Hey, nothing fancy, just a painted case
( and yes i know it looks exactly like another users qfr on here, but the store didn't have the green color I wanted and blue is my second favorite color )
Tips from an expert painter to prepare for painting. I've painted everything from cars, jet-skis, my racing motorcycles, computer cases, pretty much everything.
You can get very nice and long lasting results if you take your time and do it right. Even if you are using a cheap can of spray paint or a professional HVLP paint sprayer and a booth.
Mine was done with a $3.50 can of paint and left outside to dry.
1. 400 grit sand paper ( yes it takes forever ) go EASY to not dig into the plastic. Do not use any thing rougher than 400 ( I would have used 600 if I had some ) as it will just dig into the plastic and scratch it up leaving an un-even finish.
2. Sand all the rubber off
3. Wet sand with 1000+ grit over the entire body ( more time in prep work = better final result ) until its glass smooth
4. get paint
5. MIST the keyboard very very very lightly ( if you cover everything in one go you're doing it wrong, if it looks wet, you're doing it wrong )
6. wait 10mins, mist again, 10mins, mist, 10mins, mist, etc until the entire thing is covered.
7. let dry aprox 3 hours
8. Wetsand again with 1500+ ( it will still be tacky, but use light pressure to remove any paint build up, and use rubber gloves or be very gentle to not leave fingerprints )
9. Don't touch it for a day.
10. Repeat 5-9 I want to say I misted mine about 20 times or so before the final sanding.
11. Final wetsand of 2000+ and you're done!
Note: if you use a high gloss paint, the final wetsanding can take away the shine leaving a matt finish so I myself always use matt colors, and If I want gloss then I go into clear-coating.
I think most people here would not want a high gloss keyboard so I won't go into that.
Feel free to use my steps for an easy and awesome finish for any paint project.
Pics!
see how nice and smooth it came out. Glass
its a little more aqua/torquise than it looks in the picture though.
I may try to re-paint it green if I can find the right color I like. the Aqua color looks amazing, but does not really go with the rest of my set up which is mostly green.
I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and I may either re-paint this one another color or use another case of the 4 I ordered and go a bit more wild with it.
And once again thanks to everyone who is involved in the contest/promotion and can't wait to see everyone else's amazing creations.
Oh, and here is my first attempt....
I took the case off one of my QFR's and noticed it looked kinda cool, but the PCB was still exposed a bit,
I was just going to use a black hex bolt to keep the base secured to the plate to keep it together and then use double sided tape to keep the plastic PCB cover on, but it just didn't really work out as I had hoped and just ended up with
a few bits of plastic. ( obviously I just blasted it with paint to see how it would kind of look after I decided it was a failure )