Carbonizing FirdMobile (My Notebook)
Yesterday I'm pretty much bored at home, while waiting for Bebe to finish her class, so I decided to do something. After a while I remembered that I've purchased quite some amount of carbon fiber sticker (a whole 300 x 45 cm worth of it). One part of the plan was to stick it on my notebook's display lid, because I don't like how the top part looked like (it is a cheapo-oem notebook, so the badge wasn't stick to properly, and it was at a wrong size. But I bought it anyways because it was a bargain)
After Googling around for people who have done such "mod" (short for modification in the geek's world of doom), I'm started to work on it. Don't worry, photos will be provided.
So here's the roll of the carbon fiber sticker that I bought the other day (it's a bargain RM12.00 by the way):
Then, I measured the length of the lid, the hinges and the gaps:
Like always, after the measurement process, we cut it according to the gaps and length. However, I only trim the hinges part, and left a lot of extras on top and sides of the lid, this will be useful later:
After that, insert the cut part in between the gaps of the lid and the hinges.
In order to secure the sticker location in place, I used masking tape on them (don't worry, it won't harm the screen or the surface):
Another shot from the other side:
Once the bottom part is secured, now time to pull the top part and secure it with masking tape. Notice that I have lined masking tapes flat on the display's edges. You will know why later:
Now, it's time to fit-test and make sure everything is smooth:
Now it's time to really stick the sticker onto the lid. I begin with the largest and easiest part - the top part of the lid itself. When doing the sides, having a hairdryer helps alot, mainly because this material will get very soft when heated up, and can be easily stretched across and molded into the shapes of the lid:
Earlier, I mentioned that I stick a masking tape around the sides of the display. This is so that the extras from the carbon fiber sticker (the glue is annoyingly strong) will stick on it, and can be easily trimmed (I used a paper cutter carefully to trim them) without possibly ruining the LCD display.
And after all that troublesome sticking and heating process, I now have the carbon-fiber look!
it looks super-cun. How durable is the layer? Will it come off with daily handling and use?
Fird: I've yet to know the answer for that. Don't worry I'll keep you posted. So far, it have been only sitting on my small little desk, and no real toughness-test have been done to it yet. I'm more worried about whether the notebook itself will survive the toughness test than the layer, really :p
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[...] Should anyone finds the notebook. I’ll give you 20% of my freelance fee as reward! The only picture of it that I have is on my ‘Carbonizing‘ post. Check it out! [...]