Doug Wellington

Yes, I can redo panels that have already been JB Welded... :) Doug

I just added another column to the comparison - Techni-Tool is now the winner! Not only do they have solder for less than the other three, but they have a lot of Weller soldering iron tips on sale for less than $3 US... Doug

I started to buy some solder from Mouser, but the kind I want is $54!!! :o :-\ :( >:( That inspired me to make a comparison of solder prices. You can see the results in the wiki at: http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/dougs_solder_price_survey Be prepared for a couple shocks, Mouser fans! (NOTE: If Jameco has it, it's the cheapest...) Doug P.S. If you've got suggestions for other places to buy solder, I'll add them to the list...

I'm going to start putting together a panel order for the MB-6582. How many of you are going to want a set of panels? Please go to http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/dougwellington_mb6582_panels and add your name to the list so I can get an idea of how many we need to make. Once I find out how many of you are interested, I can get a better idea of how much they will cost... Doug

OK, it's planning time for panels! Edit: See http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php/topic,11073.0.html ;D Doug

Hmmm, wouldn't I have to buy a PS3 for that? For that kind of money, I could buy the Blackfin board AND the SoundBite or Spartan board... And what if I wanted to learn serial audio processing...? ;D

OK, you're excused, you can leave now... ;) I didn't say it was a video card...I said it uses a chip from a video card...

The UAD-1 is quite interesting - it's actually a chip from a video card. There seem to be quite a few projects using graphics hardware for general purpose computation...

Ah, so... I'm glad you are self confident enough to assert yourself in such a non-threatening manner. And how does that make the rest of you feel? ;D

Gotta do something to earn my bankstick boards... ;) Wings, Blender and Sketchup are all GUI-based programs - you'll use the mouse and do a lot of clicking and dragging. POV-ray is a rendering engine, meaning that you have to create an input (the "scene" file) and process it. It's similar to writing a computer program. I personally don't think there was very steep learning curve with povray, but I am a programmer... ;D Below, I have quoted an example of a POV scene file that describes a panel with two columns of knobs. It was one of the first scene files I wrote. As you can see, I have made some macros at the top, while "hard coding" some other things - knob color for example. (My later scene files are more consistent, but I thought this file would give you a better idea of different ways to work.) It is easy to make many layers of macros, and you can include other files with other programs in them. Having macros makes it easy to change things - for example, with this file, if I want to change the horizontal location of the entire left column of buttons, all I have to do is change the one definition of "LeftCol" and render again. You can also do quick renders at low resolution and then make a final render at high resolution while getting a beverage... 8) I left in several camera definitions - to "take a picture" of your object from different locations, you specify the <x, y, z> location of the camera, and the <x, y, z> location that it points at. There are also several light definitions - lights are considered to be points that shine in every direction. You can add as many lights as you want, but each one adds a bit more rendering time... One thing to remember about POV (and other 3D programs) is that measurements are relative and arbitrary - that is, a box with the size of "1" is not 1mm or 1 meter or 1 mile - it is merely "1" and is half the size of something with the size "2"... Doug //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// #include "colors.inc" // Customizations: #declare PanelColor = Red; #declare LEDColor = Red; #declare CaseColor = White; #declare MeterBridgeAngle = 10*x; #declare Row1 = 11; #declare Row2 = 10.25; #declare Row3 = 9.5; #declare Row4 = 8.75; #declare Row5 = 8; #declare Row6 = 7.25; #declare Row7 = 6.5; #declare Row8 = 5.75; #declare Row9 = 5; #declare Row10 = 4.25; #declare Row11 = 3.5; #declare Row12 = 2.75; #declare GPButtons = 2.5; #declare MenuButtons = 1.50; #declare KnobHeight = .5; #declare ButtonHeight = .2; #declare WheelHeight = .25; #declare LeftCol = 1; #declare RightCol = 2; #declare MainPanel = union { box { < 0, 0, 0 >, < 3, .1, 12.25> texture { pigment { color PanelColor } } } // knobs // left column cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row1>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row1>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row2>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row2>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row3>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row3>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row4>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row4>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row5>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row5>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row6>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row6>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row7>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row7>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row8>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row8>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row9>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row9>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row10>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row10>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row11>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row11>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <LeftCol, 0, Row12>, <LeftCol, KnobHeight, Row12>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } //right column cylinder { <RightCol, 0, Row1>, <RightCol, KnobHeight, Row1>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <RightCol, 0, Row3>, <RightCol, KnobHeight, Row3>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <RightCol, 0, Row5>, <RightCol, KnobHeight, Row5>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <RightCol, 0, Row7>, <RightCol, KnobHeight, Row7>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <RightCol, 0, Row9>, <RightCol, KnobHeight, Row9>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } cylinder { <RightCol, 0, Row11>, <RightCol, KnobHeight, Row11>, .2 texture { pigment { color Black } } } } //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// camera { // left front //location <0, 1, -5> // middle front location <8.5, 6, -20> // right front //location <17, 3, -5> // behind //location <18, 6, 35> // right side //location <28, 4.75, 4> //location <28, 4.75, 2> //location <28, 0, 0> //location <34, 6, 11.75> // Web view //location <25, 15, -13> // left side //look_at <0, 1, 5> // front //look_at <8.5, 0, 0> // right side //look_at <17, 1, 5> // middle look_at <8.5, 5.75, 4> } //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// light_source { < 17, 4, 4> color White } light_source { < 27, 4, 0> color White } // left light_source { < 0, 10, 2> color White } // right light_source { < 20, 10, 2> color White } // center above light_source { < 8.5, 10, 5> color White } // low in front light_source { < 8.5, 1, -20> color White } // back light light_source { < 20, 20, 40> color White } //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// // "sky" background { color Cyan } // "ground" plane { <0, 1, 0>, -1 pigment { checker color Black, color Green } } //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// object { MainPanel rotate < -90, 0, 0 > // translate <0, 0, -1.5> }

