[TUTORIAL] Pimp your Desire HD!

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Tarhaomenapuu

Senior Member
Sep 5, 2012
68
5
im going to do taht but i cant descide:

-Black and gold grills, pover button etc.

-dark brown and balck pices

-full balck
could u help me? maybe with a render...
 

haerigrek

Senior Member
Feb 28, 2011
264
51
Ryki
I'm currently trying this, but I have to wait till next week for the chemical furnace to take the paint off and put a new one, they are currently doing metalic silver with additional layer of transparent paint. That would be way to thick a layer of paint and next week they promised to make the matte black (they are currently missing come chemical compound if the paint) and I'll try black cover with red elements :D Will post pictures once done :D Keep fingers crossed, for now I successfully took the phone apart and put it back together :D
 
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haerigrek

Senior Member
Feb 28, 2011
264
51
Ryki
Hi guys, I finally started modding my DHD, I had a few problems and there are still some elements that need to be redone (paint peeled off) but in overall I think it looks cool :D
thumbnails

MORE PICS The back is all matte black (powder paint) and all the elements are sprayed "Ferrari Red" :D Sorry for bad quality pics but I took them with Xperia X10 mini pro. In reality the red really stands out, on pics it look a bit faded.
 
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imdecoding

Member
Aug 6, 2012
18
4
Bogotá
www.soundcloud.com
Looks really cool, im thinking in doing something similar, just curious, what paint did you use? did you use some base paint for the aluminum part? because i think that the paint is scratching because it doesnt have a base coating.
 

haerigrek

Senior Member
Feb 28, 2011
264
51
Ryki
Thanks, the aluminium element was cooked and sandwashed, then I used black powder paint, you have to be careful though because inside there is a tiny hole for a screw. You have to watch not to paint it over because powder paint is fairly thick and you could fill the hole with it. No base paint needed, sandwashing gives you a texture so the powder paint sticks and holds well, it doesn't fall off the black element but the red ones. All other elements (grills, volume rockers, power button, battely and simcard covers) are painted with red spray carpaint. You have to be careful with it as well, you need to add a very thin layer of translucent paint over the color to prevent the paint from falling off. I didn't do that and have to redo all the buttons, paint is coming off. You can't sand those elements because they are either too small or plastic and sanding would destroy them. With spray paint you have to put thin layers and only few of them (2-3) because every layer of paint makes the element thicker and in consequence the whole phone will be harder to put back together.
 

haerigrek

Senior Member
Feb 28, 2011
264
51
Ryki
I didn't, they fell off during sanding and I never put them back. The letters were glued into carved forms so I just painted the forms over and I got a nice result. If you want o play more with it you might try painting the letters yourself but the original aluminium letters will be gone during sanding. You may also try to take them off gently prior to sanding, I didn't do that so I don't know how to do that safely.
 

haerigrek

Senior Member
Feb 28, 2011
264
51
Ryki
one day, two days tops. The spray paint needs some time to dry so it's good to start painting in the morning and after you put all the coats of paint you plan, leave everything to dry overnight. Powder paint dries within few minutes.
 
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  • 55
    Hey guys,

    I've seen the chromed Desire HD on the XDA front page and thought it was totally awesome. So i did it with my own phone too, but i wanted something extra, so i've also painted some stuff.

    And maybe some more people want to do it but don't know how.. That's the reason i've made this short tutorial :D

    And also post your own results in this topic :D

    Let's start the pimping:


    First up is removing this little sticker and pull out the volume button thingy with some tweezers or a small screwdriver
    1.jpg




    The next step is removing the GPS antenna. This is the small rubber piece that also holds the plastic glass for the dual LED's.
    This is a hard piece to remove and i don't have pictures of this procedure. But i think the best way is to carefully open/push away the 8 plastic pins on the sides of the rubber with a sharp stanley knife. I started at the top and went round the entire think. Slowly it will pop out of the body.



    Then you have to remove 5 screws with a small skrewdriver thing. I tried some of mine until one fitted. Don't know witch size it is exactly.
    2.jpg




    After you've removed the 5 screws you can carefully remove the body from the phone. You have to tilt it a little bit because the light sensor (the most right dot at the side of the speaker grill) is a little bit sunk into the body.
    3.jpg




    The next step is to remove all the small little pieces from the aluminium piece.
    The camera cover has 4 little metal taps that you have to fold a little bit to the inside, then it will fall out of the body.
    The other 3 things are easily to remove, their held in place with some double sticky tape stuff.
    4.jpg




    Now it's time to sand the thing until you've got the result you want. I didn't want to have it really shiny so i stopped when i got a nice brushed look. But if you want to have it shine you just have to keep sanding (up to grid 2500).
    I've started with a sandpaper with grid size 200. After all the paint was gone i've wet sanded with 400 and after that 800. These are my results:
    5.jpg




    When i was sanding i noticed the HTC logo letters were falling out :p
    I removed them. After the sanding I've painted them black with a very fluid paint so it will fill up the gap nicely. The excess paint you can easily sand away with grid 800.
    6.jpg




    In the meantime when the paint had to dry i roughened up the surface of the small pieces and prepared them fore a paint job.
    7.jpg





    After two layers of standard spray paint (color mat traffic red) i noticed i didn't like the red speaker grill. It was just ugly. So i've sanded the paint off of the piece and painted it black :)
    8.jpg




    The next step would be to glue the small pieces back on the body. I don't know exactly what glue it was. But it's glue that is pretty fluid and dries up pretty quickly. The English translation would be 'secondglue' :p but i don't know that's the right description ^^


    9.jpg


    10.jpg




    Have fun modding your Desire HD and show me your results :D :cool:


    Regards, Bas ;)
    3
    Hi guys, I finally started modding my DHD, I had a few problems and there are still some elements that need to be redone (paint peeled off) but in overall I think it looks cool :D
    thumbnails

    MORE PICS The back is all matte black (powder paint) and all the elements are sprayed "Ferrari Red" :D Sorry for bad quality pics but I took them with Xperia X10 mini pro. In reality the red really stands out, on pics it look a bit faded.
    2
    wow very nice!!
    but if ill do it, i know ill kill my phone :p
    2
    My pimpin

    here is my work.

    only broken thing is me thumb and my volume down key :laugh:

    i used 400, 320, 200 sandpaper, standart sprey paint and some glue to re-attach buttons to cover shell..

    sanding is the most diffiuclt part of all.
    2
    Google still has em:
    http://goo.gl/k67bQ
    first 4-5 pics.