I LOVE the Mighty Mouse. So much that I pre-ordered 3 of them when they first came out. I'm so used to the scroll ball I can't stand any other mice.
The problem is, they don't stay "healthy" for long. The scroll ball got stuck a month later and it was really annoying. I searched for articles on Apple's web site but the advice they gave (wiping it using a cloth) just didn't help. So I decided to crack it up and perform a major clean up.
I didn't know if it would work. But honestly, if the scroll ball didn't work anymore I would throw it away anyway, so I had nothing to lose.
So yeah, with the help of 3!66op I torn it apart and here are the pix that I took -
Step 1
Open the mighty mouse using a letter-opener, you're gonna hear some weird clicking noises and it sounds like it's gonna break, but don't worry about it, you mouse is going useless if you can't clean the scroll ball anyway.
Keep pushing the opener between the upper case and the side buttons. You probably won't be able to tear it apart just from pushing on one side, so repeat the process on both side buttons.
Step 2
When the gap between the case and the side buttons become wide enough (the side buttons aren't gonna fall out, so don't push too hard. Just produce a wide gap would do), use the letter-opener to remove the "ring".
Step 3
And there you go... it looks complicated to me....
Open it up carefully. There's is a tiny plug connecting the upper and lower parts of the mouse, just unplug it and you'll be able to open up the mouse completely.
hahahahaha... that's coz my hands get sweaty all the time, plus I spend very long hours using the computer, that's why I got dirts all over the scroll ball and the hole...
but I don't really mind it, even if I have to buy a new one every 3 months, I'm still gonna stick to the mighty mouse, it's just so comfortable to use and it looks great with my mac ;)
Nicely done! Pictures are great and the best part is: No one's posted anything like this on the web yet! Goes well with my earlier video review of the Mighty Mouse when it first came out (See http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=300) :P
I was thinking about making a video of me cracking the mighty mouse open, but I'm just too lazy... if I'm getting 1000 hits on this topic I might consider doing it... hehehehehe :p
I really appreciate your comment Kevin, btw, is it ok for me to reveal that you've actually gone the distance to sign up an account here just to comment on my post? ;)
I like your blog too, great work, it's ranking high on my subscribed RSS feeds !
I was thinking about making a video of me cracking the mighty mouse open, but I'm just too lazy... if I'm getting 1000 hits on this topic I might consider doing it... hehehehehe :p
I really appreciate your comment Kevin, btw, is it ok for me to reveal that you've actually gone the distance to sign up an account here just to comment on my post? ;)
I like your blog too, great work, it's ranking high on my subscribed RSS feeds !
just checked... this topic has gotten >1200 hits so far... guess i'll HAVE TO do a video version then.....
Ok folks, thanks for that surgery but heres what I do for mine. Take some isopropyl alcohol, head cleaner video head cleaner whatever. UNPLUG your mouse, really thats volts in there! drop two drops onto that squity wee ball, rotate furiously and hard upside down whatever, repeat, and again, then again. Leave it to DRY, REALLY, theres volts in there. I take no responsibility for fried mice ( mmm tasty ). Works for mine every time, only problem is the durn thing is now an alcoholic ;)
I just took my MM apart. It was quite different from yours. The circuit board and scroll ball are the same, but the plugs are different (both of mine are ribbon cable thingees), the two halfs of my mouse shell are hinged, and most importantly my "ring" is a very different design. Bad news is that I can't get the thing back together. BEWARE trying this trick at home. (BTW, I'm actually a pretty handy guy).
you may want to add a warning that SOME mighty mouses came from the factory with a hinged rear-portion and a grey "ring" that cannot be put back on once removed. The grey ring is actually bonded to the bottom of the upper case, look like after the hinges were snapped on. My mouse works great now (thanks for the cleaning tip) but I had to tear off the bottom ring because it wouldn't go back on. works just as well, but it looks GHETTO.
Thanks for the hot tip, keep up the good work. Curiosity killed the mouse!
BTW, altho I said I would do a video version once this post got 1000 hits and it's actually getting >3000 hits now... I'm just too lazy to do it.... so.... i guess the pix are good enough.... :p
Thank you! worked like a charm, except its now sans gray bit like everyone else. the newer models seem to have a slightly different gray ring, which is stuck rather than clipped on. super glue in the corners sorts it but it will be a pain next time it goes. You can also take the roller ball housing apart, unclip each side of the white clip covering the ball, then you can get to the magnetic roller wheels and clean them too!
WHENEVER I HAVE PROBLEMS WITH THE TRACKBALL I USE COTTON TIGES MOISTURED (REAL WET) WITH ALCOHOL. THEN JUST STRIPE IT AND ROLL IT OVER THE TRACKBALL AND AFTER A FEW TIMES ROLING SOME DIRT WILL COME OUTTA TRACKBALLCASE.
