Blatboy's Blog

Hmm. Bad things happen sometimes, don´t worry too much...

In the glueing phase it would be nice, if the frontpanel could be easily attached, to avoid messing it up with glue blobs because of "attachment tries".

Also, attaching it will even get a little bit more difficult when the LEDs are in there, so it would be nice, if the tactile switches were aligned as well as possible... using flathead LEDs makes it even harder to "get them in", that is what a few people have reported...

So, if you ask me, don´t throw away your CS PCB - if the switches don´t fit perfectly, just snip the four pins of each switch off directly above the PCB with a wirecutter. Then remove each broken switch. Then use a desoldering pump pressed to the front side "around the pin remainders" and your soldering iron applied to the backside and suck the switch pin remainders through... no big deal and will leave you with clean holes for soldering the switches again... should be no problem at all, but you´d need a desoldering pump. I´ve done the same thing with an encoder I messed up in the "detention phase" and it worked perfectly.

Also, don´t underestimate the number of times you may want to remove the frontpanel from the CS PCB - e.g. if you want to change the display, or install knob backlight LEDs, or want to exchange a misbehaving encoder, all of which happened to me :)

Bye,

Peter

btw - plz record the concert, me definitely wants to see it :)

Thanks so much for the suggestions. You rock.

I do have a solder pump. I'll do that. My experience with cleaning up my errors has been slow, and the idea of desoldering 35 switches and trying to clean up those holes sounded impossible.

However, the trick to use the pump to get the solder AND the pin out.... that's interesting. I'll give that a shot. I'll hopefully have time today.

Thanks again!

w

ps. I'm going to try to get a decent recording of the concert. Maybe even video as we have a guy making some neon lights for it that may be sound interactive... we'll see how this all pulls together though. We've done a few concerts in the past and haven't gotten a live recording that we're happy with yet...so the pressure is on... ;) Concert is May 18. I want to have it finished by May 1st so I can get to learning the machine and reprogramming my sounds from the Hardsid...

No problem, you can do it! :-)

Btw, there is a fair chance of many switches already being at the correct position... so when you have the frontpanel on, look with a magnifying glass, which switch cap touches the aluminum, and remove only those switches with no "air" between the cap and the aluminum... if you are lucky, it is only a few of them which "block" the smooth attachment process.

Bye,

Peter

Oh shit, don't even start talking about this stuff!

I have my cs pcb on my work bench now, and I haven't got a front panel yet, but all the tacts are soldered in place! :) Haha, and I can see there is many of the tactiles that is not in optimal position :P hehe.

But I'll take that trouble when I get there. I have shit loads of tactile buttons in my drawer, so I guess desoldering a bunch of them shouldn't be any more trouble than the time it takes, and I guess, I have enough time ;). I need to get a quote on my frontpanel from julian soon, but the design isn't completely nailed yet, but I'm not laying another blub of solder on that cs board before I get the front panel hehe.

Good luck on yours blatboy.