Madbean Sparklehorn

[m-Kresol]

Hey guys,
this is going to be a longer story - a story of failure with more or less success at the end. Just skip ahead for the pics

So, this build was primarily inspired by Jason's (jubal81) spectacular Brazen Bull build. I thought, I can do that too as I'm supposed to be an expert on this field since I'm a chemist. I had the idea to also use a wet chemical approach to copper plate the whole enclosure and then etch parts of it away to have a nice copper-aluminium contrast with a lot of bling bling considering the name of this project is Sparklehorn.

I first tried the copper plating with the enclosure's bottom lid. I used Copper sulfate (CuSO4) as a copper source and a Zink anode. The freshly polished aluminum enclosure was the cathode. Theory tells me, that Cu2+ ions will get reduced on the neg. pole and therefore plate the enclosure (Zn on the other hand oxidized to Zn2+ to go in solution). It worked mostly, after some trials I found that 5V are more than enough and the current produced sufficed to kill the fuse of a very cheap multimeter lying around. I also found that a low pH (approx. 2) was beneficial. I perfected the procedure to the part were I could have written something onto the enclosure in copper (very crude, but I could have) since the deposition was very local at the Zn anode's tip. So I spent about 7h moving the anode around to coat the enclosure "evenly".
It looked good enough, so I went ahead and tried toner transfer. I haven't used toner transfer before, so I also did some trial runs. One trial was photo paper. This one failed miserably... it stuck randomly to the enclosure so bad that I ripped part of the copper coating of the enclosure when removing the paper. This lead to another 3h of re-coating.
I then succeeded in transfer and started etching with FeCl3. Unfortunately, I didn't consider that Al is, of course, as it is a less precious metal, more prone to oxidation ergo dissolution. So, instead of only etching the Cu away, I also got a relief into the Al, which I didn't want and also the Al dulled as it is when etching Al. Furthermore, some of the Cu didn't dissolve due to preferential etching of the Al.
This is how it looked at that stage:



I thought, I'll just spray black and sand of the paint on the elevated parts to get a copper-black contrast, but of course it wasn't what I initially wanted and also it looked rather bad with parts of the copper - once more - lifting of the Al enclosure...
After sleeping over it, I went ahead and sanded the whole top down to bare aluminum again (took about 2h, since I the coarsest sanding paper I had, was 800grid paper) and applied a hastily designed decal with a copper-coloured background. I left the sides with the real copper plating though. Finishing touches with envirotex and I was done. Or so I thought.

During boxing, I had to take everything out, because I thought that I put the LEDs in in reverse, which I didn't so it was for nothing. Also, I accidentally centre-punched the bottom part of the enclosure instead of the top for the jacks. Putting the wires in was a pain as well, took me ages to finish. And of course it didn't work as planned. Luckily, it was just a very small solder bridge on the delay stomp, which I found very fast.
So, without further ado, I present the final product, which isn't at all, how I wanted it to be. I'm not really content with the decal, should have gone with black lettering for contrast or leave the black border off.
Thanks for reading this far

     

[culturejam]

I'm tired now! 

[PhiloB]

Talk about a 'Labor of Love'!  What's your impression of the sound?


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[brucer]

I feel your pain brother.  I'm on the novice end of the spectrum and have sometimes found etching to be a time and frustration sink.  The results can be pretty cool though!!  I think yours has a great industrial vibe, so I say go with that!

I'd also like to hear what you think of the sound.  I haven't pulled the trigger on this PCB yet (trying to hold back for the "Oct" releases, but I'm weakening ...).

[m-Kresol]

I like the sound. It's not a centaur (which is one of my favorites) but you get some nice mid gain tones. The cut and shape pots are a nice feature but I actually don't see me using them too much as I prefer the brighter tones with a little more treble.
The delay is really warm and easy to dial in. It definetly safes some space on the pedal board if you eliminate another delay for it. I kicked off the SPSDX for now as I'm waiting for version 2 and the dirtbag

[selfdestroyer]

Despite the trials and tribulations I say you nailed it. Nice tight build you have there. Great job.

Cody

[G.G.]

so much science in that build! I know it's not what you had planned but it still came out pretty cool.

[Leevibe]

Wow! It's so cool that you know all that chemistry. Great job, and you are amazingly persistent!

[wgc]

Egads, that's a long time.  Great info in there, great stuff