Making of Endorphin (photo blog)

[Sasha]

After healing from perfectionism by making of ugly recycled Woody (http://www.midibox.org/forum/index.php?topic=8416.0), it is time for some fanciness again. :P

As I had pretty much free time at work by now, I spend it mostly drawing, moving and removing objects till I was completely, well, almost completely satisfied with the result. Here is the latest look.

Here is the result of laser cutting (sub-panels). Very precise and clean, and if it is drawn carefully everything should fit together perfectly. I design it in Corel so you cannot be sure in that as you cannot see the assembly and program wont inform you about part collide or other mismatching. Better use some CAD software and your head wont hurt.

I hate to see screws on the panel (except for rack mounting) so I needed to have sub-panel for mounting the encoders.

Encoder sub-panel mounted on the main sub-panel. As you can see screw holes on main sub-panel are conned so everything is in in same level!

The PCB`s are finished and tested. I add some hot glue to secure the wires. I often brake some wile moving if building last too long.

Here is the assembly sandwich of three sub-panels containing encoders, PCBs with LEDs and buttons. Yes, matrix and data-wheel are missing for now. Back sub-panel is there to improve strength and it will carry all the modules. I hope so...  :P

That is it for now. Hope you will find it inspiring.

[MTE]

Looks so great !

Im amazed about your 1000 projects  :D

[kris]

yea man keep being a perfectionist its great to see even if im not a perfectionist

regards kris

[Sasha]

Thank you guys.

About perfectionism... well, often I wish I`m not perfectionist.  ...is it good enough? should I work some more on it? ...never-ending. :) But, nice feeling once you have finish it.

[stryd_one]

Damn you make a good lookin CS dude!!

[TheAncientOne]

Superb work Sasha.

I do the hot glue trick too - it works well on the LCD cabling as well, and will peel off  without too much trouble if you have to rewire.

Mike

[Sasha]

I couldn`t find small D shaft knob for data-wheel so I needed to modify one with different fitting I have laying around. Albs do have proper 35mm data knobs but their precision wasn`t satisfying - I tried few and they wobbles a little bit.  ??? Not much, but hey... Albs are Germans, it shouldn`t wobble at all! :-\

First I needed to cut the original shaft from my knob. I cut 3 disks from acrylic and glued them together. I could cut supporting piece from one solid piece of acrylic, but laser beam makes smaller out hole, especially with thicker materials, which is bad, so I compensated it using 3x3mm disks. Final result is much better than Albs knob (no wobble  8) ), but took some time and effort to make it. 

I also finished LED matrix PCB, so main sub-panel is completed!  :)

All LEDs are adjusted to be same hight. This could be done much easier if I could wait for my panel to arrive, but I didn`t order it yet. I adjusted every LED individually using small piece of acrylic with 3mm hole in it which emulates main panel. Yes, boring job, but only thing I could do without having a real panel.

 

Now is the time to organize the modules at the back of 2nd sub-panel. It is going to be hairy... I can feel it. :P I hope I`m not going to give up of using 4 SIDs as I am extremely limited with space. Bigger box is not an option.

[ganchan]

I hate to see screws on the panel (except for rack mounting) so I needed to have sub-panel for mounting the encoders.

me too, and this is an interesting solution..  ;)

[Sasha]

Yes, but this is nothing new.

[Sasha]

Yesterday I visited my laserman to cut some parts I needed for other project and I also cut the cardboard panel for my sinth just to ensure everything fits. This is good way and it is much cheaper than milling new panel if there is some error.

I was layering down my dummy panel with smile on my face...

...untill I discover greatest mismatch I made in my life. The smile was gone...

After few seconds , after I realized what have I done, I started to laugh at myself and how big this mismatch actually is. ;D ;D ;D Craziness!

I designed panel, few sub-panels, and some supporting pieces for encoders (Corel, not CAD), but somehow I left display and soft-buttons to finish later on. It was left as it was positioned freehand in space, which looked OK, but it wasnt.  :-[ Luckily, this error is easy correctable and I feel glad I cut that cardboard dummy panel before I payed for CNC milling. Huuh.. From now I will always do that, even I`m sure everything is right. ;)

[dj3nk]

[Sasha]

My main problem when making things is that I really try to make things as compact as possible. This project wasn`t exception. Beside that I have another problem - depth limitations. It was very hard for me to find Mahagony in my country but I managed to get 2 pieces wide just 75mm, and that must be the depth of my whole 4xSID synth.  :-\ And of course, side panels need to run slightly over the synth dimensions. ::)

As you can see on the first slide in series there is no space on sub-panel for connectors as it is all reserved for modules, so I needed to find some solution while building. I could use RCA connectors, but they really wasn`t in spirit of synthesizers.

I increased the space between 1st and 2nd sub-panel a bit and start looking for 6.3mm jack that could fit in. I couldn`t find anything suitable so I decided to use female cable connector.