DEPENDING ON HOW DIRTY UR TRACKBALL IS U GONNA HAVE TO DO IT A FEW TIMES.
ALCOHOL IS DOING A GOOD JOB BECAUSE IT CAN SOLVE FAT VERY GOOD AND THIS IS WHAT MAKES THE BALL NOT WORKING WELL.
BUT DON'T USE PARFUMES OR MEDICAL ALCOHOL WHICH HAS TOO MUCH WATER.
USE 97% ISOPROPANOL ALCOHOL ,IT'S NOT TOXIC AND U CAN GET FROM THE PAHRMACIE.
I DO IT EVERY ONCE IN WHILE AND AFTER THAT MY MOUSE IS LIKE THE FIRST DAY.
Take it from someone who has taken a few of Apple's weirdest designs apart, iMacs, 9600s, 7200s etc; some little plastic clip thingy that you couldn't see nearly always breaks.
Seriously, no seriously, don't take your Mickey Mouse apart, just get it on the *good stuff* I'm seriously scrolling mine right now, cool!
The ring on the new mighty mice does not attach in the same way as the one in this guide. It is bonded to the bottom of the mouse directly and taking it off will be irreversible, although the mouse does retain functionality without it.
i took mine apart, after finding myself wiping/scraping my ball a couple of times a week just to keep it half-usable... i figured there must be a big clump of something in there... but there wasn't... there were *TWO* ginormous lumps of deskmatter compounded in there!
the instructions here didn't quite match my mouse - instead of the 8 pins on the outer ring as shown on the pics, mine has these skirt-type things, and is very much glued on all the way round.
basically i was just very patient, easing the ring off bit by bit, using a couple of penknives, one open at a blade, the other at a flat head screwdriver, and using them much like you do with tyre irons when you change a bike inner tube.
but the pics of the innards were most helpful, i would probably have panicked without them ;-)
This is ABSOLUTELY FALSE. You may be able to get your mouse apart without damaging it, but have fun getting it back together. The side buttons have little plastic prongs that slide inbetween the circuit board and mouse cover. It is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT and in my experience, impossible to reset the prongs. DO NOT TRY TAKING YOUR MOUSE APART or you'll end up shelling out 50 or 70 bucks just like I had to for believing this FUCKING ASSHOLE. :)
"aimsdahl", first your mouse got stuck and you had no clue how to fix it so you searched on the net and you came across this blog and decided to give it a try. Then although the others have successfully gotten it to work but for some reason you couldn't, you decided that you wanna call someone "FUCKING ASSHOLE" instead of blaming yourself for your own stupidity incapability.
I feel so sorry for Apple for having you as one of their customers. You deserve a Windows PC.
shirster, I've been disassembling the Apple mouse since the clear black and white versions (both wired and Bluetooth) without any issues. I have repaired faulty one's and resold them for a few bucks to plenty of friends who are still using them happily. Your steps are the exact same as those I use and I have never lost a mouse. The previous reply is not representative of the process. Use some dexterity and it works.
I just recently pulled my BT Might Mouse apart to try to solve the intermittent right mouse button issue some people have reported. I tried everything, including changing batteries with no change to the problem. I could turn on the mouse and have a right button OK but after some time it would stop working. Turn the mouse off and back on and it would once again start working. But the exact cause was driving me nuts.
Not knowing the full electrical design without the design schematic I traced the layout of the plastic backed carbon traces that Apple uses in their design for detecting the location of the fingers on the cover. I noted that my mouse had a lack of contact in the area where the plastic traces overlap and contact the copper shielding in the middle of the upper shell. I ran my finger over all of the plastic traces and the copper shield to ensure they were contacting both the case shell and the interconnection between the carbon buttons on the trace and the copper shield. Your picture four shows the interaction between the trace and the shield just near the bottom edge of the case, as oriented (the area with two holes in the plastic trace material and a black carbon dot to the left which contacts the copper shield). Looks like a 5th trace for earth with two traces each for left and right detectors.
Pressing all of these traces and shielding to ensure contact has fixed my right button operation and I now never lose the button even after some time in operation. It may be that some of these mouse covers are not having enough pressure placed on the whole area during assembly. Now my BT MM on my MBP works liked it's tethered brother on my desk. Might help some, who have their mouse open to give it a clean, to check the contact at the same time for full adhesion to the shell. Cheers...
I have cleaned my roller ball with alcohol many times and it will work for a couple of days tops. I tried this method today after finally getting fed up and I am back in business. However, the removal hard plastic gray ring directly below the side buttons is the key to this repair. It is definitely glued on and should be removed prior to popping the mouse apart. This can be acomplished by running a very thin flexible piece of metal or plastic around the perimeter of the ring in between the mouse and the ring. It is close to imposible to do this without chipping the plastic just a little bit. Once you are finished with the repair you can glue the ring back on with model glue or super glue and the chips blend back toghether - no problem. WARNING - don't use a lot of glue, because you will probably have to do this again in the future.
