Has anyone painted an optical drive?

I have a silver case (Antec Super LANBOY) and a silver optical drive (NEC 3540A DVD burner in silver). I want another optical drive, either CD-RW, DVD-ROM, or preferably, a combo drive. The problem is I can't find any cheap, silver, combo drives.

In my old PC, I have a combo drive that would be perfect for watching DVDs and burning CDs (to minimize the usage of the DVD burner) and would be great for CD-to-CD copying. The problem is that it's beige, which looked just fine in my old PC.

I'm now thinking of either brush painting or spray painting the outside face plate of this combo drive so that it will look nice and pretty when I install it on my new silver PC. Has anyone every brush/spray painted an optical drive before? If so, could you provide some tips? Thanks in advance.

Yes, there is an example of someone painting their optical drive... lemme dig up the link.

Linky to some [H]ardforum goodness

A guy in my office took a cue from that poster and did the same thing to his. His results were just as impressive.

drive faces are easy enuff to paint, just remove them from the drive before you paint them. I've painted 4 of them using Krylon Fusion and have had good results with no surface prep of any kind.

Thanks for the replies. I didn't even realize that Bullitt had replied (nice pic of that modded Shuttle, BTW) until I got the e-mail notification of Mr45's reply. Anyway, to make a long story short, I attacked this project over Labor Day weekend and am happy to report success. I pulled off the CD-RW/DVD-RW combo faceplate (bezel) and spray painted it. The silver is a bit shinier than my case or the stock silver NEC 3540A DVD burner I bought, but it matches much better than beige would've. I'll provide some links to pictures below that I took w/ my camphone.

On my old PC:

Before I painted my CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, this is what the faceplate (bezel) looked like.

After I painted that combo drive and reinstalled it on my old PC (temporarily), this is what the faceplate (bezel) now looks like.

On my new PC:

Picture #1

Picture #2

Picture #3

(Ignore the red in that last pic since it's a reflection of a greeting card I have on a nearby wall. )

I sand them with 300 grit before painting to remove that bubbly plastic texture, then spray on the base color with the 94c walmart rattlecans.


Paint has been holding up for two years now.

Btw, the rattlecan job on my cars roof is now going into its 2nd year. Its holding up great, hasnt faded. I used light blue rustoleum on it.

For the lazy, you can also use a silver paint pen if you don't want to have to take the drive out/bezel off for your coloring.

uzor said:

For the lazy, you can also use a silver paint pen if you don't want to have to take the drive out/bezel off for your coloring.

Click to expand...

Where do they sell those? Also, wouldn't the strokes from the pen be more noticeable than a spray paint job?

beowulf7 said:

Where do they sell those? Also, wouldn't the strokes from the pen be more noticeable than a spray paint job?

Click to expand...

You should be able to find them at somewhere like Michael's or maybe another art/craft or fabric store. As for the pen strokes, yes to some degree. I found, though, that rubbing the drive with a kleenex after it had dried sorta "buffed" the pen marks out. Ghetto, maybe, but it worked for me.

Here's a pic:

uzor said:

You should be able to find them at somewhere like Michael's or maybe another art/craft or fabric store. As for the pen strokes, yes to some degree. I found, though, that rubbing the drive with a kleenex after it had dried sorta "buffed" the pen marks out. Ghetto, maybe, but it worked for me.

Here's a pic:

Click to expand...

Not bad at all. Like my paint work, yours did the job and definitely improved the appearance from the stock beige color in a silver case.