MIDIbox of the Week (MIDIbox SID of Chriss)

[TK.]

The MIDIbox SID from Chriss:

[Pierrot]

hey Chriss !

Very nice work !! it is a very beautiful little machine ... it make me think about the Acess Virus ! lol ;)

I like very much the wood part , it is so vintage ! ;D

great !

Pierrot

[Steven_C]

Excellent! One of the best!  ::)

[pilo]

hehe yes a nice one ;)

how do you make the printing on the case?? with silkscreen?

[chriss]

how do you make the printing on the case?? with silkscreen?

Normally i used silkscreen, but as this panel is not straight i tried something different.

i did it with normal paper and laser printer, (on A3) and "sprühkleber" and lacquer. i think 20 different layouts. The Layout was made in Freehand.

Advantage: you don´t see the screws and mistakes which happen during drilling. And its very cheap

Dis: when its really wet in the room it makes small bubbles, because the glue was not the best. You can see it around the Lcd where i made the hole bigger then a finally wanted, have to fix this though.

Took me more then a year to build this little beast, but its worth it. better than the virus.

chriss

[euphoricgrey]

Curious... did you use a premade box or? Also.. how did you mount the wood sides? This turned out beautiful man.. cant wait to start mine! :)

[Jidis]

I like the design too. Reminds me of my Oberheim DX. ::)

Euphoricgrey- On the DX, the steel bottom curls up 90 degrees to a short lip on the sides, and the side panels screw into that IIRC. Of course that requires a really solid base though (maybe not DIY bendable).

Chriss- I love that white on black labeling too, as well as the textured panel. I've saved a few pieces of cases and stuff for that, but couldn't figure how to label to it. If you get time, I'd like to see more about what you did there. From what I see, "sprühkleber" is a spray glue or something?

Good work,

George

[chriss]

hi euphoricgrey,

Curious... did you use a premade box oo? Also.. how did you mount the wood sides

no i first did a 3d model in rhino and then went to a lokal metall company. The main front is just a bend aluminium plate where the angels of the front and back are exactly taken from the rhino model. Bending just cost 5 euro. And the wood sides are just mounted with "metall rightangels" to the front and back.

@Jidis

I'd like to see more about what you did there.

of course no problem, since digital cameras are in every mobilephone these days i can make more pictures when i will open it for V2. The reason for this black white label with spray glue is just because i have so much fear of getting the labeling wrong while paying 100 euro or more for www.schaeffer-apparatebau.de in the end having one label wrong. Printing a b/w sheet with a laserprinter and glue it on the front cost maybe 1 euro and i could change it very fast even when there is a mistake or an update.

of course the paper won´t hold forever and when i come to very humide places you can see some waves on it but it is still is in very good condition and always impresses a lot of people.

And i have everthing prepared for upgrading to V2. I can easily change the labeling of the buttons which will change in V2.

Good work,

thanks

chriss

[Jidis]

Man, I had no idea that was paper. :o

It looks like white silkscreening on that textured black painted metal, like the chassis that stereo components and stuff use. Still don't understand it 100%. How did you do white over black?

George

PS- I'm digging those knobs too. Makes me want to do an MB controller for the new UAD Helios plug now (looks like them).

PSPS- Just flipped the Oberheim lid to check. Again, this metal is hard as crap, and they have threaded reinforcements stuck behind it, AND the front and back have a similar lip which is welded at the corner (more reinforcement :-X).

-Now which one of you guys can tell me from that picture what's wrong with my DX's power supply? It flicks off and on once in a while, or if you bump it.  ;D ;D ;D

[stryd_one]

-Now which one of you guys can tell me from that picture what's wrong with my DX's power supply? It flicks off and on once in a while, or if you bump it. 

I don't need a picture to tell you that's a loose solder joint....

[chriss]

Hi,

Still don't understand it 100%. How did you do white over black?

just take a white paper and print everthing black exept the labeling. You can do this easily in a layout app (mine is still freehand). just make on layer black and the letters and drilling holes white. And then print.

It will not work the first time. But after some tests with the right paper and printer settings you can build your own custom front every time you want in 5 minutes.

And of course don´t forget the lacquer to finish..

chriss

[Jidis]

Man, that's a lot of toner. :o

I have to do that for etching labels in metal, but haven't done anything big yet. I did regular black text on white with some graphics, but my CAD app (Canvas) had some sort of "invert" function that worked to turn it white on black. IIRC, I ended up leaving the larger areas hollow and filling them in with paint or marker later to keep from having to print too much solid black.

Thanks,

George

[stryd_one]

You can also use the wax-style printers that will print opaque white onto any colour... Your local print shop will use these.

[Sasha]

Never Heard of wax-style printers before, but I needed to print white on dark million times. I must try to find one. So that is the right name.. "wax-style printer"?

[TheAncientOne]

Perhaps sometimes called a Thermal Wax Transfer Printer'.

