Rackmount Sammiches?

[m00dawg]

Curious before I go looking too far into this myself, but has anyone tried stuffing the sammichSID and sammichFM in a rack? Originally, I was going to make a 1U striped down interface with just an LCD and maybe a knob or buttons. But after seeing some of the rackmount mods for the Mutable Instruments gear, it seems like they Sammich stuff can be panel mounted in similar fashion.

Has anyone attempted such things with the Sammiches?

[Shuriken]

I have a MB FM and have been pondering about the same thing. It should be possible to make a sammich interface which fits an 1U panel.

[m00dawg]

Yep, the headers are all there so just need to design the boards and panel for it.

The more I think about it more mounting the Sammich face up in the rack (basically bolting it to the panel mostly as-is) could be interesting. I can fit both the SID and FM in 3U space and have some leftover room for other things (like an interface to an MIDIO128 I'm working on). But then I have to get a 3U panel cut, which isn't cheap. Plus there's the need to re-route power, MIDI and audio jacks to a supporting board for that to work well.

I can't decide on which option is better at this point.

[Imp]

For 1U, you would need to redesign the CSs, which is more work than rerouting some jacks, i think.  Also it might prove difficult to fit the buttons below the LCD.

That said, i'd go with 3U. As a low-cost solution you could keep the front panels and merge them with a 3U-frame, instead of having a whole new panel cut.

[m00dawg]

That is what I was leaning towards. I can fit up to 3 things in 3U mounted face-up which isn't bad. Can you elaborate on how you might go about merging the panels? That seems like an excellent idea, but not sure exactly how to do that?

A new panel isn't terrible necessarily - about $150 from FPE I suspect basing it off estimates from the 3U rackmount SID I still want to make (one day). Before I can make it, though, I have to decide what the 3rd synth/module would be is the only catch. It would either be a MI Shruthi or a panel for my MIDIO128 I suspect.

[Imp]

 Can you elaborate on how you might go about merging the panels?

 

 

What i had in mind was just a 3U Faceplate with square cutouts which fit the sammiches frontpanels. Nothing fancy.

It could be the same material as the sammiches. If they were mounted so that the surfaces sit flush, it would nearly look like one piece.

I doubt that plastic from Ponoko is sturdy enough, though. It could surely use some metal support structure beneath.

[m00dawg]

Aha ok that's what I thought. Mounting on top would be pretty easy, but I'm not sure how to flush mount (without metal supports as you mention).

Anything is surely better than simply zip-tieing the Sammiches to a rack shelf, which is what I'm going now :smile: I think for our live rack, going for a full aluminum panel would be the most hardy since it does get moved around often. But that also makes me (very mildly) concerned about through hole components getting messed with. But I suppose that's going to happen no matter how I mount the thing in a rack (though mounting the base boards flat might be better than vertically).