Many people have asked me to write a guide how to paint their laptop like I did with mine. It took me a few months before I wrote this.
This is the laptop when it was new. It looked almost the same right before I painted it.
The first thing to do is to separate the chassis and the electronics.
The easiest way to do this is to follow a service manual. My AOpen 1551 is the same base chassis as used by Dell in their m700 - and Dell has their service manuals online.
This is the empty bottom of the chassis.
The motherboard of the AOpen 1551.
This is the paint that I used. From the left:
Metallic Green Paint (54,90 kr at Biltema in Sweden)
Gray primer (39,90 kr)
Crackeluring black paint (54,90 kr)
Clear varnish (39,90 kr)
Before starting to paint the chassis must be absolutely clean and if possible try to use a fine sandpaper.
The next thing is to add the primer. I did two layers with a 15 minutes waiting time between the coatings.
Then start with the green paint.
Paint about three layers of green paint. Wait about 15 minutes between each coating.
In the lower right corner of the first picture you can se my test subject. It's an old power supply. I tried different thickness of black paint and different varnish styles. This is a must
since no paint is the other like.
Before adding the black paint the surface has to be as smooth as possible. The metallic paint is not very smooth when dried. To smoothen the surface you can use sandpaper. But since the
chassis has few large surfaces I used varnish instead. I used two coatings of varnish with a 15-30 min drying time between the coatings.
Now it's time to add the black paint. It is VERY important to get an even thick layer of black paint. If the paint is thickened the cracks gets bigger and if the paint is thin the the
crachs are small. The cracks also get small if the surface is not absolutely smooth. Use only one layer of black paint, otherwise the cracks will fill. I decided not to paint the
bottom of the laptop. I wanted the base to be as bright as possible. It often looks very nice when the light being reflected under the device is brighter. As you can see I also wrote
down the vital information which was written onto the chassis. I wrote down the exact model number and polarity, current and voltage required by the charger.
After about 30 minutes the black paint is dry. Then it is time to add the final varnish. I added as many coats as I could. I ran out of paint after 3 layers. I focused on the parts which
would be worn the most.
This is the final result of the painting. You should wait a day or two before putting the laptop together. I waited too short and made some marks in the painting. Since there are so many
layers of paint the paint dries very slowly. It will take a week for the paint to fully dry.
