Painting the computer -- Quick & dirty

                                                        by Dagmar d'Surreal
                                                       as posted on Slashdot
                                                             Nov 9--12, 1998

First off, don't be afraid to spend a LOT of time (well, three to five
evenings per unit) on this little project. The amount of time and care you
put into painting the computer will directly affect the appearance of the
finished project.

Next, you'd better not be afraid to take whatever you want *completely*
apart. You do NOT want sensitive components (especially things like CD-ROM
drives) exposed to paint fumes. PERIOD.

Go to your local automotive store and get some 200-grit sandpaper. It (and
some higher grits) are used in doing touch-up work on cars, so this is the
easiest type of store to look in. A few sheets will probably be more than
enough, just get a pack of it. You can also buy a bundle of terrycloth
rags (presumably to be used for an oil change) which you'll find essential
later on.

Next go to your local Wal-Mart (not an endorsement, it's just cheaper than
getting it at an automotive shop) or K-Mart or whatever, and get a roll of
the plastic dropcloths used in painting. This stuff is really cheap, too.
You may also want to get a roll of 3/4-inch paper tape and some kite
string (for suspending small plastic pieces). You can also get some fine
grit sandpaper here (100- to 150-grit) for preparing the initial painting
surfaces (or for just totally removing paint if you screw something up).

Some people might turn up their nose at using spray cans from the K-Mart,
but unless you have some serious painting equipment around, you should be
able to get a more than satisfactory effect with just plain spray paint.
If you don't feel like spending big bucks for an uber-fancy color, you can
do your paint shopping at the Wal-Mart or K-Mart, too. In fact, I can
highly recommend Krylon (tagger's choice!) paints and primers. You don't
need anything especially fancy for a primer, but you *will* need primer.
Paint doesn't stick to paint or metal very well, and most plastic parts of
cases have been coated in something which is meant to keep the dirt off,
but puts you in the same boat as painted metal, so you will basically have
to cover everything in primer FIRST. You will also NOT be buying a glossy
paint! Just don't bother with it because it complicates things. Get a FLAT
(as in completely dull) paint of the color you want, and you'll be making
it shiny by spraying it with a clear enamel or lacquer. The main reason
being you can expect enamel to stick to itself fairly well, but you can't
always get away with it from glossy paint without getting odd effects.

*** Wash and dry the terrycloth rags with plain old detergent. This will
make them a little tougher and perfect for removing sanding dust. This is
something you'll need to do. If you have some old dotton t-shirts around,
these can be used for buffing, but the terrycloth rags have worked pretty
well for me.

Start by preparing the are you'll be painting in. You DO want a place with
plenty of ventilation, but exposed to sunlight and/or falling leaves,
wandering pets is a no-no. You don't want the paint fumes building up and
putting a nice face-print on the case. :) Clear out a reasonable space,
and stretch out some of the plastic dropcloth. This stuff is great because
paint won't stick to it very well. If you have some narrow boxes you can
use these to suspend the parts of the case you're painting above the
plastic so you don't have to worry about the bottom edges so much.

Now... To the actual painting. If you can remove any little transparent
pieces like LED lenses from the case, do so. The round holes that are left
can be a bit of an iffy point, but the best thing to do about these is
just try not to hose them down with so much paint they fill up. Otherwise
an Xacto blade will let you scrape away the extra paint when all is said
and done (Scrape from the inside!). Start by cleaning whatever you're
going to paint with warm water and mild soap, and then dry with a towel.
Give the parts about 15-20 minutes to be sure all the water has
evaporated, and then lightly sand everything with the cheap fine grit
sandpaper. LIGHTLY I said! ;) Now get the dust from sanding off the case
with the terrycloth rags.

Before I say "use the primer" a few notes about what you watch out for
when using spray cans. Spray cans have instructions on them which you
should read. Pay attention to the temperature. Pay especial attention to
the fact that the can says FLAMMABLE. Don't even think about using a
heater to heat your garage to paint in if it's the middle of winter. You
can blow yourself up. Ventilation is also more than just a way to keep
from passing out from fumes. With decent ventilation, the paint will
actually be able to dry normally. :) Shake new cans for a good while, then
spray them for a few seconds AWAY from the case parts before you start
using it to clear the unmixed paint from the nozzle. When you're spraying,
don't be afraid to under-do it. In fact, plan on using two HALF-coats to
everything you do. If you spray very lightly, give it about 5 minutes to
stop looking wettish and then spray again, you'll be a lot happier than if
you try to get a solid coat of paint in one pass and the paint starts to
run. Runs are correctable with sandpaper, but annoying as heck, since you
have to wait for the paint to be VERY dry before you can sand and restart.