Popping the mouse apart without first removing this ring puts a great amount of stress on the tabs of the side buttons. You can actually see how shirster's tabs got bent in the pictures provided. It's pretty amazing that nothing breaks in this process.
Once I got the roller ball assembly disassembled I found that my problem was gunk, and fuzz tightly wrapped around the magnetic roller wheels. There is simply no way rubbing alcohol on the roller ball would remove this problem.
Those of you who managed to get your mouse back together without removing the second gray ring have some amazing dexterity and patience. I commend you.
Opening it or not? I cleaned the (not too badly) blocked scrolling ball of my Mighty Mouse with a little bit of Philips Contact Cleaner (comes in a spray can, product code 390CCS) and a cotton hankerchief. Actually, I don't know what is in the Philips fluid, can't find it even on internet (I only did a quick search) but it's highly flammable so maybe similar to alcohol. Because I have no alcohol in the house, and it's Christmas, I thought of this stuff which I have laying around for years. It is normally used to clean dust out of electronic equipment in general: potmeters, switches, etc. Reading this blog helped me understand that there are at least two versions of the MM, one that opens and closes easily and 'the other one', and mine would probably fall in the 2nd category according to Murphy's Law. But then again, I was lucky enough that my MM wasn't stuck so badly (no large pieces of 'gunk' or 'deskmatter') as some of you report here! Good luck!
Nice, thanks for sharing. I've also opened 2 other mighty mice 2 weeks ago and took some new pictures but I just don't have time to post them yet. Mine are way dirtier then yours by the way ! :D
Well, I had the problem with right click not working properly. Also the sqeeze was to rigid, so I had to squeeze with thumb and middle thinger (I was not able to squeeze it with ring finger). So finally I decided to disassemble it. Each squeezing sensors is 2 metal slabs with current conducting resin between them (like under keys in ordinary keyboard). Also there are 2 drops of soft plastic between slabs. I removed some plastic and the squeezng force has decreased! I even decided to put batteries and check it without reassembling the mouse. And I found that squeezing is nice! Regarding right click problem, I noticed that copper conductors are not glued well enough to the mouse back, there were some air between them. So I pressed it with my finger and it has glued tight to the mouse back. One drawback - I have damaged one ribbon cable a bit when I tried to unplug them. (They were much shorter then on the pictures here so I could not even open the mouse far enough to reach them). So be extremely carefull with them! Finally I reassembled the mouse, turned it on... And it worked! Even the right click was working much better. And as my mouse was only 2 weeks old I decided no to diassemble the ball&rollers assembly at all. Till next time. :)
BTW my mighty mouse is bluetooth version. It has much more electornics then on pictures here and it is really ingenious thing looking from inside. I've bought it "used" on eBay for $40, but it did not have any usage clues. Not the slightest crack or dust... I immediately noticed problems, but as I live in Siberia I decided it would take too long to send it back to the seller (he agreed to exchange). :) So I just fixed it. I suspect that the seller knew it was not working very well. But may be he thought that many people never use right button? :)
Well, it did not go so well for me. The directions were brilliant! But, alas, my mighty mouse ended up in the trash. My mouse was obviously a later version as I just bought it 6-8 months ago. It had two ribbon cables connecting the top to the bottom. One for the click/scroll ball, and one for the left/right buttons.
An interesting thing to note is that the little black clips that hold the ribbon cables in on my model were single-use. If you pull them off (regardless of how carefully) one end snaps off and it becomes useless.
Also, the bottom ring on mine WAS glued like I expected and as you directed, but, it had no clips... it would have to be re-glued to stay on.
When I put it back together, the ball didn't work at all. Off to the trash it went.
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Comment deleted at the request of the thread owner.
With regard to the ribbon cables in the mouse - they are held in place by a little clamp device. You gave to ease the plastic tabs each side of the ribbon cable out and then the ribbon cable easily comes free. Put it in the reverse way - put the ribbon cable in and then push the little tabs each side of it back in to clamp it.
A drop of glue keeps the grey plastic ring in place. If you displace the side buttons then simply undo the metal screws holding the black plastic side parts to the mouse base and ease the buttons back in on top of the two plastic ridges.
My opinion of the mouse is that it looks and feels good and the rollerball is great but it is highly impractical to a degree that it almost damages Apple's reputation. It stops working because of dirt and the right-click mechanism is unreliable and often impossible for users to become accustomed to. I do not think that Apple tested this product sufficiently before release. I certainly check new Apple products a lot more before purchasing them.
