Blog
Mc2 Progress #4
Date: 12/10/2015
Tags: mc2
The time comes to stop mucking around with software and start building the hardware. I'm no where near as good with the hardware things. Software is easy and fine... so how much did I break it? Turns out a fair bit. Lets take a look.

First I started with an Inkscape file that described all the positions of the components and specifically the places where I have to drill or cut. I printed it out in A3 and glued it down to the top surface of the chassis.



I started drilling out the holes and all the switch / neopixel holes went fine. Then came the LED rings and the paper started tearing everywhere.



So I left the LED ring holes for a while and worked on the screen rectangle. I bought this tool called a "nibbler" to cut the hole. You drill a hole in the area to be removed, and insert the nibbler into the hole and start cutting. It can cut in a curve so I used that to align to the border.



Then I came back and finished all the LED ring holes. However my accuracy was terrible and I don't feel all those holes are good enough.



I've decided that this chassis is a bit of a write off. I have since gone and bought a new chassis (they are about $60 AUD inc shipping so not too bad). And now I'm looking for someone that can do CNC drilling.

Moving on I tried test mounting some of the components, starting with the screen and Pi.



Seems to fit quite nicely. So I tried to bend the holes in to accommodate the countersunk machine screws that I had bought. That bent the metal around the hole too much and deformed the chassis around the screen area. In hind sight I should've used a large drill bit instead of mechanical force. So because of the deformations in the metal when I tightened up the screws around the screen I heard a faint cracking sound. Yup I broke the screen just a little.



That's just fantastic! :( Another thing I have to re-order. Similar price too... bah. There is some good news thought... the screen still works:



Although I haven't had a chance to test the touch screen part.

The PCBs and Neopixels need to be mounted behind the front of the chassis, so I went and bought some rectangles of 3mm perspex:



The switches go through the perspex and keep it in place. I've started soldering some 3 wire ribbon cable between the Neopixels, not shown in this photo. It's slow and tedious work :( And the various glue electronics to interface the Pi with the buttons, encoders, expression pedal ports and neopixels is all mounted to that as well.

 
Reply
From:
Email (optional): (Will be HTML encoded to evade harvesting)
Message:
 
Remember username and/or email in a cookie.
Notify me of new posts in this thread via email.
BBcode:
[q]text[/q]
[url=link]description[/url]
[img]url_to_image[/img]
[pre]some_code[/pre]
[b]bold_text[/b]