Stainless-Steel Mousepad

[LordNova2]

Materials/tools needed:

-304 Stainless Steel 3/16" thick (No. 2B finish)
(304 SS Chemical Formula: Fe, <0.08% C, 17.5-20% Cr, 8-11% Ni, <2% Mn, <1% Si, <0.045% P, <0.03% S)

-60-100 grit glass-beads

-Scotch-Brite™ Surface Conditioning Belt, 3 1/2 in x 15 1/2 in A VFN
3M Id : 61-5001-6022-3
GTIN(UPC/EAN) : 0 00 48011 93075 6

-Abrasive Flap Disc 947D, 4 1/2 in x 7/8 in 80 X weight
3M Id : 60-4400-9787-5
GTIN(UPC/EAN) : 0 00 51111 61189 0



Contamination-
Some abrasives contain carbon and or oxides, the uses of such abrasives can contaminate the surface of stainless steel causing it to rust. The above listed 3M products (Scotch-Bright A VFN, and Flap Disc 947D) do not contain any such

contaminants, as well as any new glass-bead abrasives.
To avoid cross-contamination, never use abrasives after it has bead used on other metals (particularly steel), as small amounts of particals will become imbedded in the surface of your stainless steel work piece and rust. To avoid this

simply use new abrasives, and if you have any doubts that it might be contaminated use new abrasives.




First I sheered a 12.25 x 9.625 x 0.1875 piece of stainless steel

STEP 1:
-Obtain a piece of Stainless steel, no thinner than 7ga or warping will occur during sand-blasting.
-Don't be afraid to get creative by using a plasma or laser cutter and make a custom shape for your mouse pad, just make sure you have a big enough range for your mousing area and for your mouse. However try to avoid long or thin

extruding points as they may warp during blasting.
-Economically it is best to get the metal in a 2B finish, a good quality 2B with no scratches is best, minor scratches will occur while handling the material however they should not affect the quality of mousing area. But deep scratches

will show up after blasting and may affect the quality mousing area.




Next I shaped the corners with a 80 grit belt-sander and debured it, you can also use a 4.5" or 9" 80 grit Flap disc to do this as well. You can use anything from 80-120 grit for this, 80 grid will cut in nicely ware 120 will give you a

smoother finish with more time spent on grinding.

STEP 2:
-Remove all sharp edges, burs, and slag as blasting cam make them sharper and or give them a jagged cutting edge. Unless you’re an emo there is no point in slashing your wrist when you operate your mouse.
-It is best to use new abrasives that do not contain carbon or you will contaminate the mouse-pad. If you use abrasives that have been used on steel or contain carbon you may have rusting problems in that area of the mousepad later on

down the road.
-You can easily use a 4.5" grinder with a flap disc to shape corners and debur sharp edges instead of a belt sander.Just becarefull not to gouge the material.




Then I blasted the mouse pad to give a good texture for high DPI movement reading.

STEP 3:
-Use 60-100 grit glass beads, a finer grit mix will not leave rough enough impressions for polishing.
-If you are not familiar with the procedure of blasting metal, the small particals bombarding the metal will "stress-relieve" the metal and it will return to its "natural shape", so some warping will occur. To straighten the mosuepad

back out just blast the other side, you may need to play around with this technique a little bit before you can get it to go flat again.
Don’t fret too much because you probably will never get it perfectly flat again, mine is not flat either but fairly close. I ended up placing a rag under my pad to stop it from wobbling, plus I also used 10ga plate instead of 7ga.
-Due to contamination issues from other metals as well as the fact that glass beads break into smaller particals changing the grit size, it is best to just use new.




Finally I used a 3.5" Dynastright with an A VFN Scotch-Bright belt to smooth off the rough sand blasted surface to create a smooth surface for the mouse to glide along.

STEP 3:
-Polish the blasted surface until it feels smooth for the mouse to effortlessly glide over, test with your mouse occasionally glide and response. Too little polishing and the rough texture will abrais the skids on your mouse, too much

and erratic movement will appear when operating the mouse (quality of the mice will differ on how far you can go with a polish, also a laser mouse will handle a smoother finish better than an optical mouse will). You will have to build

your mouse-pad specific to the mouse you are using.
-Be sure to fully clean the dust off the surface before testing with the mouse as any particals of grindings will scratch the skids.
-The big key is take your time to keep a uniform finish on the mousing area by making full smooth passes across the entire work piece.




You may also further customize your mousepad by laser-etching a design name or logo into the pad after it is completed.
You can also mill a design name or logo after the pad is completed.
Before you blast you can lay down a blasting stencil of a design name or logo. If you do this I would recommend getting the realy good quality 2B plate with protective film on it, and do not remove the film until prior to blasting, as

even minor scratches will become impossible to buff out without defecting the mousing area in Step-3.

