- Designed in Onshape Free
- 8 beatmania IIDX clone switches w/ LEDs from AliExpress
- 4 rotary potentiometers and 4 slide potentiometers
- Faceplate laser cut on 1/8" 5052 aluminum by SendCutSend
- Using aluminum wall mount sign holders with rubber pads as legs
- Based around a Teensy 3.2 because I had one
- Connected via PCB and 18 gauge copper jewelry wire
- Switches wired inline with LEDs to light up when pressed
- PCB designed in KiCad
- PCB manufactured by Oshpark
- NGE artwork desgined in Inkscape
- Art converted to footprints with svg2mod
- Special thanks to Uri Shaked's Practical Guide to Designing PCB Art
- Running Arduino
- Using USB MIDI
| Part | Price |
|---|---|
| PCB | $51.65 |
| Laser Cut Aluminum Faceplate | $39.15 |
| Switch (8x) | $24.99 |
| Teensy 3.2 | $19.80 |
| Aluminum Legs (10x) | $13.99 |
| Jewlery Wire (55ft) | $12.99 |
| Slide Potentiometer Screws (10x) | $8.67 |
| Rotary Potentiometer | $7.80 ($1.95 ea) |
| Slide Potentiometer | $7.80 ($1.95 ea) |
| Rubber Foot Pads (50x) | $7.79 |
| 1k Through-hole Resistor (100x) | $4.99 |
| Potentiometer Knobs (20x) | $4.73 |
| Slide Potentiometer Knobs (10x) | $2.45 |
| TOTAL | $206.80 (yikes) |
Everything fit in the plate beautifully. The faceplate only needed a little bit of post-processing with a file and some scotch brite.
The rotary potentiometer pins were longer than expected. I extended each slide potentiometer pin with the metal innard of a female pin header so that the PCB will sit parallel to the faceplate.
The aluminum legs strip easily.
The PCBs look great. There's a few spots where the silkscreen wasn't printed. I knew the fab house would remove silkscreen on top of exposed copper, but it looks like they also remove silkscreen within a small radius around exposed copper. Also, some small lines on the left were left out of my Gerbers; I'm not sure how that happened.
The copper wiring was a pain. Removing the coating from the jewelry wire and trying to keep everything straight and sized correctly was tedious.
The easiest method I found to remove the coating was scraping with a razor blade. Fun-Tak was useful for securing things while soldering.
I could've benefitted from better modeling of the wiring ahead of time, and I should've used through-hole pads on the PCB for the wire.
In the future I might try to use thicker wire that holds it shape better. Since I still have a bunch of wire left over, I'll probably find a way to strip a large amount of it ahead of time. I think I'll also buy better solder.
This sketch I found in my notes is pretty much how each switch is wired.
Finally, the linear and rotary potentiometer knobs both needed some work. I bought rotary pots without knob splines because they seemed nicer (apart from that), so I just drilled out the knobs a big to fit on. The linear pots came with knobs, but I bought nicer ones that were way too tight. I shaved down the linear pot stems a bit with a razor blade and used some Fun-Tak to try and help them sit a bit higher and not scratch against the plate.
Both sets of knobs still rub on the plate a bit, I think 1/8" is probably the upper limit these parts are intended to be mounted through.