I had the last 14.4mm screw strip on my 2012MBP case (commence cursing….) I tried the rubber band trick and different drivers, but after reading merryladyj’s glue gun idea, I took a modified approach and used a soldering iron with a clean tip. It took a few tries, each time increasing how long the iron was in contact with the screwhead, and using a 3/64th” flathead to get a grip on the screw. It worked great, and the cursing stopped :) The stripped screw had 2-3x as much locktite as the ones that came out easily so I’m guessing that was the cause. Hope this helps :) K
So smooth…. great instructions iFixit crew!! In a past life I was strictly PC and built/modded a loads of systems over the years, but never a Mac. To ease the tech-xiety I copied the old drive to the SSD in a USB case, and then booted from USB for a couple of weeks until I was sure there were no surprises. Swapped the SSD for the HDD and it was like the heavens opened and the choirs sang (Monty Python choirs of course). And thanks everyone posting, for your tips and lessons, they definitely came in handy.
I’m now looking at swapping the optical drive with another SSD, and then maxing out the RAM. Where will this madness end…..???? :)