The above alterations can affect the quality of the mousing surface so keep such alterations out of the mousing area.





Maintenance:

-You can optionally apply a thin coat of mineral oil or air-tool oil with a cloth for a fluid like glide before a gaming session.

-When cleaning remember this mousepad is almost scratch-proof, using scotch-bright or steel wool can and may affect the quality of the mousing surface. Use a brush or cloth to clean with and you will get a long lasting life out of your

surface. You can always use the back side to test any questionable effects of cleaning utensils. Your best bet would be to throw it in the dish-washer if you have one.

-for stuck on grime stainless can handle a mild soap to just about any industrial cleaner/sanitizer on the market at full concentrated strength. If you do use an industrial cleaner/sanitizer, remember to take the proper safety

precautions while handling it, they tend to be corrosive and acidic in nature.

-Keep clean from rough abrasive debris such as sand and dirt as this will grind into the skids scratching them, as well as add scratches to the mousing area over time.

[Sir MMPD Radick]

where did ya find that info from? sounds interesting for a project

[LordNova2]

It is actually of my design, it is a step-by-step process of how I built the mouse pad. It took me awhile to find a method that actually worked, at first I tried a small piece that I polished to a mirror finish, this lead to erratic/spontaneous mouse movement. If I were to smoothly move the mouse across the surface to the left it would jiggle a little bit then shoot straight up, stop and jiggle some more and then shoot off over in the opposite direction. Really weird and erratic results.
Then I tried just polishing it down with the scotch bright abrasives, looked like a "brushed" finish but a far smoother finish then a No. 4 finish. I still had some problems with erratic movement with this finish, once in awhile if you when in sync with the grain my laser mouse would act up, but the results with an optical mouse was still horrible.
Finally I tried blasting it then going over it with the scotch bright to smooth down the surface and eliminate its abrasive properties, this in turn gave me a surface that worked awesome with laser mice and optical mice. I donor think the optical mice picked up much of an advantage on this mouse pad, however if your spending this much time and money on a mouse pad I would presume your doing this to cmplement a high-performance $40-$70 laser mouse.
I had seen allot of mouse pads online that have special high-DPI surfaces made out of plastic glass and aluminum and they all had equal complaints about the musing area wearing out over the course of 6 months to a year with heavy gaming. The plastic would become scratched and wore down in areas making a 'sticky spot', the aluminum ones seemed to have the same problem. The ones made out of glass did all right as long as you did not drop them or drop anything on them, they seemed to have an overwhelming problem with breaking and chipping (sometimes coming this way out of the package).
I have had this thing for almost two years now and just managed to finally ware into the surface a bit. and over this time I only use about half the surface area on my mouse pad since the other half sits my ashtray and drink. I can feel the difference in the surface if I remove the ashtray and drinks from the other side and use that area, the difference in the areas is not so much a "sticky" spot but more of a distracting rough-terrain vibration that makes you look down and see what's going on. However since I never use that side/area due to the calibration of my mouse not requiring me to go over that far on the mouse pad, I turned it into the designated "coaster-zone" so it never gets used at al anymore for a mousing surface. Even with my 1920x1200 desktop resolution (as well as games) I only use about 1/4 of the surface area on a 12.25x9.625" surface (it is more like 1/10th when you count only the area the laser travels on).
Which brings me to another reason why I went out and made this mouse pad, I had been using allot of the typical old style " 8-8.5 x 7-7.5" format cloth covered rubber foam just was not doing it for me anymore in surface area as well as durability, within 6-12 months I can get a good area at the bottom ware the cloth lifts and curls from the rubber. As well with all the new improvements to higher resolutions and widescreen monitors required larger and wider mouse pads. I wish I could find my old SLP mouse pad that I used for about 1.5 years, not only did lift an area of about 1.5" of the cloth up at the bottom, but wore down the rubber foam behind it, and in the middle the image which was almost too dark to see when brand new was fading to white. But I am sure everyone here knows what I am referring too when it comes to wearing out these mouse pads, most everyone here came from the days ware all we had was track-ball mice, which required a surface to grip the ball and turn it. And the only alternative were those stationary track-ball mice ware you rolled the ball around with your fingers to move the mouse.

[Pepsi-Wolf]

I might actually want one..

[Cyril]

wouldn't it be easier to use 316L
and then bring the polish down with blasting or abrasives?


plus i would need the wrist pad
I have some 302 plate, that i i might try this with
i could just cut out the shape for the wrist pad, and use the mouse pad as a base.
I have some really good industrial glue i could use to make sure they don't slide on each other.


in the pic,,,i was noticing the ashtray,,,you make that too? looks like it is metal


you said "sheer" what did you use?

