This mod was inspired by a mouse made for WoW Cataclysm
1. The first step was to mark the angular slots:
3.Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of how the slots turned out and already covered them with fabric and made a rough sketch from plasticine.
We had to remove the brown fabric because it turned out like a nightmare, so we replaced it with black.
4. Next, I replaced the fabric with black and cast a skull and blade from tin (I’ll tell you how this is done later) on this moment I melt the sides around the edges
5. While everything is drying, you can tint the sword and skull
Making horns and sides
This process takes quite a long time, so patience is key here.
What we need:
1. Plaster or alabaster
2. Water
3. Plasticine version of the model
4. Tin (I used POS-30 solder)
5. Well, additional containers for mixing, etc.
Step one. Kneading
I mixed alibastra with water at the rate of 7 grams (two full red plugs) per 8 cubes of water. The consistency of the mixture is like cement... or melted ice cream.
Step two
Z fill out the form with a side. I applied everything with my finger because this way you won’t damage the plasticine and you won’t create bubbles.
Step three
We put it on the battery and wait until the whole thing dries.
After an hour of drying, the mold should be easy to remove. Take it out and dry without a bath for 2 hours (in the end, the whole drying takes about 3 hours. When everything dries, you will see wet and dry places on the mold).
While everything is drying, let's start creating a more complex double shape for the horn.
Making a bund from plasticine small sizes(great for this lego but I threw it away a long time ago)
Fill it HALF with the solution!!! We drown our plasticine model.
We set it to dry in the same way as a mold with sides.
After an hour, remove the plasticine and make it higher than the rest of the model.
Let's take it liquid soap and grease the dried form. Then we apply a layer of plaster on top and dry again for an hour. Then remove the plasticine sides and continue drying.
After 2 hours, carefully with your hands!!! NOT A TOOL!!! separate the 2 halves
I left the whole thing overnight (optional)
The matter comes to thermal executions of forms. I put all the molds on the stove at a temperature of 100 degrees until all the water comes out of the mold (it is forbidden to pour into a wet mold because the evaporation will create holes and other defects in the tin).
If you bring a glass close to the hot mold, you can see how moisture from the mold condenses on it. While it is still there, you cannot fill it.
It seems like everything has dried, it’s time to melt the metal!!!
As slag appears on the metal, remove it. The most optimal temperature Filling is when the tin will be covered with a yellow film.
Fill the folded forms and after cooling, separate them and voila!
We cut off the edges and unnecessary metal and clean it where necessary.
The sword was poured into this mold.
I put everything on a rodent and in the end it turned out like this.
The good old “mouse”.... So much is connected with this, which has already become an integral attribute of any computer. This glorious manipulator is always subject to unfounded criticism, when the iron hangs, it is always the mouse that pays for our failures in some toy. Why? Yes, because in most cases this device is the first to fall under hot hand. Who would kick and hit, for example, a video card on the table if it doesn’t handle the long-awaited Oblivion? That's it. The mouse has long become an unofficial, so to speak, “scapegoat.”
It recently became clear to me that the Lord sent me to this world not only so that I could raise a child, plant a tree and build a house, but also so that I could find a way to save the unfortunate woman! And this method has been found! Let's do mouse modding!
List of required materials:
- Primer for plastic, black paint, varnish;
- Car air freshener;
- Super glue;
- Blue ;
- Electrical tape (or heat shrinkage. Whichever is more convenient to use);
- Some wires;
- Cold welding;
- Fine skin (preferably Polish);
- Small diameter fan (to fit into the mouse);
- Double sided tape.
Since everyone has their own set of tools, we will not list it.
The “little rat” (a very fresh name for the manipulator - I liked it! Note for the editor-in-chief) from the company “A4 Tech” was chosen as the object of modding. And here, in fact, is himself.
First, withdrawal top cover mouse and inspect the board for any flaws or ambiguities.
The modding object was not very successful in the sense that there was too little space inside. It will not work to install it into the inside of a mouse just like that. You'll have to use your imagination, ingenuity, and modder manipulators. Hands, that is.
After inspection inside the top cover of the mouse, it became clear that the task was becoming seriously more complicated...
Let's throw away defeatist sentiments. Since I called myself a milk mushroom, I can say that my own shirt is not worth it to my body.
First, let's take a box of air freshener.
All we need now from its contents is the grid.
We apply it to our experimental subject and outline the outline with a marker.
The next step is cutting the hole.
As a small reminder: the cut line must be thoroughly processed with needle files and fine sandpaper. The main thing is that the mesh does not fit into this hole too easily, but with a little effort.
