out of time, couldn'e use the garage, and was too dark out to paint, so I reassembled it for a gaming session ( http://i.imgur.com/di2zE3R.jpg )

Finally, the time has come. I taped the sanded top plate to a cardboard stand I crudley created ( http://i.imgur.com/INdNFpL.jpg )

Just another shot ( http://i.imgur.com/SPk923d.jpg )

After 2nd coat of Plasti-Dip ( http://i.imgur.com/wbh0JEt.jpg )

After jumping out of my chair waiting for the 3rd coat to dry, I realized I forgot to add the custom rear logo i designed, so I had to peel off all that work ( http://i.imgur.com/1YKvvMg.jpg )

Here we are with the once again naked top plate, and a sheet of the designes printed out for cutting ( http://i.imgur.com/MiC2Iok.jpg )

Taped about 5 peices of packaging tape on top of the design. I was cutting it out with my spyderco grasshopper ( http://i.imgur.com/qIvK4JG.jpg )

FINALLY FREE ( http://i.imgur.com/QEBnxRw.jpg )

A close-up of the design ( http://i.imgur.com/wJkNXxN.jpg )

Lighly glued it to the back of the mouse. The pencil marks were how far the LED can be seen. ( http://i.imgur.com/4lyLtHi.jpg )

After coat two done properly ( http://i.imgur.com/rj6kEDy.jpg )

Shot of the side ( http://i.imgur.com/dmU0uax.jpg )

Coat four ( http://i.imgur.com/oEM5Zq6.jpg )

Side shot ( http://i.imgur.com/C1tokER.jpg )

Dat ass ( http://i.imgur.com/0by7qaT.jpg )

Close up after coat five, the logo embossing visible and ready to be shaved off ( http://i.imgur.com/lWAF2s4.jpg )

Side shot ( http://i.imgur.com/o4mlS2r.jpg )

Shaved off with glue bits remaining ( http://i.imgur.com/nQF8XnR.jpg )

I tested how it looked with the LED, and noticed some bleed. The coating wasn't thick enough to block out all the light, so back to the garage to put on some more ( http://i.imgur.com/M82C1pB.jpg )

BUT FIRST, need to reapply the bird ( http://i.imgur.com/cxhW3oO.jpg )

After six more coats, and shaving off the logo, we have this ( http://i.imgur.com/FLntPgZ.jpg )

A bit of touch-ups ( http://i.imgur.com/JpyRYWT.jpg )

Two coats of clear Plasti-Dip ( http://i.imgur.com/hGxktYJ.jpg )

REASSEMBLY ( http://i.imgur.com/XgSgjS6.jpg )

Reattaching the top plate to the top frame ( http://i.imgur.com/vPraCSM.jpg)

The little white bit here was a rubber thing that went over the LED to help soften the light, but since I sanded everything opaque, I needed it off to have a good glow ( http://i.imgur.com/xbz9sTR.jpg )

Perfect ( http://i.imgur.com/7TK1QBh.jpg )

Reassembled, and proudly sitting on my desk. ( http://i.imgur.com/qq8UY2u.jpg )

Thanks a bunch for reading all this!

If you have any questions, concerns, criticism, or insults feel free to let me know, and I'll respond to the best of my ability.

If you guys also have interest in other modding adventures in the future, please tell me. Documenting and typing all this up was a lot of work, and I don't think I'll do it again unless there's an interest.

[Guest]

Nice post and welcome to the forum. The end result look amazing and i'm glad you shared

[Oshino Shinobu]

Looks good. But please, embed the images then use spoiler tags or something. Clicking though image links takes a long time. 

[Aviarius]

Sorry
I tried doing that, but the resolution of the images made it impossible to do so, and I don't have time to resize 47 images.

[Guest]

Looks good. But please, embed the images then use spoiler tags or something. Clicking though image links takes a long time. 

Don't do this with this amount of images the post would go on for days.

[Aniallation]

lol I've never sanded anything before plasti dipping it, because the point of plasti dip is to be able to peel it off and return to the original paint surface. If I'm gonna sand it, prep it, etc. then I might as well just physically paint it a different color

[Aviarius]

lol I've never sanded anything before plasti dipping it, because the point of plasti dip is to be able to peel it off and return to the original paint surface. If I'm gonna sand it, prep it, etc. then I might as well just physically paint it a different color

Well the issue with paint would be the lack of grippy texture, and how it'll chip off after a while. I'm not too sure how it would hold up to sweat and constant bending from clicking the mouse buttons either.

[rodion.zissou]

Great job, could you post an update if it begins to peel? I did my laptop quite intricately and it only lasted a week before peeling around edges. I just want to know if I messed up somehow.

[Aviarius]

Great job, could you post an update if it begins to peel? I did my laptop quite intricately and it only lasted a week before peeling around edges. I just want to know if I messed up somehow.

No problem.

I made the Plasti-Dip go around the edges in hopes to avoid that, we'll see how well it fares.

[raimoa1]

Sent you a pm as well. Doesn't the logo peel off? I mean the edges of the logo are rather sharply cut off from the rest of the paintwork. Shouldn't it peel off? I also had the problem of peeling