There are also  'Dye Sublimation Printers'. These t use secondary colour films, They will do beautiful opaque colours with full page bleed (meaning they can cover the entire sheet with print, and leave no plain border), but they will not print white. In UK you can buy the older Tektronix 'Phaser' printers very cheaply second hand: the reason is simple, a full load of 'ammunition' for the thing costs about 300 Euro! There is a later type that uses 'sold ink', cheaper to load, (though not a lot), and each colour is loaded seperately, which keeps cots down, though on the otherhand, they are best left powered up, because of the amount of ink that they waste on the power up cleaning cycle.  A friend saved over £100 in 12 months by putting his on a UPS - mains dropouts in the office at night were chewing through his ink supply.

The white ink thing is wierd. They only seem to be available for big commercial unit, and are often a UV curing ink, as used in silk screening. If I wanted to do this at home, I'd go the silkscreen route, or maybe it would be kind of neat to recycle an old large format Epson inkjet, but load it with the special black inks that one can get for photographers to print in black and white. Lyson are the most famous.

The problem is that opaque inks are hard to make and keep stable, The liquid white inks usually contain Titanium Dioxide in suspension, and if you are not careful they settle out, so need agitating - specialist printer again. Same goes for metallics, you can get silver ink too, but the same problems apply.

The only type that might be usable on the small scale are the wax ribbon transfer type, used in a lot of bar code printers, though the only white ink ribbon printerI knew of was made by Alps, and is now discontinued.

So we're back at 'waste lots of ink or toner', or go to a specialist.

I have just found some packets of white letraset, but I really don't know if I can put up with that fiddly approach. I was more patient as a kid......

Mike

[Sasha]

Mike, thank you very much for this detailed answer. I would personally never go with paper. It do look good, but still.. paper is paper even it is lacquered. If one put that much effort in hand in hand making aluminum panel it is shame to put paper on it, if you ask me.

Chriss, sorry for hijacking your thred, but hey, it happens to me all the time. Take look at my Endorphin blog about carpets.  ;D

[TheAncientOne]

Hi Sasha

I'm with you on the normal use of paper, but I use that technique a lot in the past to try out panel ideas. I still have a bench microprocessor power supply with a paper front panel from years ago - I never thought it worth spending the money on engraving. The secret to it's long life is that the paper, (Print from a BBC micro on a Dot Matrix!), is under a clear plastic over panel, held down by all the 4mm sockets.

If I want a graphic or 'flowchart' style panel, as I will with some of my analogue stuff, then it's not that easy to get things like that engraved, and a colour print, under a protective film, or a mirror image print onto a clear film can look good.

There are colour graphic effects that can only be printed too, like gradient tints, or, if you like the 'Aceed'/graffiti/Sk8r look.

In the past, I did prototypes for engraved panels by drawing onto a foam cored mounting board, (I think it was called 'Foamex'), and mounting the controls directly on it. The first ones were done on a drawing board in Rotring film ink with draughting pens. Later I scored an old flat bed plotter and used that.

As an aside, the plotter did well for ages  until a servo amp failed and took the motor with it: Calcomp wanted £150 in 1985 for a spare, so I scrapped it. 3 months later, a customer in Manchester offered me another one that had been dropped during a move and was all bent, but still had two working servos. Isn't that a special case of Murphy's law? It was an A1 size flatbed. I could still use one of those today, htough Ilve in a smaller place now and definitely don't have the room. they could take a vinyl cutter, and I guess a small router. Perhaps I ought to build one of the DIY little CNC's, just enough to engrave and drill PCB's. Ther are enough designs out there.

By the way, back on thread, I really like Chris's layout, and I wouldn't have thought it was laquered paper either.

Mike

[Sasha]

I'm with you on the normal use of paper, but I use that technique a lot in the past to try out panel ideas.

Sure, I always do that, and paper is unreplaceble for that job! :)

Perhaps I ought to build one of the DIY little CNC's, just enough to engrave and drill PCB's. Ther are enough designs out there.

I`ve collected some mechanical parts (guides, steppers..) from printers and scanners to made myself a small CNC, for same purpose as you... PCB engraving and drilling. I need to finish first few MB projects that I am already building, and I would like to continue with CNC. Not sure what stepper controller design I will use yet, so if you have some suggestion... I`m here, but maybe not in Chriss`s thread. ::)

[Jidis]

The secret to it's long life is that the paper, (Print from a BBC micro on a Dot Matrix!), is under a clear plastic over panel, held down by all the 4mm sockets.

I've seen that done on lots of stuff and it seems pretty indestructible (unless water gets under the panel I guess). I wonder if a similar thing could be done by having a negative of your print put on clear paper (transparency) and laying that upside-down over a white or colored panel.

I'd still like to see someone get that stinking white TRF to work. I got a pack of it and couldn't even get it to pretend to stick, but Smash, who had used the green one, said it seems to only work with the manufacturer's (Pulsar) paper.

George

[Jaicen]

You could also look at getting printed adhesive rubber. My local place does that pretty cheaply, they can accept CAD so you can have all the holes cut, and then print onto the surface. Instant panel.