That's it, the work with the hole is finished. The next stage is ahead - implantation of a ventilator.
For my modder mockery, I chose Carlson, which previously cooled my 6600 GT series video camera.
But here's the problem - the fastenings of the mouse buttons interfere with the installation of the fan, and very much so. The problem can be solved in the simplest and most in a radical way- cutting out everything that interferes with the installation of the cooler.
The next tricky point: the main board parts also offer resistance. It took me about two days to remove all the extra stuff. As a result, the fan costs as if it were original. Perhaps the most difficult stage of this modding.
Let me remind you that I attached the cooler using double-sided tape and connected it to 5 volts and ground. The red wire is 5 volts, the black wires (there are two of them, and both are absolutely identical) are ground.
Next on the plan is lighting. 4 blue LEDs and a 100 ohm resistor were purchased. This was quite enough to drop the voltage from 5 to 3.8 volts, this will be just right for the normal operation of the lamps. All light sources were connected in parallel. The backlight is powered from the same red wire, and grounded through the black wire. I secured the lights to the board with double-sided tape. It may look a little clumsy, but it is reliable. Moreover, you still can’t see anything from the outside.
Before painting the mouse, it turned out that I had not yet returned the buttons to their place. And by that time the fastenings had already been cut off...
A real, peasant solution was found: cold welding! That's what I used. But first I did some work with the buttons themselves, namely, I “shortened” their legs.
We wait a day until the final hardening of the weld. Then we paint our mouse, having previously degreased it with a solvent.
I remind you of the painting process: primer-paint-varnish. Only this way, and no other way.
- Apply primer. We wait until it dries. (In my case, this time period was about 20 minutes).
- Next - two layers of paint with an interval of 30 minutes. We wait a day.
- The final touch is two layers of varnish. Let dry for 24 hours. Now the mouse is ready for painting.
When painting, there is one main rule - the layers should not be too thin or too thick (and the latter is much worse). The second, no less important rule is to take your time. I advise you to remember the old sayings about “if you hurry, you will make people laugh”, about “measure seven times” and the like.
Well, okay, it's all a theory. This is what I ended up with.
Now our mouse is almost ready for use, in the sense of exploitation.
Finally, we assemble and connect our mouse.
Final photos (Please don’t be afraid of the red light coming from inside. It comes from the LED that the mouse optics uses. There was no way to remove it, and, in fact, it doesn’t really interfere, quite the contrary):
Rat in idle time
Rat is active
Happy Endo
Well, that's all, the mouse is ready. the main task The goal that I set for myself was fulfilled - now, when my computer freezes, I take my anger out not on the mouse, as before, but on something else. Because the fruit of your labors is many times more valuable than someone else’s. Now the hands, squeezing the mouse, don’t sweat like it’s unclear what, but quite the opposite.
I once bought a mouse for a laptop - it was just white, and laser light and paint shone through the case. I saw a video on the Internet where they were built into a mouse - it’s very beautiful in the dark! So I decided to remake this mouse so that it would glow. First, I found the power leads - I put a simple blue LED there and assembled it.
It was somehow boring just a blue LED. Therefore, I installed two more LEDs of the same color (there were no others) and assembled a simple flasher on two LEDs - they blink alternately. I took the simplest circuit for it - a multivibrator with 2 transistors.
Then, having assembled everything and previously tested operation from the power supply, I installed the parts into the mouse. The whole modding took about 30 minutes.
I glued the LEDs themselves to the board with glue, and one more thing - I used KT815 transistors.
Of course, this is the simplest modding, but just right for beginner radio amateurs. After mastering microcontrollers, you will be able to make more serious LED effects. Author of the design: Alexander Ivanov (sexzek).
Perhaps the simplest option for modding a mouse is to change its color. It is enough to take a can of spray paint to literally change the appearance of a desktop “rodent” beyond recognition in just a couple of minutes, and if you have artistic abilities, you can decorate the surface of the mouse body with a picturesque miniature. However, this time we will not consider the issues of artistic painting of mice. This article is devoted to more sophisticated modifications, the implementation of which will require disassembling the mouse and redoing something inside it...
Currently, both optical and optomechanical mice are used. The operating principles of these types of manipulators have been described many times 1, so we will not touch on this topic in this article. In terms of modding options, the type of pointer you have at your disposal doesn't really matter: the modifications described below (with the exception of one) can be implemented in both types of devices.