Hello. Does anyone here have an idea how to make the little roller ball axles stay when putting them back together? I can't do it for some reason because they keep coming off the little ball holder and I got mad and gave up and put the mouse parts in plastic bag in hopes that I could save them until someone can come along to help. I just can't do it and I don't know wy oter than the fact I have a handicap that makes me not able to hold still enough to make all the axles in the roller ball stay when I am try ing to put them all back together. Thanks
The little rollers are magnetic and want to keep flying out and sticking together. They only go in one way round so you have to experiment. Once they have clicked in the correct way then it should be fairly easy to get it back together. I did both of my mice and they are OK now. I had to glue the grey ring back on. I managed to pull one of the side buttons out from its mount so had to undo all the screws holding the PCB to the base in order to re-seat it - there's a notch and a tab to line up. It really is a very poor design! It allows dirt and fluff to get into an almost inaccessible place. Pah! I expect they are very happy with all the repeat sales... I hope that some other manufacturer brings out a roller-ball mouse and forces Apple into making better and cheaper versions. Hello Logitech?
I used to hate Logitech, but now maybe I am going to re think that. I want to send out a big THANK YOU to the Fellow Nerd out there who pmd me with how to make those stupid little giddy idiotic axles stay. THANK YOU!! He said just turn the assembly UPSIDE DOWN and put the axles in the black part attached to the ribbobn cable instead of trying to put them in the white retaining thingy and POW!! It worked, thank you so much to whoever pmed me that message, you ROCK. And also, thank you so much to the smart apple who made this MOST EXCELLENT Kick BUTT web page, it saved my butt. WAY TO STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!!! Great Site Thank you so much!! :)
I think I have the newer one with the grey ring on the bottom. It can be removed with out too much problem. I tried the alcohol technique and it works for a while but then stops working It was driving me crazy today so I took it apart. I have a video of it up here.
Mine has the grey ring glued on... plasti-welded at the rear of the mouse. Also the openings for the side buttons are open to the internals of the mouse at the bottom, not at the top as in your pictures. I was working at prying the grey bezel off when it started to crack and I stopped.
I was, however, able to wedge the mouse against my desk so I could push down hard on the scroll wheel without breaking the insides of the mouse. By pushing down on the wheel really hard while turning it I was (apparently) able to dislodge the desk derbis that was keeping my down-page scrolling from working.
Thanks for the ideas, even if they didn't work out so good.
I've a glued ring too, but my mouse is better without it anyway. I have a cluttered desk and if I clicked the mouse when it was next to a headphone cable or a small pile of paper, the ring would sit over the obstacle and you couldn't press down until I lifted the mouse and repositioned it - without the ring it doesn't happen! And when it's on the desk it still looks good!
The cleaning worked for a long time - but why is it always an eyelash that comes out of it? Maybe it's all the alcohol I put in it - it keeps getting lashed! - Sorry, couldn't help myself.
I think the most convenient vs. helpful thing I have done so far is just flipping the mouse upside down and rubbing the ball around with a lot of pressure.
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I got it open and cleaned, but when I tried to assemble it it went wrong at trying to get the side buttons at the right place. Probably put to much pressure on the wire from the ball and it ripped off... The mighty mouse is dead now!
It's really the weak part of the machine. I went directly to the store to get a new one and there was another dude with the same problem!! They said to him to give it to the techincal service. They just wouldn't believe it couldn't be cleaned. Bastards!
-m3nn0-
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abishalum wrote on Sep 10, '07, edited on Sep 10, '07
i got it! i figured out how to take it apart before i found your blog. buuuuut then i couldn't back together, so i had to navigate to this site with a dismantled mouse. that was hilarity in and of itself. but anyway, i almost made it all the way back to completion without disconnecting the grey ring. by partially disconnecting it from the back i was almost able to fit everything back together. it takes time and patience, neither of which i have right now since i'm under a crazy deadline on a project. BUT i now have successfully cleaned my mouse! works like a charm, except, uh, the side to side scrolling will only scroll to the left, no matter which direction i spin that thing. well, i'll fix it later when i've finished my work. thanks again!
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I have had the same problems for the last few days. Then I found a note on Macintouch that said the battery power on their BT MM was down and renewal of the batteries solved the issue for them. I have a wired mouse but for the last few days (see above) I have had a USB drive attached to the keyboard (easier to unplug that way). Removal of drive and problem solved. Perhaps the drive was drawing too much power from the keyboard at the expense of the mouse. Anyway worked for me. BTW way how is HK these ddays ? Lived there for 20 years and loved it.
Comment deleted at the request of the thread owner.
Comment deleted at the request of the thread owner.
Comment deleted at the request of the thread owner.
Neat video you've got there ! :thumbup:
