removing the ACER decal from the top of my laptop

Hello all,

I would like to know if anyone could tell me the best way of removing the silver decal "acer" from the top of my laptop. It doesn't pry off easily. Would a paint thinner work? Or would that destroy the rest of the finish?

Thanks for any input,
Kaspr

 

What is the lid of your laptop made of?
If you think that it is glued, try getting a hairdryer or heat gun on low setting to warm up the glue a bit before attempting to pry off the logo but be wary of melting or damaging surrounding areas.

 

Acer is awesome. They have something no other brand has - culture

But since you asked, I used a knife.

Spoiler

Please forgive the pet hair (and rust), it was unavoidable

 

Jesus. i was thinking of this yesterday, decided i'd go to this section of the forum to see if anyone else had attempted this, and BAM, this thread was right at the top of the page. bravo NBR, bravo.

of all the knives you had, only a rusty one would do??

Did it leave any scratches?

 

tried prying it off, first with a slot head screwdriver (jeweler sized), then a butcher knife. in both attempts i managed to scrape off the grooved texture of the acer logo, but i cant get the knife underneath the sticker. how did you do it? using the very end of the knife? i dont want to push into the lid hard because that might kill the screen...

 

Yep I only have a rusty on lol.

the butcher knife probably didn't work because it was too thick. I think you need something thin and decent tempered steel so you don't break the tip.
Mine might be different from yours, its an older lower end laptop I think. But I found that the left tip of the 'a' was somewhat raised over the surface of the lid.
I think what mostly did it was starting with the knife completely perpendicular to the lid and sort of shimmying it in under the letter slightly.

There is a problem with all of this however - the logo is built flat onto the lid because it sits on an indent. So even if you get it off, it will still say 'acer' it will just be black like the lid and look kinda like it was engraved there.

 

stick to the topic of how not why....

 

Thanks for the info.

Lt.Glare, did you manage to get your acer logo off?

 

sorry about the lateness of my reply. I certainly haven't yet. It looks like if i were to continue to use the knife I could shave the grooved texture of the acer logo off the lid and then only have a silver acer logo instead, but the amount of work to do this is extreme, not to mention an inordinate amount of time.

After much summoning of my courage, I tried a Dremel to see how well it would remove the logo. It works a little too well, and I lost my nerve after seeing how easily the Dremel could put a hole through the metal lid. This also nixed my idea of using sandpaper because if the sandpaper could get the logo off, i imagine it'd scratch the crap out of my metal lid too.

For now, I'm gonna order my custom sticker from Schtickers.com and when the sticker arrives ill take a second crack at this. Just not sure what dimensions I should ask for when I order the sticker. Is it best to order an inch too much? Assuming the sticker image wouldn't be affected from a little trimming.

 

If its held with glue use a heat gun to loosen up the glue and then peel it off.

 

So. I tried the dremel with the hardest, coarsest tip I had, and ran it up and down the logo trying to at least cut it down a tenth of a millimeter so that when I put a sticker on it, it wont have a Acer logo pushing through the sticker. The result was, in my opinion, failure. Although it did reduce the height of the Acer logo a little, it was also a very non-delicate procedure, and i missed quite a few times and hit the lid, scraping the black off of it. The logo looks this like now. Luckily, Since my plan is a sticker at some point, I'm not too concerned, but dammit, bad way to do it.


Oh well, this laptop is hopefully going to be the first laptop I don't resell after a year or two.

I don't have access to a heatgun, and I dunno if I feel comfortable putting a hair dryer to my laptop and cooking the lid until the sticker hopefully gets loose... if it is a sticker

 

Can anyone comment on the effectiveness of a hair dryer compared to a heat gun? Would a hair dryer just burn up the inside of the lid?

 

The 9 dollar 1500 watt heat gun I use to remove glue from surfaces gets alot hotter than any hair dryer I have seen. 500 to 1100 degrees.