How much time do you need to make a complete project?

[add4]

Say, from the moment you decide you'll build something, you ordered the parts and received everything..
you sit at your bench and start whatever it is you do first (i suspect the most effect thing would be make a template, artwork, drill, paint, label, clear coat, THEN build..)
How much time does it usually takes you to go from the first move to the finished product.. in hours of work?

[jkokura]

depends on the project and how efficient I am. I bet I could do one in less than 5 hours total spent. However, I most often have many, many projects on the go simultaneously, and rarely are they so simple as to take that little. Some projects could take more than 30 hours. My average is likely about 10 hours.

Jacob

[lloyd17]

I can usually get two dirts or one complex pedal like the pork barrel done on a Saturday afternoon including enclosure milling, troubleshooting and an hour or two of NPD grinning and jamming.

My process is pretty methodical though, I measure each component as I add them and only populate and solder a few components at a time. Being a pretty absent minded and accident prone kind of dude forces one to take a few precautions.

I tried to do a flip flop build pattern where boards are populated one weekend and installed in cases the next but that stacked milling a bunch of enclosures [my least favorite part] on the same day.

I'm in no hurry though, the build process is fun for me.

[jubal81]

I've found it's best for me not to look at it as a job or project, but as an activity or passtime.

Any time I've tried to watch the clock or hurry, I've made some mistake; the end result being that it ended up taking more time because of debugging.

If I just flip on the game or something and take my time working without worrying, I get it right the first time.

All that being said, if you're working with a fabbed board, the small-part soldering is the easy part. It's the drilling, wiring, artwork, etc. that takes the longest.

[juansolo]

Honestly depends on what we're doing. We can knock together and board and have it running pretty quickly as we have a vast stockpile of bits. But an actual end to end... Probably about a week to prep and finish the enclosure ready to drop the electronics in. Say a couple of hours to populate the board and an hour to drop it in.

In reality it tends to take a lot longer as it's a hobby and many, many other things get in the way of it. If it was a job I could batch them up and do them a lot faster. But I get kinda bored doing the same pedal over and over. They do tend to turn out nice the more you do though. I think I did about 8 or so sunkings, the last ones were really nicely done.

[TNblueshawk]

I've often thought about this but have not actually sat down and put "pen to paper" so lets do it. I'll round off.

1. Plan and mark, drill, sand, prime and paint pedal: 1 hour
2. Decal process. Thinking about what album to pick, searching the internet, manipulating the decal and printing, some tests etc...:  2 hours
3. Decal prep and application: 15 minutes
4. Envirotex the pedal including taping/prep: 30 minutes (hard to gauge as you baby sit it for awhile but I'm close on actual work)
5. Worrying: 24 hours  
6. Cutting and drilling out excess epoxy: 30 minutes
7. Bagging the components and marking for easy access on build: 30 minutes
8. Populating the board: 2 hours (varies greatly ie. fuzz vs modulation)
9. Total wiring job: 1.5 hours....I'm slow  

What do we have. 8.15 hours? I'll bet that is pretty close on average for me.
9.

[crash]

A couple months

Soldering the components on is the easy part that only takes an hour or two.

Wait a couple of days because I hate off-board wiring.

Order part(s) that I missed.

Wire the jacks, dc jack, 3PDT switch

Play it/debug it.  I don't think I've ever had one come out right the first time.  I always miss something: wire a jack backwards, wire a pot backwards, etc.

Play with it and maybe do some mods over the next couple of months.

Here is a list of my Work In Progress pedals that are not boxed up yet:

Rat - not done modding
Rat - not done modding - giving this to my cousin
May Queen Drive - done, not boxed
Current Lover - populated except for the IC's
Omega muff - populated, no offboard wiring
Boneyard - populated, no offboard wiring
Chunk Chunk - not done modding
1969 Fuzz - not done debugging
Tone Source - done, not boxed
Sunking - not populated
SRV Special - done, not boxed
Bloviator - populated, no offboard wiring
Pork Barrel - just started populating
Mongrel with LPB boosting it - done, not boxed
AMZ Miniboost with AMZ Presence control - done
EA Trem - done, not boxed
Lavache - done, not boxed
SWAW - not done debugging
Cornish G2 - done, not boxed (love this circuit with 1N60's )
Orange squeezer - done, not boxed
PT80 delay - done, not boxed
Hwy 89 - done, not boxed
Hunny Bunny - populated, no offboard wiring
Sparkle boost - populated, no offboard wiring
Fetzer deluxe - populated, no offboard wiring
Uproar - populated, no offboard wiring
Lunar fuzz - done, not boxed

27 pedals in progress   

The 2 big things holding me back from boxing these is not having a printer for waterslide decals and not wanting to spend all that money on enclosures.

[Jamiroking]

I think I'm in the same class as crash. You other guys make me feel bad for taking so long.

I always do a bunch at the same time so its hard to tell how long one takes. But everytime I always finish the board population and think "Oh man that was so fast. Why did I always take so long before?" and then I get to the wiring and get my answer. Another reason I take a long time is that I insist on being able to use a battery and never use anything bigger than a 125b so it can take a while to figure out how I'm going to cram everything in. And of course, that usually designing the decal so it fits with the layout. Then there's the painting which took me over a whole weekend to do 9 pedals (Now I learned to do it simultaneously so the enclosure is dry and ready by the time you finish your wiring. And I'm still trying to figure out how to put a more durable clear coat on them...

Oddly enough, I think the most time consuming and annoying part of building is jumping back and forth between mouser/smallbear/tayda ordering all the parts I need--and of course missing a couple

[lloyd17]

Oddly enough, I think the most time consuming and annoying part of building is jumping back and forth between mouser/smallbear/tayda ordering all the parts I need--and of course missing a couple

Agreed, not to mention post from three or four sources does enough to build price that it cannot be ignored. I tend to build up a queue of five or six before I commit to parts to mitigate shipping costs. I really wish I could get down to two suppliers, one would be too much to ask.

[gtr2]

Quickest 3 hours, longest 15+ hours.  Average 7-8 hours.

Josh

[Quip]

Built the cupcake in like an hour. Aquaboy though took me a good few hours.
Low rider is taking me forever. I'm just procrastinating finishing that thing up. These don't include boxing time though as I suck at that and usually don't box  them up right away.


I got tired of forgetting parts when orderring so now I copy every component I need into notepad, usually from BOM's on Bean's pdf's, and delete them one by one as they get ordered or verified in my stash.  Always check the mods for different values if I intend on tweaking. Been working out good as no forgotten parts since I started doing it.