[m00dawg]

I am about 75% of the way done with my control surface board wiring. I already have the positions of the knobs and stuff and, as best as I can tell, things appear to line up with my panel, both with measuring and eyeballing (by printing both out and comparing them on top of each other). The panel is going to run probably about $250 from FrontPanel Express and I am trying to figure out how best to approach things.

So I'm curious what some of you custom control surface peeps do? Do you prototype your front panel and, if so, how exactly do you do that? I thought about cardboard, but I'm not sure how accurate I can be while still getting a good measurement and letting my buttons function as they should.

I would actually rather buy the panel and hope That way I can mount the control boards as I finish them, have a visual stimulus I can work towards, and if I mess up a measurement, I can remake a control board cheaper than having to make a whole new panel.

Advice is much appreciated as I'm a bit stumped

[nILS]

I typically try to import/export as much as possible between the apps (in my case inkscape, eagle and fpd) That way you can easily check if the stuff you made in X actually matches what you have in Y. Obviously you wanna have the parts beforehand so you can crosscheck dimensions with the datasheets. Worked flawlessly so far for me.

[m00dawg]

Hah good call on comparing datasheet measurements Just realized the buttons I was going to get might flare too much if they stick out too far from the control surface.

The biggest issue I am concerned about is missing a measurement between the control surface board and front panel (so a button is off by some amount). So far, everything has lined up perfectly when comparing print-outs on top of each other. But, man, dropping $250 on a panel makes me nervous

[pcbatterij]

I compare my KiCAD files with my frontpanel design. I also put loads of measurements both on my PCB design and frontpanel design and print them from time to time.
I also make an MDF wood frontpanel(thin wood), this costs me a few Euro's, and that way I am sure that the frontpanel design fits the PCB. This also rules out stupid mistakes or things that I just forgot, misplaced,...

cheers Jef

[m00dawg]

How do you make your wood panel? Just by hand?

[sidmonster]

m00dawg, on 08 November 2011 - 21:14, said:

How do you make your wood panel? Just by hand?

MOODOG,


I have tried making panels first and then making the PCB later and that never works, the easiest way for me is to do my Control Surface in Eagle and then export an image from Eagle and bring it into adobe illustrator which is where I layout my front panel, I use the image that i exported from eagle as a background for my illustrator layout so i just draw my cutlines for the front panel right over top of the component outlines from the eagle image.

Why don't you prototype your frontpanel with laser-cut acrylic from ponoko? It will cost very little, and if you're happy with the result, then you can be confident when you drop $250 on the nice metal panel from FPE.

[m00dawg]

Ah good idea! I wonder if FPE lets you put images in the background...hmm... I had originally written of Pokono due to not being able to export my panel from FPE, but I now see there are options to do that, so yeah that's an option I'll have to consider!

Might actually even look cooler in acrylic anyway, although I'm guessing I can't do fancy things like blind threaded holes and such.

[pcbatterij]

m00dawg, on 08 November 2011 - 21:14, said:

How do you make your wood panel? Just by hand?

Yes I make my wood panel by hand, it is not perfect at all, but at least it gives me an idea that the frontpanel file fits the designed PCB

cheers jef

[m00dawg]

*WOW* So apparently my 3U panel is only about $40.00 US to make via Ponoko. That doesn't include any engraving or the screw holes I will need to use (instead of the hidden screw holes I had on my aluminum version) but even the thickness is what I wanted (3mm). I'll have to figure out how to constrain my sizes a bit - I had to use the largest size available from Ponoko to fit my 3U panel so I'll have to look into that further. It also took a bit of work to get it from Front Panel, mostly due to having to change line colors and widths. I haven't tried lettering yet (I just exported the cuts).

But I think this could be a very viable option, thanks for the idea, sidmonster!

[sidmonster]

Yeah,

I changed the frontpanel layout on my MBSID a few times and it only cost me about $30.00 each time to have ponoko cut it. Now that I've finally settled on a design and used it comfortably for a month, I am ready to have it machined out of aluminum. The easiest way is to export a .svg from FPE and import it into illustrator or inkscape to change the line weights for ponoko.

[m00dawg]

Line weights and colors were the two issues I ran into. Now that I know how to fix them, converting should be easy such that I'll probably go ahead and order a panel here in a few weeks. Will HUGELY simply things by having something to work on. Very cool!

[ssp]

when i do my caseworks and front panels i work off the 2.54mm grid from the pad boards i prototype on. Then I try and use eagle, give the files to nils so he can have a good laugh and correct them where needed (everywhere) i then save a copy of hem as a dxf for the centre points of everything. I then load this into solidworks and check it against my case schematic and then adjust if needed. Works everytime for me, this is how i did the bpm casework and the humon casework.

[m00dawg]

You save a copy of your board layouts as DXF? How do you do that exactly? I didn't see an option for that in Eagle, but man being able ot see the panel on top of the boards would be a huge help. Right now, I just print them out and hold both up to a light source ;)

[ssp]

forgot to add, one of the biggest helps as well is i use acetate as well, if im checking the casework against component positions i print each one to acetate sheets and then everlay. examples in my bpm thread.

[nebula]

For my circle sequencer project I had sketched out the panel first using the drawing tools in MS Word. Then I designed the board using Eagle. When I created the footprint for the pushbuttons, I added an extra 1/16" hole right in the middle of the component:

I then clamped the unpopulated circuit board to the back of the panel and drilled through each hole with a 1/16" bit. I removed the panel, then enlarged each hole using a stepped drill bit.

I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about, since this is a homebrew panel, but ... for this project I used the board as a stencil to cut the panel.

[m00dawg]

Helpful enough I didn't think I could just get laser transparency sheets for my printer and just compare that way as well. Now that I know Ponoko panels are so inexpensive, that really helps too since $40 is almost within risk-taking

[m00dawg]

ssp, on 09 November 2011 - 19:57, said:

forgot to add, one of the biggest helps as well is i use acetate as well, if im checking the casework against component positions i print each one to acetate sheets and then everlay. examples in my bpm thread.

Man I'm trying to find that thread but I must be really bad at searching Happen to have a link?

[findbuddha]

Ponoko 3mm black frosted acrylic is great! But be careful if you are planning to rackmount it - it may not be strong enough, depending on how heavy (and particularly how deep) the rest of your chassis is.

[m00dawg]

Indeed it probably won't be thick enough to handle it - the chassis is entirely supported by the front panel. I could probably have it sit on my mic-amp or flip my shelf over and have it sit on that, but I'll probably just leave it out of the rack - I'll have to be adding boards and things to it and working on the internal layout anyway.

Turns out it will be more like $60 after engraving work and the additional mounting holes but that's still pretty dern cheap!