The Wave

[pickdropper]

It's been a long time since I've posted a build report, but this one was sort of interesting, so I thought I'd throw some pics up.

Somebody contacted me and asked if I'd build them a 3-in-1.  He wanted an etch of The Great Wave off Kanagawa on it. 

I suggested using acrylic plates for it (which I still think look better) but he wanted it directly etched on the enclosure and seems very happy with the results, so it's all good.  I didn't get very good shots of the inside, but there is one gutshot.

This is the final build:



This is one of the acrylic plates:



This is a an acrylic plate with a reverse etch:



And this is the gutshot (obviously):



The circuits are a FF + EA Trem + DBD

[alanp]

That is so art-like I like how minimalistic your silkscreens are on the pcbs.

The name always makes me think of that book, "The Wave" by Morton Rhue.

[BrianS]

Oh my that's a great looking build.  That etch is, uh, I don't have words of how sharp it looks.  So nice in and out.

[EBK]

Can you tell me more about this acrylic plate etch stuff (pointing me somewhere else would be ok too  )?

[Leevibe]

Man, I like all 3 versions. I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite.

[pickdropper]

Can you tell me more about this acrylic plate etch stuff (pointing me somewhere else would be ok too  )?

Basically, here is the process:

1.) Take a piece of acrylic
2.) Paint one side of it with the color you want (I used black for both pieces)
3.) Setup your artwork in the vector program you like (I use Adobe Illustrator)
4.) Flip the artwork horizontally so that the image is backwards (because you are going to reverse the underside of the acrylic.
5.) Laser etch and cut acrylic.  I used a 30W Epilog laser for this.

For the reverse etched one, I inverted the colors.

[stringsthings]

Wow!

[midwayfair]

Lovely etch, but can we talk about how perfectly sized and spaced the boards are inside?

[diablochris6]

Agreed. Great layout inside and ingenious method for plate design.

[Willybomb]

Those guts are a thing of beauty.

[pickdropper]

Lovely etch, but can we talk about how perfectly sized and spaced the boards are inside?

When you use boards laid out for 1590A builds, it sort of just works out that way with 3-in-1 builds.

[bcalla]

That's beautiful!

[mrclean77]

Great build - I love the little boards and the insides (I usually do love your gutshots). The customer chose wrong - shoulda went with the reverse etched acrylic, oh well. One could say this is a matter of opinion, but nope....customer was wrong. 

[EBK]

For the acrylic, would the switches and knobs be mounted only to the underlying enclosure and not physically touching the acrylic (due to carefully oversized holes)?  Wondering about cracking....

[m-Kresol]

perfect in every way!