So let's get started. First of all, you need to disconnect the mouse from the computer and disassemble it. Typically, a mouse body consists of two detachable parts: a base (on which a printed circuit board with microswitches, a motion detection sensor and the electronics necessary for its operation is installed) and a top part with movable button panels attached to it (Fig. 1). The body parts can be held together either with screws (usually three or four) or with a combination of one or two screws and a pair of latches. The screw heads can simply be recessed into the base of the housing; in this case, they are immediately visible. If you cannot visually detect the location of the screws, then most likely their heads are hidden under the pad feet. In this case, using a sharp object, you should carefully separate the legs from the base (Fig. 2).
Rice. 1. Disassembled optomechanical mouse
Rice. 2. Sometimes the screw heads are hidden under the pad feet
After unscrewing the screws, carefully remove the upper part of the case. If you have an optomechanical mouse, then before disassembling, do not forget to remove the ball from the manipulator.
1 See the publication “Mice: the new generation chooses “optics”” in No. 12’2002.
"Blue-eyed" mouse
The simplest option for modifying an optical mouse is to replace the optical sensor LED (for obvious reasons for optomechanical models this action not applicable). This simple operation allows you to change the color of the sensor backlight. The vast majority of optical mice use a red LED as the light source necessary for the sensor to operate. To make your mouse more original, you can replace the red LED with a blue one.
Before you begin upgrading, you need to find the sensor backlight LED on printed circuit board. In some mouse models, it can be enclosed in a transparent or opaque plastic casing (Fig. 3), which must be carefully removed before soldering the LED (Fig. 4). As a replacement, you must select an LED whose dimensions and brightness correspond to the characteristics of the standard element; otherwise, the modified mouse will be inoperable.
Armed with a soldering iron, remove the standard LED and install a new one in its place (Fig. 5). Since the LED is a semiconductor device, polarity must be observed when installing it. After this, it makes sense to connect the mouse to the computer and make sure that the LED installed on the board works. If no glow is observed when power is applied to the mouse, you should check the reliability of the installation and the polarity of the LED.
Rice. 5. View of the lower part of the mouse body before modification (top) and after
If the result is positive, all that remains is to install a plastic casing on the LED (if there was one) and assemble the mouse body.
Light in the window
A very impressive result can be achieved by installing additional lighting for the mouse. This will require one or more LEDs and a resistor.
Having disassembled the mouse, first of all you need to find comfortable spot to connect power to additional “illuminations”. Typically, mice use universal printed circuit boards designed to assemble several different modifications of the manipulator. For this reason, on the board of almost any mouse there are free mounting holes, which are very convenient to use for connecting wires from additional loads.
The power required for the operation of the electronic components of the mouse (+ 5 V) is supplied via the interface cable. Often there is a plate on the printed circuit board indicating the functions of the interface cable wires, and you can identify the ground wires and power buses by their color. If there is no such sign, you can ring the interface cable using a tester or multimeter and find the required wires, guided by the pinout diagram of the USB and PS/2 connectors shown in Fig. 6. After this, find free mounting holes on the tracks corresponding to the ground and power bus, and carefully solder the wires to them. In the example in Fig. 7, empty mounting holes intended for installing a capacitor were suitable for this purpose.
Now assemble a circuit of an LED and a resistor connected in series (Fig. 8). The resistor value (in ohms) can be calculated by dividing the supply voltage (5 V) by the operating current of the LED used, expressed in amperes. For example, for an LED with an operating current of 20 mA, you will need a resistor with a nominal value of 250 Ohms (5/0.02 = 250). If one LED does not provide adequate backlight efficiency, you can connect one or two more in parallel with it (Fig. 9) in this case, install a resistor with a lower value. It is also worth keeping in mind that the brightness of LEDs of different colors with the same amount of current flowing through them will vary significantly. For example, if you need to connect blue and red LEDs together, then to ensure the same brightness of their glow, you will need to include an additional resistor (R2) with a nominal value of about 200 Ohms in the circuit (Fig. 10).
By installing the LEDs inside the case and connecting the wires from the power bus to them (Fig. 11), check the operation of the circuit (and at the same time the mouse). If everything works, you can move on to the second stage of modification. The goal is to ensure that the spectacular glow can be seen from the outside. If the mouse body has transparent or translucent elements or inserts, there are no problems. But if you chose a mouse with a completely opaque body for modification, you will have to modify it.
Rice. 11. Two LEDs installed in the mouse body
The easiest option is to drill into the mouse body round hole and glue an LED into it from the inside. You can do it differently: drill several small-diameter holes on the side and/or top of the mouse body, through which the light from the LEDs located inside will be visible (Fig. 12). These holes can be arranged in the form geometric figure or the letter in a dark room it will look very impressive.
