Dropped my dial. :-/

[artblender]

So it finally happened. I forgot to put it back on my desk as I tilted the screen back up and down it went, bouncing hard on its edge against my porcelain tile floor. Battery door flew open and the batteries fell out. Sturdy little thing, it only has a tiny dent on it. Nothing broke and it still works but... now when I turn it I can feel a sort of dull internal friction. It's not bad and it doesn't seem to affect the functionality, it's just not perfectly smooth like before and on long scrolling (it's great for documents) it does get a little distracting. Can it be fixed?

 

[DCW1000]

You might try slipping a piece of semi-stiff paper like a post-it between the silver can and the internal cylinder to identify exactly where the pinch is. If the paper probe binds where you see the dent, there may not be an easy solution. But maybe just sliding something back and forth between the two close surfaces will improve the situation.

I understand frictional frustration. Before optical mice came along, I hated the necessary routine disassembly of roller ball units in order to clean accumulated desk grime off the pinch rollers that translated ball movements to positional info. I also spent more time than I wanted tweezing compressed fibers off the scroll wheel axle in almost every multifunction mouse I ever had. Good riddance to those days.