• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

How to paint your drive face-plates

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Cown

Member
Joined
Jun 9, 2002
Location
Denmark
A "little" guide on how to paint your drive face-plates, enjoy:

Attempting to paint the front of your CD-ROM drive can be a pain, especially if it's a shiny new drive or you simply aren't willing to risk damaging it for the sake of aesthetics. Painting the front of your drives isn't all that difficult a task and with some perseverance and patience, you can finish your case mod and display it proudly and just feel good about having been able to do the job from start to finish.

The drive is just a simple CD-ROM drive. It has a retracting tray which is what you need, I have noticed allot of new drives these days are being made with slot loaders. You simply push the disk into the hole and the drive does the rest.

Before you start let me tell you to be very careful! Always take care in what you are doing.

The first thing you will need to do is going to be the hardest part and that is taking the front plastic bezel plate off the actual drive. Most plastic fronts simply clip onto the front of the drive itself and popping it off is relatively easy.

If, however you have a tray-loading drive, you will have to pop the plastic front off the tray first before removing the front plastic bezel. Eject the tray, most CD-ROM drives have a hole you can stick a pin or similar object in to eject the drive when there is no power, and set the drive upside down. Pull the tray right out. See where the cover clips onto the tray itself? tilt the drive so the end of the tray is resting on the surface of your work area and stick a little flat screwdriver in the gap there and gently free the clips.

The cover should simply slide off once you free the clips holding them together. Again be very careful, it's easy to do, but if you force it or apply too much pressure you could break something. Once you have that piece off, you can take the rest off. Most CD-ROM drives simply use clips to hold the plastic bezel plate on and it is simply a matter of very carefully popping the clips out. Generally you will have a clip on the top and bottom and one on each side, sometimes two on each side. Be careful here, the clip on the top will probably have the warranty sticker covering it. If you don't care about the warranty, just peel it off otherwise you can very carefully try removing the clip from underneath by sticking your screwdriver into the drive and pulling the clip down from inside. If you look into the drive from the bottom side, you should see the top clip.

Gently push the clips in with your screwdriver giving the plastic bezel plate a little wiggle to make sure they don't pop back in. Try popping the side clips first then the top and bottom may make for easier removal. Just gently wiggle the plastic bezel plate off once all the clips are out and your ready to get started on the real work.

Before painting it you need to get it ready. You will need a little 1000-1200 grit wet & dry sandpaper to get the surface ready. The primer will stick better to the plastic so you wont have to worry about it chipping off easily. You only need to give them a light sanding, if you use the paper wet have a glass of water handy to dip into, make sure you go around the edges as well. Cover as much area as you can, pay particular attention to the eject button as this will be the most touched area.

Once you are done with the sanding job, give the parts a rinse under the tap and dry them off with a cloth then leave them for a while to air dry. You will be priming these parts first as the final color will stick better and last longer on the primer than if you just painted it straight onto the plastic. Use a simple enamel paint for drives.

Lay some newspaper in a well ventilated area like a garage with the door open. You don't want a thick coat of primer, hold the can 10" to 12" inches from the parts and spray a light even stroke from one side to the other then stopping. The next part is a bit tricky, you have to aim the spray so you cover the sides and gaps and holes in the drive cover. The way to do it is to hold the can at approximately 45 degrees and spray in a semi-circle covering the left side, arcing out towards yourself then twisting around to the right. Take the newspaper and carefully turn the whole thing around 180 degrees and do the same thing from the other side. Don't worry too much if you missed a couple of spots on the the first coat, as long as the coat was nice and light you can leave it and hour or so to dry then apply another thin coat focusing on the areas you missed the first time.

You can't rush this job, it takes time but if done right your end result will be very nice.

Once you have finished priming it will need a couple of hours to dry. If you want it to look really professional get a piece of 1400 to 1600 wet & dry sand paper and give it a very light sanding, clean it up and then start the first coat of color. As with the priming, you want 2 or 3 light coats. If you have plenty of time and are using enamel paint you can apply the first coat, leave it for 24 hours, give it a light sanding, apply the second coat etc. If you want the quick method you can simply forego the sanding and each new coat can be applied after a couple of hours. Apply the paint in the same method you did the primer, don't overdo it or you will ruin your job and it won't look good.

Once you have finished applying your coats of paint, put it all in a safe spot and leave it to dry. Enamel paint being oil based really needs 4-5 days to dry properly but after 24 hours in a warm area it's generally all right to handle. If you want a nice glossy finish, you can apply all the previous methods again this time using a clear top-coat spray that will add to the protection of the paint and give you a nice finish.

