Preface: I have seen this mod pop up all over the internet, but I have only seen it done with larger crappy rolerball mice. Why can't I have a fan in my cool compact optical mouse I use everyday damnit!?! I can now. I warn anyone who wants to do this, it takes a LONG time and lots of patience. Only attempt to do this mod if you have experience with soldering irons and with a Dremel or simmilar rotary tool. Also, never use soldering guns on electronics, they leave a residual charge and will fry your hardware. Use a good 'ol soldering Iron and ROSIN CORE solder. If you use Acid Core I will smack you several times.
This is the vicim that will help me in my quest for cool palms and one sexy optical rodent. It is a generic 50mm processor fan. It is supposed to run at 12 volts, but a mouse draws a current of 5v. The fan will work, it will just spin much slower.
You don't need to remove the wire as you will want to cut them later anyhow, but I took them out so I could show my parents how the voltages worked before I soldered anything. LOL.
In order for the fan to fit inside the mouse, you are going to have to remove the frame. A cutting disk on my Dremel made quick work of this.
Here is the stud that I have glued in. As you can see, it is a pencil. LOL. I just needed something to hold the fan up from the surface of the mouse.
This is the drill bit I used to make the holes.
And this is me f%$#@!g up the mouse. That is sort of the design for my first plan, and according to momma it would have looked great if I had cleaned up the edges. I think not. Instead I used this one as a practice for the holes and got a new mouse of the same type the day after when I went into work. It is a $15 mouse, but I got if for $8 with my employee discount.
On my second mouse job I am applying the old saying, "Measure twice, cut once".
This is how I measured the holes. I first put masking tape down and drew a straight line. I then put a dot every 7mm. I used a thumbtack to push through the tape and just get a small indentation on the mouse. I then used a chisel like tool to make it just a little bit deeper.
I turned the Dremel on the lowest setting an got my starting holes.
These are the first three holes after being cut. You will want to go very slowly on the lowest speed and pull out the drill for about two seconds every couple of seconds. If you don't do this the plastic will start to melt and warp the mouse.
While I chill and plan out the rest of the mod, I cut the threading off of this screw. I then glued it to the center of my mouse. This way, it looks like the fan has been bolted to my mouse.
This is why it is incredibly cool to cut metal in the dark.
If you haven't gone too quickly and done everything right, this is how your holes should look.
This is a spanking new soldering bit I just tinned.
And this is what happnens when you touch the soldering iron. I new I was touching it too, I just didn't know it got quite that hot that quickly. It wasn't at full temperature though, I have gotten worse burns from the tips of hot glue guns.
A bandage and some Neosporin and I am back in action.
Evidently these smaller fans weren't meant to be tampered with. I desoldered the yellow wire, as we will not need it, but the red and black fell off. I sucked all the solder off and resoldered them myself. My solder actually held in place.
Here is the fan mounted in the mouse. I actually had to move it a little farther back than this, but this is what it should generally look like. To make the fan fit in such a small area I had to bend two capacitors. I shaved the brackets and removed the ones I could. I also had to sand down the LED some. Finally it all fit in.
For power I soldered the ends of the wires to the board. You will see that in the downloadable video at the bottom of the page. To find the the place to get voltage just touch the wires across from eachother on the board. The black one will always go on the North side if you are looking at the logo like you were to read text. The red wire will go at the southside. They will allways be directly across from eachother also.
Difficulty: Very Hard
Problems:
(1)Wires soldered to fan motor are poorly soldered. They will need resoldering.
(2)I had very little room to work with in my mouse. I had to bend and sand lots of things.
(3)Cutting holes is very time consuming. Had to buy another one and start over.
(4)Difficult to get wires out of the way.
Fan in action
