Does anybody make custom mice?

I've got an unusual problem. I am allergic to rubber. Every mouse wheel I've seen so far is made of rubber.

Is there anyone that makes custom mice? I need one without the evil rubber. I've considered using paint on the mouse wheel but I don't think it will last long before being worn through to the rubber.

Thank You

 

Hey!

I don't kow much about custom mice, but, say, the Ikari Optical doesn't have any rubber on it; lots of hard plastic, mostly. Best of luck.

 

Well i know off quite a few cheap optical mice which don't have any rubber except for the feet. Just have a look around in stores.

 

Cant you just remove the ball in the middle? Or use a trackball mouse?

 

If mice had rubber feet, they would be unusable, as they wouldn't slide well on any surface. The feet are some sort of plastic (maybe delrin?).

 

Feel are teflon I believe.

 

You're probably correct!

 

I'm sure it's not what your looking for, but what about wearing some kind of glove? (Dunno if you like the Michael Jackson look or not.)

 

Look into Apple's Magic Mouse.

 

+1
haha, this guy I know at my college wears thin material gloves when using his computer... he says its because he wants to keep his [extremely glossy] HP laptop free of fingerprints, but I don't know

second looking into the apple mouse (don't think there is any rubber on it)

 

The magic mouse is an awesome mouse (with no rubber parts on top) and I have one for a mac mini. The problem there is no driver support for scrolling and secondary mouse click outside of OSX.

So, if you are in a non-OSX operating system, and need a pointer and single click, the magic mouse would work great. Otherwise, you'll have to keep looking.

 

@jclausius
I read that if you use the boot camp drivers for the magic mouse that it works pretty well, though still not perfect; not sure if you have tried those drivers with a windows computer or not.

 

Microsoft sidewinder mice use metal in for their wheels instead of rubber

 

I kind of doubt that natural rubber/latex is used on mice these days. Soft, squishy parts are more likely to be some kind of silicon polymer.

What exactly are you allergic to?

 

The drivers are supposedly not as fine tuned as drivers in OSX, and also not available from normal channels (Apple), so you would have to rely on someone hacking the drivers from a Windows from a boot camp partition or the USB update.

Besides the "will it work" type questions, there are other things like how reliable is the hack? What about the next round of driver updates?

Who knows, perhaps rockmedic comes from an adventuresome lot.

 

Thank You all for the replies.

I have white cotton parade gloves. Using them ALL the time is annoying. I tape a paper sheet to the side of my door when at work {Ambulance} because the door panel is PVC which I react to....I call it my door condom.

Some Silicones are actually made with rubber. Then you have to wonder if it is enough rubber to trigger a reaction....and you have to wonder when do I become sensitive enough to it that I will react. So I try to limit my exposure {I get exposed enough at work}.

Some of the cheaper mice are best, but trying to find them at Best Buy/Frys is not quite as easy. Kinda like finding an ink pen in a store that doesn't have a rubber finger grip.

What I am really looking for would be a small {Travel} wireless mouse without rubber. Some of the cords are rubber....doable but wireless would be a lot easier.

 

as said before, Sidewinder's wheels are made of metal, not rubber...

also, what about MS Arc & Arc Touch mice?

 

Besides the other posts here, I had another thought...

Have you thought about a "touchpad" rather than a mouse? I don't know how fine of an instrument you need for your pointing device, but perhaps a touchpad might be a suitable alternative.