Disassembling The Faceplate (tutorial), With a few painting tips Options

[Sloppy Fat Dump]

Finally I got around to make a tutorial for disassembling the 360 faceplate.

While making this tutorial... I slipped with one of my knifes and cut myself. It's pretty bad too. But, I hope everyone will benifit from it!



Here's my thumb after I cleaned it up. There's the exacto I slipped with.



Disassembling the Faceplate

First, we're going to start off with the stock MS faceplate.




Supplies:

• Exacto Knife (standard and chisel blades are perfect)
• Faceplate
• Hot Glue (for putting it back together)
• Careful hand (so you don't cut yourself like me )

This is the finished product. You can see all of my supplies and all the individual parts.


Removing Memory card slots A and B

The first step to removing everything is to take off your Memory card doors. It's pretty simple.


You can see there is one spring for each door. You need to remove them both.


You can use either your exacto or your bare finger to lift up each end of the spring over their holding spots. Make sure that you keep your finger on top of the coils when removing the second side.


Here's the first spring off.


Repeat the same thing on the second spring.


The second spring shown off.

Now, we have both springs off. We are now ready to take the physical doors off. You will see two noches that hold the back of the door "axil" in place. It's hard to show in a picture, but you will need to push the part of your faceplate down where the axils are. You will then need to push diagonaly on the actual axil on one side. Then, the doors pop right out!

Don't be scared, I'm just telling you exactly what to do so that you don't break it. You'll figure it out.


Here's the first memory card door. You can see that I popped out only one side. The other slide just slides out. See how it is diagonal? That's the direction I pushed when I removed it.



The first door off.


Both doors off.

Removing the USB Door

The USB door is kind of tricky. Do not use the same method on the USB door that we used on the memory card slot.


Here's what it looks like before we begin.


Begin by cutting away the "soldered" plastic on the metal part of the door. When you look at the solder joint, you will see that there are inscribed and circumscribed circles. Cut off the thin circumscribed spots on each side. There are two in total .


Once you get the melted plastic cut off the metal piece comes out. It also allows the spring and the door to come out.


The door and all the parts shown off.

Removing the Remote Component

This part gets kind of ugly. It's really tricky to cut off these "solder" joints because you can't get a good angle with your exacto.


Before you begin.


I spent a lot of time on this piece cutting with my standard exacto blade. DON'T USE IT.

I found that it is the easiest to just plainly cut off the solder joint all together. You can do this by shaving off layers of it on both sides with your chisel blade. It won't be a clean or simple job.


Just push on the main shaft of the component when you're finished cutting off those joints. The thing easily slides out.


The individual piece.




Now, you should be at this point with the doors out and the remote component removed.

Removing the Ring-of-light button

You want to be as careful as you possibly can be on this piece. It is a bitch. The ring consists of the actual button, a transparent plate, and four supports.


Here's the ring itself.


Begin by cutting each solder joint into a right angle. The 90 degree angle is facing the middle of the button and the remaining 270 degrees should be facing away from the middle.


Next, wedge your fat exacto chisel between the solder joint and the transparent board. You want to preserve as much of the solder joint as possible for reassembly. *It was on the last joint that I slipped with my knife *


The button then just pops out. You are then left with the four supports and the transparent board.


The transparent part easily can be pulled out because it is no longer secured. Make sure that you pull it straight up so that you don't break a support.


The button and transparent board removed.


Removing the Signal Component[/size]


After doing everything else this should be easy.


Just cut that melted circumscribed circle of plastic from the solder joint. Don't worry if your button splits at the end a little, it happened to me too. A little glue will fix it all up when you reassemble it.


Both solder joints cut.


All the parts out.




Does this picture look familiar to you?


Yay! Now you can paint all the individual parts !

Painting the Power button


There is a great painting tutorail you can find here in the F.A.Q. The only thing that I can contribute is how to paint your power button!

I went to my local hobby shop to figure out how I was going to mask that pesky power symbol. I was talking to the owner and I got a few suggestions. Masking solution (too chalky and expensive), Ultra thin tape (not thin enough), and to just scratch out the paint when I was finished (too ghetto).

So I purposed an idea... Rubber cement. The owner, Joey, nearly killed himself because he was outsmarted by a kid (I'm 17 and he's nearly 80).

Here's what you need:

• Rubber cement
• Fine Brush

You can get the brush and Rubber cement for about $5.


Here's what we start with.


Paint as thick or as thin of layer of cement as you would like.


If you're not the most skilled painter, you can touch up with an exacto after the rubber cement dries. My layer was so thin that it's barley noticable to my camera. *btw, any1 know how to take better close ups? I got a 4 mega pixal camera that takes shitty close ups *


Well, anyways... Happy painting!

Your friend,
Sloppy Fat Dump