BTW, in case this wasn't obvious to you, anything you don't want painted,
cover with paper tape. Furthermore, paint works best when applied to a
level surface. If this means laying the case first on one side, spraying,
waiting 45 minutes and turning it, spraying another surface, waiting,
turning, and spraying again, so be it. Like I said, the more care and time
you put into it, the better it will look. Tip: A large cardboard box with
one open side will let you hang your case parts from it so that you can
not have to let paint that's only been drying for an hour or two touch the
plastic dropcloth.

Anyway, plan on doing the painting in three distinct stages. This will
mean at least three evenings. Start with the primer. One coat of primer
(provided everything gets covered) is really all you need, so there's the
first evening. Once the primer is dry the next evening you can try lightly
sanding, but scratchy ( =) ) terrycloth rags are really all you need,
since there will be some fine dust from the primer that dried in the air
before it landed on the case which you will want to brush off. The next
step is the paint. I'll say again, use a FLAT paint. With a flat paint,
you don't have so many worries about the depth of the paint. Give it the
two half-coats of paint, and let it dry. If you want to be really
thorough, the next evening, use 150-grit sandpaper to even out any iffy
places in the painting so far, and then do another entire coat. DO always
give the paint about 24 hours to dry before each coat of anything. The
most evil thing I've ever seen were small bubbles that cropped up from
putting paint over primer that was only 2-hours old. The gas escaping the
primer made little tiny holes in the paint. :/

Now... Once you have a very dull looking colored case, comes the part
where you can be really really anal, and you'll also start to get an idea
of how well things are coming out. Use the terrycloth to clean the paint,
and then the 200-grit sandpaper to smooth it. Be gentle. Fresh paint is
softer than paint which has had time to 'cure' (usually a few months) and
you can probably scrape some right off with your fingernail if you're not
careful. Once you've sanded the paint smooth, dust it again, and start
with the lacquer or enamel. Be prepared to buy twice as much enamel or
lacquer as you did colored paint. (Did I mention you'll typically need to
get two cans of everything, and probably three of the enamel?) Whatever
you do, be sure and get the SAME types of paint, and the SAME type of
enamel, and the same type of primer. They don't have to be the same
brands, but you don't want to find that mebbe one company's shade of sky
blue is a little darker than another's, if you get what I'm talking about.
Enamel is something I initially thought wouldn't fall prey to this, but I
was wrong. Red Devil enamel is pretty good, and easy to manage. The enamel
will add a very shiny gloss to your case, as well as protect it from bumps
and scratches later on. Don't sand the enamel. :) ...just buff it with old
cotton t-shirts after each layer has dried. Two to three complete coats of
enamel will give you a nice deep shine without a lot of trouble. I
wouldn't suggest going beyond five (you could, but then you have to ask
yourself, is it the gloss, or the paint fumes that you like? Heh.)

BTW, people wanting cheesy effects for a case for their SO might want to
remember that designs, decals, glitter, etc should be applied after the
first coat of enamel, and then covered with two more coats of enamel. This
will keep it ON the case.

Note that unless you really buy the most expensive spray paint you can get
your hands on, this whole mess won't cost you more than $35-45 USD in most
areas.

I'd have put this under my name if I could remember my password. Hehe.
It's somewhere...

Good luck!

--+ Dagmar
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You can paint your keycaps in the same manner that you painted the rest of
your case, but there's a few problems with that... A big one is that your
keys will be completely unreadable. Another problem is that if you mess
up, it's very hard to sand a convex keytop without making it look weird.
You also have to definitely pray a foot or so back from the keys, or risk
having the force of the spray paint blow the little things over. (argh!)

