The illustrated guide to Wacom mouse scroll wheel adjustment and other maintenance

So you bought a Wacom Intuos tablet and hey, the wireless mouse that comes with it isn't even that bad! It even has a scroll wheel. To bad that it is so hard to rotate. Every time you use it, you press the scroll wheel button, whether you like it or not.

This annoyed me so much that I decided to try to adjust it. Now it works just fine. You can hack your wacom mouse too:

What you need

What you need is a Wacom mouse and two screwdrivers

a 2.4 mm philips screwdriver
a 3 mm flat screwdriver
and of course the mouse. This one comes with the Wacom Intuos 2 set, but this how-to will work with the majority of scroll wheel mouses.

How it's done

First unscrew the mouse. Usually there are one to four screws and usally at least one of them is hidden under a sticker. Since the complete bottom of this mouse is stickered, we can just peel of a corner to reach the first screw. Use your nail or a flat screwdriver to get under it, then just pull. Do the same with the other corner.
In this case there are three screws, the last one is in the center, beneath the sticker. Unscrew all.
Now we can easily lift of the upper half of the casing. Mention the thick, metal ring. It isn't connected to the circuit board, and no, it's not magnetic either. It's only there to give some weight to it, so it feels more solid!
If you, like me, prefer a light mouse above fooling yourself something is better when it's heavy, unscrew it and leave it out.
To the left of the scroll wheel, there is a little metal strip where the axis of the scroll wheel presses on when you press the wheel. Then the strip presses the actual switch. Sometimes you can bend it away from the switch, just a bit. That way, it will get more resistance and it will be harder to click the switch. Always be very carefull, not to break it or overbend it. You'd have to make a new one by hand and it's not always easy to get fit if you can pull it of at all! In this case it didn't help much though, so I had to go further:
The right end of the scroll wheel axis is attached to a little mechanism that gives the wheel resistance when you try to scoll.
Here a close-up. The little dent in the litte metal disc (red) makes it hard for the axis (green) to rotate. Of course, the metal disc is only very thin and quite easy to deform.
Just put a flat screwdriver between the 'red' disc and the 'green' axis and the pressure will flatten the dent some. Pull out the screwdriver and try the scroll wheel to feel if it needs more adjusting. If it does, put in the screwdriver again and gently push a little in the directing of the dent. Check the scroll wheel again. Repeat untill the desired 'smoothness' is reached.
Put back the top half, screws and sticker corners - Fixed!

Tips and tricks on cleaning your Wacom mouse

Cleaning the outside

After a while, the cloth sticker on the bottom of the mouse collects so much dust and dirt that it makes it harder to move your mouse than is comfortable. I tried to clean it, but found out that there is a much better solution: Just tear it off! Unlike the view at photo #3, make sure you keep the transparant plastic sticker underneath it though. After removing it, the mouse has virtually no resistance to the surface any more! :) Also, it's very easy to keep both the mouse and Wacom tablet clean. Even after half a year of intensive use, it is still stainless.

Cleaning the inside

On the inside of the Wacom mouse, dust and dirt can clog up.

If the mouse buttons start to behave irregular
If it double clicks when you single click
If it doesn't always work when you click
If scrolling becomes irregular or unsmoothly

..then you might want to open up the mouse as described above and clean it out, instead of throwing it out!

Dust and dirt inside your Wacom mouse. Photo by Trevor Masinelli Yes, this much dirt can gather in your mouse.