F. Lyxzén's Arcadiator w/ homemade knobs

[m-Kresol]

I showed my own layout of Fredrik's amazing Arcadiator a while back, so here's the finished pedal! So much cool sounds in just one box.

After I apparently hooked up 9V to my input on my first pcb, something smoldered; but as I couldn't find the part and everything worked perfectly when hooked up correctly, I was happy with it. However, during boxing I found that the IC socket for IC3 was too high to allow for top mounted jacks, so I had to desolder it. I screwed it up a little and was not sure if I fried the IC when soldering it in without the socket, as it sounded a little off. Long story short, I desoldered pots and switches and populated a second board. After fixing a solder joint on that one, it fired right up and the layout is officially verified, which is a big deal for me as it was my first ever layout I had fabbed.

As a side note: the third board is on it's way to Fredrik. I won't make it a shared project on OSH park as he is planing a webshop and there's already Ben's wonderful version at rullywow.com

     





One special thing about this pedal is that I made the knobs myself. A coworker had some leftover material for silicone molds which was just standing around going bad (theather stuff he used for making test specimen). So I made a mold of various knobs I had lying around, which worked amazingly well. The detail is astonishing to be honest. You can see the set screws and on one knob the silicone ran on top of the knob which resulted in the 'serial number' being on the final knob.
To make the knobs from the mold, I simply filled it up with Envirotex and let it harden. Due to the thickness you can't really get rid of all the bubbles, so I did another try with some green textile dye I had. Unfortunately the dye didn't quite desolve in the epoxy and turned out really dark - but you can't see the bubbles this way. After drying, its only drilling to 6.5 mm for the shaft and 2.5 mm for the 3.0 mm set screw.

I have to admit it was fun to try, but I probably won't persue it. The epoxy material can be brittle (see the top left knob missing part of the round bottom) and it's a pain to drill - makes a mess and you can't quite hold it just in your fingers (cut myself a couple of times). Using pliers will scratch the surface.
Anyways, here are some picks of the progress. The chickenheads came out best and were easiest to drill.

     

[brejna]

Big like! You did awesome job.

[culturejam]

Awesome!

[cooder]

Very cool and awesome look of both pedal and those knobs!

[Leevibe]

That's so cool! I kind of want to try casting some knobs too. The chicken head-ish knobs on my Leslie 147 amp would be worth cloning.

[nzCdog]

wow dude thats awesome.  donkey kong ftw!

[AntKnee]

Very cool. I like the knobs, too.

[lincolnic]

Way to go, Felix!

[Ettore_M]

And DIY knobs? A whole different level of DIYness.. Awesome build!

[TGP39]

With all the wonderful things going on in this build it is easy to forget what an impressive layout you did with this pcb!  Now that you have Eagle in your toolbox, there is no stopping you! Btw...Donkey Kong Rules.

Awesome stuff. Steve.

[m-Kresol]

thank you!

That's so cool! I kind of want to try casting some knobs too. The chicken head-ish knobs on my Leslie 147 amp would be worth cloning.

I agree. If you have rare knobs it could be worth the effort

With all the wonderful things going on in this build it is easy to forget what an impressive layout you did with this pcb!  Now that you have Eagle in your toolbox, there is no stopping you!

I fiddled around with this one a lot. Having the pots and switches in the designated positions made it harder. Definitely not half as neat as Ben's layout, but he cheated and used a bigger enclosure than necessary 
And Eagle is not that hard. Jacob's tutorials explained it really well and I have 2 more layouts on my desk atm and another in the queue

[rullywowr]

That's a great layout and spiffy knobs too!

[Cortexturizer]

Insane layout and looks to match! Wow

[luks999]

second arcadiator build?
awesome job. love the graphic and your knobs came out great. seems like a pain doing them

[jimilee]

This is full of win


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