Tape Mod for Mouse Feet & Glass Mousepads
On this episode of “I am way too OCD about the smoothness of my mouse feet”, I decided that perhaps there is a simple solution to making your mouse glide faster and smoother for pennies. Using tape for improved glide is not a novel concept but in the context of glass mouse pads (SkyPad 3.0, The Empress) being extremely popular these tape mods also gain relevancy.
Why would you have to spend money every single time your glass pad eats your skates when you can simply tape them up?
Clear Tape
No matter how good the PTFE skates you are using are, glass pads will wear them down over time making the material lose some of its smoothness. While using clear tape over your mouse skates sounds quite dumb in reality this is a very simple and cheap/practical mod to improve the glide of your mouse.
All you have to do is cover your bad OEM/old PTFE skates with a layer of tape and you are good to go. What you need to be careful with is the thickness of the tape since adding a layer to the skates influences the way the sensor tracks and might mess with the mouse’s LOD.
A thin layer that is under 0.2 mm (basic clear scotch tape is 0.058 mm) will not influence the tracking of your sensor meaning that you are safe to use one layer on your skates. I have tested this on other types of pads but it does not quite work as well as using it on glass mouse pads.
TO NOTE: using tape with extra strong adhesive might leave residue on your skates so it is not advised!
I have shared my little mod with friends who use glass pads and on multiple occasions they have concluded that the glide is either similar or faster than their normal PTFE skates. One of them being in the aiming community also managed to get some PB’s using tape over their mouse feet.
Source: Killuminati
Try it, see if you like it, and if it is not to your taste you can just peel off the tape and go back to your normal PTFE skates (no residue, no need to clean anything).
PTFE Tape
Mouse skates are made out of PTFE and luckily there are many types of PTFE tapes available for purchase. In essence, PTFE tape should provide a similar glide to regular tape, and I wanted to test this claim since I have found some thread seal tape (plumber’s tape) lying around.
This type of PTFE tape does the opposite of what normal tape does and makes the glide extremely smooth but slow. If you are struggling with control while using a glass mousepad this is one very unique way in which you can transform your pad into a very consistent control pad for tac-shooter games.
Perhaps trying out other types of tape over mouse feet might be worth it, but figuring these little tricks out for now was quite fun!
TL;DR
If you use glass mouse pads you should use clear tape over your feet to get a smooth and fast glide for pennies. You can also try different types of tapes to see how it modifies the feel of your glass pad!