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Grounding the potato

Started by urowinner, October 08, 2011, 05:03:52 PM

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urowinner

I've built two successful madbean PCBs so far (zombii and sabretooth) but I'm still definitely an electronics newbie....

I love the Mr. potatohead "enclosure" in the build off thread: http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=322.0

I want to build one of my own for a fun challenge, but am wondering what would happen with grounding the parts. My understanding is that all the components need to be grounded to each other via wires, and there is enough incidental contact with metal enclosures that all the components end up sharing the same ground.

Would there be a grounding issue inside a Mr. Potatohead figure since the whole enclosure is made of plastic? I could easily connect everything as usual via wires, but there won't be any metal for the jacks/switches/pots to come in contact with....so would that doom the project to hum?

Like I said, I'm a newbie, so it's possible I don't understand the issue I'm dealing with....but I would prefer to go into the Potatohead project with a workable plan if I can. Does anyone have advice for how to make this work? Or will it work just fine even without a metal enclosure?

Thanks so much!
dave

bigmufffuzzwizz

I built my test rig in a plastic enclosure and it works fine, no hum or crazy noise ever.
The jacks are the main part sharing ground through the enclosure, which can easily be connected by attaching the 2 sleeve lugs. I can't see any grounding issues except the space your working with is small and you just have to be sure the board doesn't ground on the other parts. Just make sure each ground is connected manually and you should be all good!
Owner and operator of Magic Pedals

stecykmi

yep, just make sure all stuff that is grounded on the schematic is grounded manually.

you may run into problems if you build a high gain circuit into an non-shielded enclosure though.