There is a little trick used to enhance the front of the drive. There are several little raised parts of most CD drives used to indicate volume, headphones, activity etc, not to mention the "Compact disc" logo found on nearly all CD drives. For that little extra bit of detail get a fine tipped permanent marker and very carefully run the tip of the marker over the raised parts of the front. Be very light handed when doing this, if you miss and hit the flat, the icon will look bad and you will have marks where you don't want them.

If you do this little extra detailing you might consider spraying a coat or two of clear over the top. Then there's the volume control. They can be real difficult as most of them are fixed to the circuit board and won't come off. You could do the black marker thing with them, or if your a hobbyist and have some of those little jars of paint you use for your models you could use a little brush and paint them that way, but most people leave the knobs alone.

Once your finished and are satisfies with your work, it's simply a matter of popping the plastic bezel back on the drive, slipping on the tray door and installing your newly painted drive.

Painting your CD-ROM drives and even your floppy drive isn't all that difficult a task, but it is time consuming. If you are contemplating painting your case I can recommend you do your drive front's etc at the same time. It does work out a little easier this way as you spend the same amount of time painting everything at the same time and in the end it's all ready to put together.


Heres another nice guide on how to turn your plastic face plate into metal ;)
Linkos
 
Last edited:
Also, after paint/primer coats are dry to the touch, wipe them down with either tack cloth, paper towel wetted with denatured alcohol, or degreaser. When painting, lock your elbow and use your shoulder only to move the can. Visually Seperate the bezel into different vertical rows. Paint one row, then paint the second, overlapping the first about a half inch or so. Here is a link with visual aids. The process in the link works with practically any surface, save wood.
 
Great post 4x4. You can get that front cd tray as shiney as you want by doing this. As shiney as any metal paint job. When my digital camera gets here i'll show you how mine came out. It looks like a mirror but took my 3 weeks to do.
edit: Ohh and I applied rubbing compound 4 times, and buffed it with 4 layers of car wax, dont be afraid of the wax :)
 
There is a little trick used to enhance the front of the drive. There are several little raised parts of most CD drives used to indicate volume, headphones, activity etc, not to mention the "Compact disc" logo found on nearly all CD drives. For that little extra bit of detail get a fine tipped permanent marker and very carefully run the tip of the marker over the raised parts of the front. Be very light handed when doing this, if you miss and hit the flat, the icon will look bad and you will have marks where you don't want them.


Another thing you can do is to take and exacto-knife and very carefully scrape the paint off raised symbols and letters.
 
well i want to paint my drive tray covers only so do they just pop off or do i have to remove the whole drive tray and the thing i am scared about is the cd drive was 100$ cd burner 40x and i works really well and i am brok so i dont need to mess this up
 
If ya look close you can read the ATARI from the reflection on the cover. Image is a bit blury but still shows enough detail.
 
Great guide Cown. I painted my face plates yellow today to match my almost done case. I will have pics in about 5 days after I get my window cut and my new fans put in. I cant wait:D
 
Chrisdafu said:
Great guide Cown. I painted my face plates yellow today to match my almost done case. I will have pics in about 5 days after I get my window cut and my new fans put in. I cant wait:D

Thats great, cant wait to see your case :D
 
Hey peeps, got a suggestion, RC car racers use a Lexan based paint that actually bonds to the body shell, just thinking that that might be really nicec for drive and faceplate painting because it will bond to the plastic and not tend to chip off, or scratch easily back through to the white.

Should be available from hobby stores.

regards,

Road Warrior
 
It works a treat....I did (most) of my case at the weekend - but I ran out of Black paint......

If you look at the right hand side of the case, you can see the shine.....
4-picture2.gif

1 Layer of grey primer, 3 coats of gloss black, and 2 coats of clear Laquer......

Still got the floppy and case top to do.

Doing your CD drives is easy, Cowns guide is perfect - just remember to mask off the status lifgt on the front:)
 
when my friends use to custom make thier bikes, they used something called "thermal bond" to bond colors to plastics.

its in a little tube about the size of a tube of liquid nails.
it comes in chrome and black.

how you use it is you good this stuff all over what you wanna bond it too, and I mean slop it on, then use a hair dryer on it to spead it around, the heat then melts it into the plastics.

we use to find it at ace hardware.
but I haven't seen those in years...
 
Back