[LordNova2]

316L or A4 is an extra low carbon grade alloy of Stainless Steel, jewelers like it because it is easy to work with and it does not tarnish. However I do not see how changing the alloy compositions will help you out much in this project. The 304 alloy that I referred to was on the low/economy end of ISO standards for "Food-Grade" stainless steel, this was commonly found off the rack and in the scrap-bin at my last place of employment
FYI: When we worked with Stainless projects at work, we normally uses a variation of No2 (sometimes 2B with plastic film on it to get a better scratch-free surface to start, and No.0 or 1 for the thick stuff. And we always sent our projects in to be sand-blasted to cover up any grinding marks and small scratches, basically to give the customer a nice sexy looking finished project. (this was one of the things our company prided itself in, was a picture-perfect looking product when we were finished.) However we would polish down by hand to give a No.4 finish to parts that needed to meet this specs in Food-Grade applications.
In actuality you could make this out of just about any metal you wanted to, as long as you kept up with regular and proper maintenance I do not see why you cannot get away with making this out of mild-steel without rusting issues.

It sounds like you are referring to a No.7(reflective) or No.8(mirror finish). You could try this, but if you're buying the materials No.8 finish is a costly finish that can easily double and triple the price of the material. Personally I would try experimenting with a No.9 finish (Bead Blasted) and then polishing it down. Usually you can sand-past and polish your material cheaper yourself than buying it from the mill this way.
The best advice I can give you is if you have an idea for doing this another way, give it a try and see what happens.


I think the new metal mouse pad would be heavy enough to stay put on the old mouse pad, unless it is one of those slick-plastic surfaced mouse pads them you might need to glue it down. You could remove the wrist pad and affix it to the new mouse pad too.


http://humboldtfabrications.com/images/large7.jpg
As for the Sheer we had a large Piranha sheer (you can see the corner of it on the left of the image, and yes they hooked the hydraulic system up from the sheer to test-run the project in the picture), it would accept up to 12 foot wide sheet, you could go as thick as 1/2" for mild steel and 3/8" for stainless using the "full width" (8ft or longer). Anything after that and you were gambling with the risk of breaking the blades, which can make you a very unpopular person for the rest of the week.
If you are good you can just cut our your piece with a 4" cut off wheel, or you can take your circular saw (exercise extreme caution with this one) and remove the guard and place in a cutting wheel for metal. You can also use a plasma cutter if you do not mind the grinding, or if you know of a place where you can get it done with a robotic laser cutter (or water-jet cutter for a better result) you could bring the specs into them and have them do it as well.
For those of you not so keen on your metallurgy you cannot cut through stainless steel with an Oxy-Acetylene torch, you can place a thin sheet of mild steel over the stainless and the molten slag will get hot enough to cut through the stainless but you then contaminate your stainless steel.
Actually you can cut through some stainless alloys with Oxy-Acetylene, it will take a long time and you will warp the material badly. You will also discolor the material enough that polishing and sand-blasting will not take it out.



Yes the ash-tray is made out of aluminum, when I took an industrial arts class we had two projects we had to make out of casting aluminum, the one everyone had to do was make a replica of a small vice in the shop (and it is a handy little thing for soldering small wires). For the second project we had to make a template out of styrofoam, I had no idea what to make at the time so I decided to make little dish (figured I could throw little screws and such in it when I took something apart), then when I started smoking I found out it made a great ash-tray.

[LordNova2]

UPDATE: New high-end mice....
I have recently gotten one of those new fancy Cyborg R.A.T.7 mice, which as some of you know has dual 5,600DPI lasers for tracking.|
So far this pad seems to do great with tracking... ...Until it gets dirty. Even though I cannot see any dirt in the mousing area I still get erratic results, the results verry from erratic mouse movement to the pointer creeping across the screen when the mouse is not moving at all.
I am still trying to figure this one out since it throws me off when the pointer moves and the mosue is not. I know with some of the optical mice I had issues with shiney surfaces vs laser when I was playing arround with this mouse-pad idea. However the surface seems to reflect more light off it when it is clean, and even more when it has a fresh coat of oil. But yet the shinier surface after being clens and or oiled give better mousing results? Hmmm....

So basically as long as you keep the pad cleaned you will do all right with the new high-end laser mice.



As a side-none on the RAT7 vs the mousepad, I have an almost-mirror finish pice of stainless I polished up. It is polished to the point ware you could use the thing to shve with, but still has enough grain from polishing with the sand-paper to slightly distort the image.
It will track against the grain, but it is not the greatest responsce with tracking against the grain. And forget about tracking with the grain, because there is none. I did not expect it to perform verry good on this test, but I figured it would have out-done my Logitech G5 by attempting to track with the grain.
So, we are still waiting on a mouse technology to track on a mirror like surface.


And on a note on the mousepad itself, sewing machin oil works just as good as the miniral oil. That is if you can handle the smell of petroleum oils. Personally most petroleum smells turn me on, is that normal?