I want to mod my gear!
 

I want to mod my gear. I've already made my keyboard. Black with red gothic letters. Now i want to mod my MX510(i wanna make it red with a cross blinking as a bit of heart). I know how to do that. I have problem with pad modding. I have 4D Steelpad. It's black. I wanna make a portrait of my G on it. But i don't know how to do that without losing gliding propetries? Gimme a tip!

hmm yeah it would be hard to mod a mousepad without messing the surface up

i would keep it as it is

perhaps draw small "G"s around its border
or dremel the border where the mouse isnt going ot be used

btw
since you will have your mouse on it most of the time, it only makes sense to have the art showing in places where it can be seen most of the time

therefore, the border

i would engrave the Gs
then paint the dips in red
how about that?

when he said G i believe he is referring to his girlfriend..

ohhhh
lol
big misunderstanding

but still
i would only suggest on modding the borders of the pad
or unless you print something and use glass on top of the printing and use that glass as the mousepad

but then, im not sure how the MX510 tracks with the glass surface

probably not nearly as well, if at all

I'd suggest making a pad composed of 3 layers, similiar to the suggestion above. On bottom would be the picture of the GF, followed by a thin layer of plastic. Use some 800 (or higher if you can find any) grit sandpaper to rough it up and give it some texture. Make sure to give it enough texture for the mouse to track on it, but remember that you want to be able to see your GF through it. Then put a third transparent film over it, such as another layer of plastic, so that the pad will still be smooth enough to glide the mouse over.

yeah

all have to be thin
not too thick
once too think, accuracy will decrease as light might get diffracted when traveling down the not perfectly uniform density plastic

if your pic is large enuf, you might not need to sand as the pic will be the pixels that the sensor on the mouse will grab (instead of dots of roughed up textures as vee_ess suggested)


maybe, vee_ess, we should get together and make some awesome mousepads!
lol

damn too bad we are far away

We should! The Internet makes us neighbors!

I think I'm going to start experimenting with stuff...

i just tried to track my MX700 on a clear acrylic glass that i cut out
its about 4mm thick

so its kinda thick and the result was no good
it didnt track well at all

up next in my test is a cd protector commonly seen in 50 spindles of CDs

the test subject had a grainy side to it
it was much easier to slide and glide the mouse on the grainy side

the thickness is pretty thin
only about 1.1mm

so how did it track?

very well wherever the transparent plastic protector is placed
and while grainy, you can still see the pictures under

but i dont think this grainy effect can be achieved by sanding a smooth plastic surface
sort of like mousepads, it has to be mouses, or sprayed on

im sure there are such sprayons you can find
just hard to find