Vinyl dye questions

[WT]

I'm a first time case modder that wants to do the mods right, rather than just getting it done. I chose a Compucase 6919 tower in black with a silver lower insert. The optical drives I currently have are beige so I purchased Testors silver spray paint yesterday for the CD faceplates. This matched perfectly to the lower panel so I'm in good shape at this point. Now the tricky part ... I want to use vinyl dye on the drive trays themselves but haven't worked with vinyl dye before and have found little info online to guide me along. A local shop carries SEM spray-on dye, so my questions are:

(1) Can I just spray this stuff on with no sanding to the front of the tray or do I need some prep work ?

(2) Does it require additional coats or should I go VERY light and let that dry sufficiently, then add a second or third coat ?

(3) What kind of drying time am I looking at for each coat ? Since the dye itself ingrains into the plastic, I would guess it is substantially longer than simple paint. A big no-no would be closing the CDRom and finding your tacky CD tray sticking to the faceplate. OOPS !

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions you guys can offer. I need to take some pics of my project too. Building a nice box is easy, its the little extras and added effects that require the most time but offer the greatest satisfaction when they are done well.

 

[beatle]

You'll want to remove the trays from the drives if you're planning on dying them. I followed Gideon Tech's vinyl dye guide when I dyed the faceplates of a few cdrw drives. They came out looking great. I went with 3 coats.

 

[Chucko]

No sanding needed, Several light coats (not to heavy), a 5-10 mintues between coats should be fine, and then let the final sit overnight. I have painted about 6 or 7 drives and they all came out perfect.

 

[RalfHutter]

What Chucko ^^^ said except I clean off the palstic with regular isopropyl alcohol first, just to make sure there's no oils or dirt to inhibit the vinyl dye from biting into the palstic.

Any vinyl dye will have recoating time directions on the can, most say to wait 5-15 minutes between coats and 24hrs for a full cure. I've always waited 24hrs after painting my drives and never had any problems.

 

[huesmann]

Why would you want to use spray paint on the face and dye on the tray?

 

[WT]

For the color matching. I already have the silver for the drive's faceplate. You know anyone that mixes vinyl dye to match ?

 

[huesmann]

But why can't you just use dye for the whole thing? Is there no silver dye?

 

[WT]

Yea, for $10 a can .. I already bought the Testors paint and I don't have an unlimited budget at this point. I realize dye would work better but paint is not the end of the world.

 

[WT]

My paint and dye project is complete with very good results. I used SEM semi flat black on my CD trays and it looks very nice indeed.

Before

After

I am still not quite finished with some small details. The floppy drive was painted black and the floppy door painted silver, as well as the eject button. I didn't pop it in the case yet but it looks good so far.

Compucase 6919

 

[rseiler]

Regarding removing trays from CD drives, what does that mean exactly? I've opened one or two up a long time ago, and recall the faceplate/frame coming off, but don't recall anything about the tray (by that you're meaning drawer, I assume) coming out. I really only want to dye the face of the drawer anyway, the actual visible part, not the entire drawer. Any thoughts?

 

[WT]

If all you are worried about is the visible front bezel of the tray, you can remove that from the tray by prying two tabs out slightly from the lower half of the bezel, then sliding the bezel upwards along its grooved track until it comes off cleanly. This is obviously a much easier way of doing it then removing the whole tray, but I wanted to do it the way I wanted it done. Flip the drive upside down and manually open the drive with a paperclip thru the manual ejection hole on the faceplate, then you should see the small tabs to the left and right of center on the bezel edge of the tray.

 

[rseiler]

OK, it's good to know this can be done, so I'll do the face and also frame and leave it at that. This will be in a couple weeks, so I'll report back then.

Edit: Finally had a chance to test this out on my Thankgsgiving Lite-On 411S, and I think it went well. The little strip covering the drawer came off easily as described above, and the bezel itself took most of the time, since it was latched in pretty well. Three light coats of the flat black dye did the job wonderfully, though you really do need a WELL ventilated area with this stuff. The pieces will harden overnight, and then I should be set to go. I'll leave the thumbwheel white, since it makes it visible and I really don't see how it would come out anyway.