Here on the first pic you can see really nice connector from some synth but I couldn`t find anything like it.

To secure the cable connectors in place I needed to make 4 piece puzzle which will be screwed to the back sub-panel.

The end result ended really nice and I felt great relief because I solved my greatest issue by now. It could all be avoided in designing stage but I already spent months drawing and I reeealy wanted to start actually building it, so never finish the design phase to the end.  :P

On the last pic in series you can see whole assembly mounted to the hardly visible yellow acrylic back sub-panel. 

[Sasha]

To protect coax cable from breaking and to isolate naked joints I applied some epoxy, both on audio and on DIN connectors.

[Sasha]

The back-panel is populated with connectors. Well, almost, as I left LCD contrast trimer to screwed on it later (hole most right) Beside that back sub-panel needs to be fixed to the chassis of course. I will probably use aluminum L profile or something.

I sanded transparent sub-panel with fine sand paper so you can see it this time...  ;D 

[Sasha]

Here are few pix showing how dense it is. All Core and SID modules are double stacked to preserve precious space, and all that because of bloody side panels that are just 75mm wide, but hey... they are Mahagony, so it`s worth it!  :)

PS. I`ll split the image posts - one image per post, even they are all optimised for web, to make this page as lighter as possible. 

[Sasha]

Here is another view. All wires going from encoders, buttons and LEDs are long just enough to reach connectors, again, to preserve the space. Only the LCD>Core interconnection cable is bit longer, but it is well packed. The aluminum L profile (2nd not on the picture) will be holding memory and LTC modules.

My girlfriend said it looks like a brick, and she is probably right. :P  I wanted something angled, not so squared, brick-like  but it`s just not possible without making it bigger. As I build it It starts taking the shape of of Arthesia`s fabulous sequencer. Great work Arthesia!

 

[MRE]

damn that looks pretty.

[SLP]

... and it's so clean and tidy  :)

Where did you get those blue acrylic panels?

[Sasha]

Thanks guys.

...well, it must be tidy, not to look good but to fit in.  ;D One ot the things that really saved my day was cable ties and hot glue. I would surely brake some wires of the PCB till now if it wasn`t fixed in place that nicely and tied together.

Where did you get those blue acrylic panels?

Blue sub-panels I bought from the local acrylic manufacturer. I don`t find them specially pretty, they are just there to support the structure. Above everything will be aluminum panels and wooded sides.

[Sasha]

Last night I played with my baby for a while, holding it on my lap... I was fun but pretty unpleasant experience. The SIDs are getting hot. Yes, nothing new. My box is opened now, but I afraid temperature could build up pretty much when I close it. What is the chance to damage the SIDs because of overheating? I cannot do much about it, but to put piece of aluminum on SIDs at the 1st flore. Top ones can use chassis for cooling.

Do I really getting anything with this 50x40x2mm piece of aluminum?  ???

I have some spare space for small fan, (I know you don't believe it ;D), but I really like to avoid it because of the noise they make. They anyway wouldn`t help much because there is not enough space for air to circulate well.

Do I have a problem and what should I do? Should I use those plates at all?

[Sasha]

SID builders... any advise?

[stryd_one]

Well, the air probably wouldn't help much given that it's going to go nowhere, but I wonder if you have thermal paste on there? If not, sometimes the heat cannot be transferred into the heatsink efficiently, and your heatsink ends up being an IC blanket.

Even still, a flat piece of Al will not give a massive increase in the surface area, and I have no idea of it's heat conductance compared to the SID's (why do I get the feeling that TheProf will know this ;D ) so I guess the best way to know how effective it is, is to try it out and measure the temperature of the SIDs...

Sorry I took so long to reply, I've had this page open in a tab since you posted but hadn't gotten to it yet...

[Sasha]

Well, the air probably wouldn't help much given that it's going to go nowhere, but I wonder if you have thermal paste on there?

Actually, I thought to make some holes on the one side of the case, and fan on the other to take out the heat. But as there is a space only for some very small, graphic card type fan probably I wont do much with it.

Thermal paste is a must, and I will buy it definitely.  ;)

so I guess the best way to know how effective it is, is to try it out and measure the temperature of the SIDs.

Yeah... I would measure it but I really don`t know anyone with decent thermometer.  :(

I`ll try to "invent" some more space for another piece of aluminum to be screwed to those plates with T profile, but still it can be only flat one without any ribs. Maybe some holes could help for exchanging the heat...

I really made my life complicate with this miniaturization.  :-\ 

Thanks Stryd

[Twin-X]

SID builders... any advise?

From old c64 i scavenged there was 1 that had a heat sink attached to it with a tie-wrap.

Why dont you use this method?

[Jaicen]

That's something that i've been thinking of doing. Would a passive heatsink prolong the life of something like a 6581 that runs very hot, or would that need something like a fan?