There are a couple free programs I've used. For just modeling, Wings3D is pretty handy... http://www.wings3d.com Blender is The Big One ;) - lots of people have used Blender for both 3D stills and animation... http://www.blender.org I personally find Sketch-Up to be infuriating! It's great for very simple stuff, but when you start to build complex shapes, you'll rapidly run into limitations... While GUI-based apps are nice for a lot of things, I find them slow for doing mechanical design - things like control panels that have evenly spaced rows and columns. For my MIDIbox designs, I've been typing in my own "scene" files and rendering them with POV. You can see a couple of my POV renders at http://www.analognotes.com/mbmatrixseq and http://www.analognotes.com/mb9090 - those pictures were generated with relatively simple text files. I created a file for the front panel, one for the case, and another for the meter bridge and then included them in a master file for rendering. (If you compare the two different projects, you can see that the meter bridge is the same - it's the same file...) http://www.povray.org Doug

Well, I've never used ptfe grease myself for faders, so I'm not sure which one to use... Everything I've done has been with Caig (DeoxIt) Fadergrease... http://store.caig.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.305/.f I've also heard that GC Electronics Luberex is good, but I haven't tried that one yet... Doug

The box got here just fine. Thanks! Doug

Just do a search for "PTFE grease" - there are several manufacturers - probably one in your country... Doug htp://www.analognotes.com

Hey! Are you calling me "little"?

Paid - how come they're not here yet? :P

Damn those bloody brits! ;D

You can see two versions of the MB-808 front panel at: http://www.eight-oh-eight.org and http://www.analognotes.com/mb808

Ouch! Over $90 for switches??? If you need them for a "real" TR-808, that's probably alright... The MB-808 uses E-Switch 5500 series switches. http://www.e-switch.com/index.php?contentID=261&type=push&seriesID=37 I've got a group buy going for the 16 colored switches at $50 plus shipping...

I already looked into buying red on black 40x2 LCDs from CrystalFontz - they want a 300 piece minimum order... Doug

Good stuff! I have both Rev 4 and Rev 5 MKS-80's, plus an MPG... When I get a chance, I'll open them up and take pictures for comparison. Anything in particular I should look for? Doug

Sorry about the packing job... I had wrapped the transformer in bubble wrap and was expecting it to be packed in one of those cardboard priority mail boxes we get at the post office. It got put in an envelope instead. :-[ Glad it got to you though!

Wow! Memory lane! I have two Peavey SP units in my rack still... (And two SX-II samplers.) I'm the guy that wrote the first SP floppy disk duplicator that ran under DOS... :) (Sheesh, when WAS that??? 1991?) Man, I might have to plug those things in again...

Yes, that is one cost disadvantage of us here in the States - in general we pay our people more money for work... (It also costs more to live here I think.) I'm not offended if nobody wants anything from me - I'm not forcing anyone - I am just offering an alternative... I work with any kind of wood - I buy a lot of it from a store here in Tucson called Wood Workers Source. You can see the kinds of wood they have at http://www.woodworkerssource.net Doug

There are several of us doing silkscreening, and there are lots of tutorials out there! Here's a couple: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=008032414425079535247%3Akplxrakvu20&q=silk+screen&sa=Search Most tutorials are for tee shirts and other items that don't require a lot of precision. The two biggest things you can do to help precision are: 1) get the highest thread count screen you can, and 2) make a jig so that everything will line up accurately each time. Here's a look at one method: http://guitarfool.com/Silkscreen.html And just for comparison, here are a couple other possibilities for labeling panels: http://monopole.ph.qmw.ac.uk/%7Ethomas/synthdiy/frontpanel.htm Doug P.S. If you guys can be patient and/or don't want to do it yourself, I will be re-silkscreening my own MB-6582 panel in the next couple months, so I'll have everything set up for anyone else who wants it.