Experienced modders can be offered a more complex and, perhaps, most spectacular option. Cut a window in the mouse body - rectangular, round or any shape. Then cut out an insert from transparent or translucent plastic that matches the shape of this window and carefully glue it into the body. The illumination of such a window looks very impressive when combining two LEDs of different colors, for example red and blue.
The wind is at hand
Nowadays it is hardly possible to reliably find out which of the modders was the first to come up with the idea of equipping the mouse with a palm airflow system. Despite the fact that the benefits of such an addition are very doubtful, this modification has become very popular and, moreover, a similar solution is currently already implemented in some commercially produced manipulators (for example, in the Xenix Optical Wheel Mouse model). So if on a hot summer day you feel that your palm could really use a light breeze, then the modification described below is for you.
Unfortunately, not every mouse is suitable for this modification: even a small fan requires quite a lot of space to install. Therefore, before proceeding further, you should evaluate the amount of free space available in the mouse case and make sure that the fan you choose will fit there.
The main element of an improvised cooling system is a miniature fan operating from a voltage of 5 V. You can use a ready-made fan of small diameter (Fig. 13), however, most fans used in a PC cooling system are designed to operate from a voltage of 12 V, whereas in a mouse it is necessary rely solely on the 5-volt power rail. Fans running on 5 V can be removed from used video adapters and motherboards with active chipset cooling.
If you couldn’t find a ready-made fan of suitable sizes, you can make it yourself. To do this, you will need a miniature electric motor operating on a voltage of 5 V, for example, extracted from an old optical drive (Fig. 14).
A piece of thin plastic is suitable for making a fan impeller. Mark the center on the workpiece, draw a circle of the desired diameter and carefully cut it out. Then make a hole in the center of such a diameter that the workpiece fits onto the motor shaft with some difficulty (Fig. 15).
Rice. 15. Blank for making a fan impeller
Divide the cut circle with lines into four sectors of equal size (in principle, the number of blades can be increased to six or even eight, but the process of making the impeller in this case will require extraordinary skill) and make neat cuts along these lines, not reaching 2-3 mm to the center circle (Fig. 16).
Now you need to give the blades a curved profile. After slightly heating the sector of the workpiece over the flame of a candle or alcohol lamp, soften the plastic and use tweezers to bend the edges of the blade at a small angle relative to the plane of the workpiece. After cooling, the workpiece will harden; in this case, the blades will retain their given shape (Fig. 17). It is more convenient to perform this operation in stages, processing each blade separately.
Now place the finished impeller on the engine axis and secure with a drop of glue homemade fan ready (Fig. 18).
Connect the power supply wires to the motor and solder them to the printed circuit board (how to find the power bus is described in the previous section). To be able to turn off the fan, the mouse cooling system can be supplemented with a miniature switch that opens the motor power supply circuit (Fig. 19). In the one shown in Fig. In example 20, a small slide switch was used. In order to bring its lever out, a small rectangular hole had to be made in the side of the case.
Rice. 19. The assembled circuit of a fan with a switch is connected to the printed circuit board
In order for the fan to successfully perform its function, holes must be made in the mouse body for free air circulation. The location, shape, diameter and number of these holes depend on the location of the fan and your imagination. It is also worth providing air intake holes on the side or bottom panel of the case. True, you shouldn’t get too carried away from large quantity holes made may cause the mouse body to lose strength.
You can secure the fan inside the mouse body using glue or double-sided self-adhesive material used to fix wall hooks (the foam base will also act as a damper, absorbing vibration from a running engine). Depending on the features of the mouse being modified and the design of the existing fan, it can be attached either to the bottom (see Fig. 20) or to the top of the case (Fig. 21).
on the top of the body
Important Notes
Please note that additional electrical load will increase the mouse's current draw (typically 100 mA). According to current standards, the maximum current consumption when connected to the USB ports of a computer or an active USB hub should not exceed 500 mA, which is more than enough for additional LEDs and even a fan motor. However, if the mouse is connected through a hub that does not have external source power supply (for example, built into a keyboard), then the current consumption limit can be as low as 100 mA per port. You should not connect a modified mouse to such USB ports.
Before turning on the modified device for the first time, carefully check the correctness and reliability of installation installed elements and make sure that they do not interfere with the normal operation of the standard components of the manipulator (motion sensors, buttons, etc.)!
