remove led, drill holes in the inner shell and partially remove that fence-like red plastic going round the bottom
should reduce it's weight quite a lot

if you travel to space it becomes weightless

try that

have u tried working out?

You came to right forum mate.
Here is someone's Mx518 drill holes.

http://uploadpic.org/storage/originals/l2djjj...339ssn.jpg

My advice is change cord. Use braided cable will reduce weight like 20 grams. Get if from your other mice which you might have.

I don't recommend removing LED it may malfunction your mouse.

Drill some hole at bottom or cut out square like this guy has done with G5

http://i34.tinypic.com/k0rl1t.jpg

GL and let us know how you modified it.

If that G5 really weights only about 80g, he made a really good job.
In my experience with the DA, there is not much weightreduction possible, even with cutting.

That's a little discouraging... the DA has onboard flash, DPI switches etc. Hopefully the IME's weight is more a design choice than a necessity.... Most people don't like hollow and light, at least from a 'this seems to have good build quality' point of view'

I'm the phantom driller!

You can actually take a fair bit of weight off, what's better is you actually weaken the chassis too so the mouse can flex and change positon depending on your grip.

I'm not sure if you can do the same thing to a MS one (to this degree as there are holes under the plastic too-and in almost everywhere possible without ruining the way it works)

I greatly admire your work. :D It looks pretty cool as well.

I've just bid on some IME's on ebay to be my test subjects. I'll try and hold off until they I have a couple of backups, so I probably won't open one up for a week or so.

Getting to 80 grams is a LOT of weight reduction. I'd be happy just getting rid of 10 grams, if it's straightforward. I have an A4tech x710 - after removing the weight inside, which is something like 18 grams, it felt much lighter.

Thanks for the responses guys, especially the pics of mice on a diet.

I don't expect a weight reduction to make me play any better, but mods are fun. And If it's a bit more comfortable for a day long L4D2 session, that's perfect.

It looks like the inner shell really is ripe for reduction. I'm about to bid on some 2nd hand 3.0s on ebay - I'd like a spare before surgery in case I kill my precious.

I don't have any braided cable but it's a nice idea. Maybe I could even do it myself to the 4 USB wires. For my WMO I just removed the plastic on the cord and spaced out strips of tape to hold the copper strands together. It's ghetto but feels like air compared to the usual stiff cord. I'd love to add a decent Omron left mouse switch to that one, but I'm not sure if it's the right size. WMO has tiny square microswitches.

try DA and return back to 3.0. After that u won't be complaining about 3.0 weight anymore ;)

well i tried the DA and went back to my wmo because i tought i was playing with a cement bag on my hand

Ok, so a quick update. I opened up my IME to fix the scroll wheel. At the same time I tried to measure the weight of the inner shell using a ruler and coins. I get something like 28+-4 grams. There's actually a lot of unnecessary plastic there. Most of the weight is the PCB and bottom. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get 10-15 grams from the whole thing quite easily.

First I need another IME to compare it to afterwards, though :D

Done some weight reduction to my Deathadder.

Removed the LED's, cut off some material from the shell, and got rid of the paint i once applied.

Before 106g, after 101g

http://www.imagebanana.com/album/tue402c4/

You can see the different shells of rev.2 and rev.3, where rev.3 is not so good to cut off material, while it was also heavier in the first place.

so you ruined a mouse for 5g less. nice work.

ruined?
I got the maximum out of it.

Standard DA 3G already had best shape (for my taste) and sensor already.

Mine now has those features aswell:

-reduced weight (rev.3 would even weight 112g!)
-rubber sides
-more flexible cable
-really low LOD due to red-LED

Idiot is idiot gnihihi

srsly guys... when I read this thread I really don't know wether I should cry or laugh. the one guy fools around with drilling holes in his mouse and the next one ruins his 50€-mouse to make it 5% lighter. can't belive it... and now please don't tell me you can feel the difference and your aim has improved lol.

ur right, u dont know...