Actually, someone else posted the worst evil about trying to paint the
keycaps... your fingers will wear the paint off. If you really and truly
so want to color your keycaps, there is something I failed to mention in
my previous post... Rit dye. You can find it at almost any fabric store
(or even Wal-Mart/K-Mart), and it comes in all sorts of colors, and is
pretty inexpensive. It can dye plastics about as well as it does fabrics,
it just takes a little more preparation. If you dye the keys, the odds are
very good that (at least with pitch black) you won't be able to get them
the exact color you want, but it will be very very close, and the printed
letters on the keys will still at least remain slightly visible, since
they're not covered in anything.

Rit dye will color plastics quite thoroughly, but you will have to soak
the plastic parts in the hot and dye-saturated water. Provided you soak
all your parts at one time, you can have a reasonable expectation of them
all coming out the same color, but if you do the dying of parts in two
separate sessions, you will not be able to get them to match easily.
Follow the directions on the box, and just make sure that you have taken
the vessel containing the dye off the stove and let it cool a bit so you
don't melt your keycaps. I've found it more useul to microwave the water,
pour in into the pot with the dye & etc, stir it up, and then put my
plastic pieces in.

A tip: Before you dye your keycaps, they will need to be clean. VERY
clean. Finger oils and etc will either strip the protective coating from
the keys over time, or they will build up like a lacquer of their own.
Both of these will leave you with an unevenly colored set of keycaps. Get
your keycaps clean before trying to dye them. Those wimpy little girly
sponge-things that look like a bundle of netting with a string around it
are just that. They're a big tube of netting, with a string around them.
Get one. Cut the string. You will now have a three-foot long TUBE of mesh,
which you can tie off at one end, and then stick your keycaps in. You'll
only need about two and a half feet of the stuff, so either cut it in
half, double it up, whatever you want. Just spread the keycaps out on the
top rack (if you put them on the bottom rack, the heat will melt them,
guaranteed) of your dishwasher (with both ends of the tube closed, eh?)
and run a normal cycle with detergent. You can do (most of) your dishes at
the same time. When everything is done, your keycaps will be really,
really clean.

The protective coating that is on your plastic parts can be a bit of an
issue, since it will impede the dye, but usually the dye will eat it away
and then soak right into the plastic. The major thing you want to worry
about after you get your keycaps dyed is that you will need to rinse them
very very thoroughly, let them dry for a good while, say 12-24 hours to be
sure, then spread them out on that nifty plastic dropcloth (that nothing
sticks to very well) and spray them with a coat of enamel. Let the enamel
sit for at least three days before messing with them. They'll be dry to
the touch in just a few hours, but 'touch' is not the same as the repeated
hammerings of happy hacker-fingers. You will note that some of the enamel
will come off the dropcloth and stick out from the sides of the keys. Just
scrub the edges on the terrycloth rags to get rid of it. You will want to
enamel dyed things that you touch often (like keycaps) because you don't
want the dye leaching out of the plastic onto your fingertips. It won't do
it much, but until the plastic has sat for about a month, it will do it a
little. There's also the issue that now that the dye has stripped the
protective coating from the plastic, it will be more likely to take dirt.
The enamel will fix that, although your keys are going to be rather
smooth... If you don't want glossy keys, there's also semi-gloss and flat
(dull finish) enamel just about everywhere you go.

Another way to get that nasty protective coating off your plastic parts is
plain old denatured alcohol. You can usually find it in hardware stores,
and sometimes drug stores. This is not the same thing as isopropyl
(rubbing or medical use) alcohol. It reeks, and it is supah extremely
poisonous to ingest, but it will strip silkscreening and coatings right
off plastic with a little rubbing from a soaked cotton ball. For gods sake
don't use this stuff around an open flame. It's used in alcohol lamps, so
it's especially flammable stuff!

--+ Dagmar

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I will add one more caveat that I learned the hard way which nearly cured
me of the whole idea of customizing cases with complex paint jobs...
Before you spray something on the case with a new can, spray a little on
something else first and take a close look at what comes out. Some sick
and twisted haploid inbreds appear to think it's funny to switch clear
enamel caps with light grey primer. This blew four night's work for me on
a super-tower in a matter of seconds. It looked like the right stuff as it
was going on, until I noticed that it wasn't going transparent. *shudder*
I was working towards a 'classic black hotrod' motif, and wound up with
the side and top being coated in pale grey. If we get one more warm
weekend before winter sets in with a vengeance here, I'll try and finish
the thing so some nice high-quality pics can go online. (One side still
looks okay.)