Making drive face-plates touchable?

[Little DeViL]

Ok,

I am wanting to make my drive face-plates touchable... Basically what i want to do is this...

I want to be able to touch the drive face-plate and it will open, i dont want to have to push the actual button.

I know that it can be done as I have seen it in action. I was just wanting to know how you do it...

Any help appricated ;)

[Robrules18]

Well as far as i know you can mount your plate over the drive and have a little spring or something in the corner over the button so if you push that corner is hits the button, other than that it would require extensive work to do.

[Little DeViL]

That is what I tried... But it doesnt seem to work... The face plates keep on getting caught on the sides of the panel.

[Bensa]

I think the best idea is to have the connection between the end of the cd sled, and the faceplate, to be sprigngy. Then when you push the faceplate enough, the faceplate makes enough contact with the button. You may need to add a little more or less, test it.

[Little DeViL]

Ok, has any1 else done what i am trying to do?

if you have, plz supply some pics... thanx...

and Bensa... i will try what you say and i hope that it works too :P

[Bensa]

Oh yeah, you may also need to add some padding right over the button on the faceplate to get good contact.

[Little DeViL]

Like what sort of padding? foam or something?

[Bensa]

http://koti.welho.com/pwalchli/pics/panel.gif

The red is foam, or whatever soft material (I would advise a thicker layer just to be sure). There also needs to be a small outcrop from the panel inwards, right over the button. This makes sure that the button is pressed. Be sure not to make it too thick, so the panel is flush.

Edit: Should have added labels, but here is a key.
The large black box at the top is the drive itself, the grey popping out from it, the sled. The red is foam, and the lower black box is the panel.

[Little DeViL]

ok, thanx... g2g ... but thanx for the help again

[RadiationMan]

Here's some pics of what I did on my drive bay.

This is the front of it, closed. I drilled a hole in the aluminum under the plastic, so you can see the activity LED-
http://www.theforumisdown.com/uploadfiles/0103/flatdrivebayfront.JPG

I broke off the tabs holding the face plate on the case and sanded the edges down a little so it would not get hung up on the opening and it would close smoothly. I attached about 3 strips of heavy duty foam tape to the front of the tray and lined up the face plate in the opening and stuck it on. The stuff is gray colored and intended for putting up house numbers and other permanent applications(once it's stuck, it's there forever). Sorry the picture is kind of dark.-
http://www.theforumisdown.com/uploadfiles/0103/flatdrivebaytape.JPG

Then, I lined up a short bolt with the eject button and taped it to the face plate. I wanted something a little more solid to push against the button than just foam tape.-
http://www.theforumisdown.com/uploadfiles/0103/flatdrivebaybolt.JPG

When I want to close the tray, I just push the exposed button.-
http://www.theforumisdown.com/uploadfiles/0103/flatdrivebaybutton.JPG

In the future, I may get a push button switch and wire it to the button on the CDrom and make a stealth switch somewhere else on the case.

[Little DeViL]

Damn man, thats cool... Thanx for the info... I think that you might have just helped me to stealth my roms ;)

[RadiationMan]

Glad to be of help.

Your question got me to thinking. I have a reset button on my case that I had disconnected from the mobo(my 18 month old kept pushing it). I think I am going to solder the wires up to the cd eject button. It's already mounted, don't need to buy one, and already matches my case.

[Little DeViL]

Not a bad idea. Lol about the baby :D

[bafbrian]

Looks great RadMan.

Hey Little Devil: You not supposed to use red as your font color.

[Little DeViL]

arent you? why? it sayz not to abuse the color tags... im only using one color, instead of the normal color... i dont see anything wrong with it

[Bensa]

Red text is what the mods use to edit posts.

[Little DeViL]

well - i am sure that ppl would be able to tell that i am not a mod... and if it was a mod... i would hope that they would say that they have edited a post of mine... until they say no to use it, i will still keep on using it... im not rebelious, i'll stop when they tell me to stop ;)
Stop using it.

-eobard

[Mico]

That looks pretty nice up there. Slteathed drives are really nice. I like them a lot. A whole lot, in fact. To be honest I love them. And yes...yes, I will marry it!!

[eobard]

:D (Look 2 posts up.)

[Little DeViL]

thanx... did you do that on purpose... ???

[Bensa]

Hehe, now we know the mods have a sense of humor.

[Little DeViL]

Fine, then i will just use blue... see.. even i have a sense of humour :P

[Bensa]

Try again with the blue :D
That should be a clear indication that you should just keep with the standard color. Hehe

[Little DeViL]

arent i stupid :P

[NcBaller1985]

I wouldn't go toooo far with this whole color thing. ;)

Out of all the moderators....eobard is the one I would most hate to push "over the edge." (nothing aganist all the other mod's, I wouldn't want to push any of you fine gents over the edge! :D)

[Bensa]

I'll say this straight off. Blue is damn annoying to read, even in small bits. In paragraphs, no one will read it. Just use default, its there to allow easy reading.

[eobard]

I didn't really do that to be humorful. I edited Little DeVil's post to show the contrast between the two colors when put together. As for my reply below that, I wanted to add one more post so that all who are subscribed would get a notification that there was new info in the thread, and instead of being redundant and repeating myself I just made mention of my edit above. As for colors the best option is the default. I've been here long enough to remember at least one previous color scheme for these forums. Way back the background was light blue and so to make posts readable the default text color was black, when the forums went to a darker background it became obvious that the text needed to become lighter. It was tested a bit and what we have now is the most readable text color given the background, so if you want your posts to be seen the best way to go is with default, adding colors to bring emphasis occasionally. One other reason to stay away from red is because the forum search results get highlighted in red, so if you're searching for a certain word and you click one of the thread results it will take you to that thread/post and highlight the words you selected in red, if all of the words in that thread are red it makes it harder to find what you're looking for. Now how 'bout we get back to modding faceplates?