Thank you for these brilliant instructions. I successfully did it using your illustrations.
I didn't use plastic tools but three Jimmy knives which worked perfectly fine and quickly.
Be careful with the step to disconnect the cable: the brown lock does not actually go "upwards" but away from the back of the iPod/towards you :)
Good luck! :)

Attention. "Lift the brown lock latch straight up by 1 mm" is wrong IMHO, at least totally misleading!
Wether or not he brown thingy goes "up" depends on the orientation of the iPod, how you are holding it.
Clearer would be "... push brown lock latch away from the back of the iPod" rather "towards you", then "up".
Also the image/illustration wit the red arrows is somewhat misleading in that sense.
Got stuck at this point trying to push it "up" (= towards the top of the iPod), which didn't work, of course...
Luckily no damade done :)

3 Jimmy Knives did it - easy peasy :)

Done. Used two Credit Cards as I am not a guitar-guy and didn't have a plectrum :D
Got in through the top side though and worked my way around.

Mind the left for the cable to the headphone jack.

P.S. Step 22 & 23: no need for that special tool: simply push w. both thumbs against the air outlet (that ventilation grill) and the Logic Board will come out smoothly :)

Steps 17 -20 you (like me :) might not have a fancy PCIe SSD :)

Step 30 was a pain, wiggle, wiggle, but it all worked fine in the end - Mini now runs on a Singsong 860 EVO w. a massive speed improv compared to the ol’ 5.400rpm factory built-in HDST, which got a bad sector after only 17k hrs of operation and was therefore replaced :)

"orange" is the short one, that goes in the middle ;)