The Fruit Of My Recent PCB Design Labours

[FuzzMonkey]

I thought I'd share a few photos of the enclosure trials that I conducted recently. These came about from my desire to design a set of PCBs that I could use as a template for all my builds moving forward after a recent experience using a few boards from PedalPCB.

The aim was to include as many of the following features as possible:

1. Top-mounted input and output jacks with a flush-mounted DC power jack.

2. Built-in non-sacrificial reverse polarity protection.

3. The main circuit board to use PCB-mounted jacks.

4. Has minimal off-board wiring. Most important!

5. Fits into a 125B-sized enclosure.

6. Has a soft fading status LED. Both in and out. Which I think looks cool.

7. Looks good/professional. Also very important.

8. Easy to remove from the enclosure for maintenance and repair purposes.

Below: Fits into a 125B-sized enclosure.


Below: Looks good/professional.


Below: The Mosfet-based, non-sacrificial reverse polarity protection circuit.


Below: The flush-mounted DC power jack with top-mounted input and output jacks.


Below: A few close-ups.






Below: Clapton is God.


If you couldn't guess from the last photo, the circuit in this example is an early version of the Marshall Bluesbreaker. I want to build one and needed something to put in it so this seemed as good of a time as any.

Next up is determining if I want to go with UV printing or a faceplate. Samples of both are on the way.

I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts.

~ Blake.

[Kev77]

Very tidy

[jeremyb]

So nice!!!

[FuzzMonkey]

Very tidy

Thank you Kev.

So nice!!!

And thank you JB.

[TmcB]

So many questions!
Love your layouts - these are amazing! Clearly know what you’re up to.

First - what program and which library do you use for your boards? I’ve been using Madbean’s library in eagle but quite keen to try KiCad

Second, where do you get your pcb’s fabricated?

Third - do you cnc your cases? I’m so keen to get something with the in/out/power sorted like you have, and to do the same thing with switching (perhaps relay) and leds. Wasn’t sure how to get the square power jacks working.

[FuzzMonkey]

So many questions!
Love your layouts - these are amazing! Clearly know what you’re up to.

First - what program and which library do you use for your boards? I’ve been using Madbean’s library in eagle but quite keen to try KiCad

Second, where do you get your pcb’s fabricated?

Third - do you cnc your cases? I’m so keen to get something with the in/out/power sorted like you have, and to do the same thing with switching (perhaps relay) and leds. Wasn’t sure how to get the square power jacks working.

1. I use Eagle as well and the Madbean library is featured heavier in this design. Especially the main PCB. There are a few other components/footprints I either found online or created myself. I've been curious about KiCad but I think I've invested too much time and resources i.e. library building in Eagle to swap now.

2. It get all my PCBs fabricated by JLCPCB (https://jlcpcb.com/).

3. I'm terrible at drilling holes so I get my enclosures drilled (and painted) at Tayda Electronics (https://www.taydaelectronics.com/). They recently added the ability to create square holes so gave that a try for the first time with the DC jack.

I have another one built that uses a microcontroller-based relay bypass with a soft touch switch. It has the ability to turn on and off with a quick tap of the footswitch or a momentary function i.e. press and hold the footswitch down and the effect will stay on until the footswitch is released.



It also has a mute function that briefly shorts the signal to ground to prevent any pops from being audible when switching.

[PaulWD]

You're a clever fellow. I like the idea of the mute function preventing poppings

[TmcB]

So many questions!
Love your layouts - these are amazing! Clearly know what you’re up to.

First - what program and which library do you use for your boards? I’ve been using Madbean’s library in eagle but quite keen to try KiCad

Second, where do you get your pcb’s fabricated?

Third - do you cnc your cases? I’m so keen to get something with the in/out/power sorted like you have, and to do the same thing with switching (perhaps relay) and leds. Wasn’t sure how to get the square power jacks working.

1. I use Eagle as well and the Madbean library is featured heavier in this design. Especially the main PCB. There are a few other components/footprints I either found online or created myself. I've been curious about KiCad but I think I've invested too much time and resources i.e. library building in Eagle to swap now.

2. It get all my PCBs fabricated by JLCPCB (https://jlcpcb.com/).

3. I'm terrible at drilling holes so I get my enclosures drilled (and painted) at Tayda Electronics (https://www.taydaelectronics.com/). They recently added the ability to create square holes so gave that a try for the first time with the DC jack.

I have another one built that uses a microcontroller-based relay bypass with a soft touch switch. It has the ability to turn on and off with a quick tap of the footswitch or a momentary function i.e. press and hold the footswitch down and the effect will stay on until the footswitch is released.



It also has a mute function that briefly shorts the signal to ground to prevent any pops from being audible when switching.

Love it. Ooh did not know Tayda was doing square holes now! Awesome. Your relay bypass looks really nice - I do wonder if they are more expense/effort than they are worth for the nice feel. You do the smd by hand?

Going to check out that jlcpcb, thanks! I’ve classically made my pcbs as tiny as possible but I think giving them some air like you have will probably make my life better.

Love the ribbon cable - I had tried to do something like that but couldn’t find them with the correct distance between wires to make it not fiddly. Looks like you’ve got the annoying bits all smoothed out

[FuzzMonkey]

Love it. Ooh did not know Tayda was doing square holes now! Awesome. Your relay bypass looks really nice - I do wonder if they are more expense/effort than they are worth for the nice feel. You do the smd by hand?

Going to check out that jlcpcb, thanks! I’ve classically made my pcbs as tiny as possible but I think giving them some air like you have will probably make my life better.

Love the ribbon cable - I had tried to do something like that but couldn’t find them with the correct distance between wires to make it not fiddly. Looks like you’ve got the annoying bits all smoothed out

The square hole thing is a little more fiddly as you need to enter two sets of coordinates, the start and finish point of each line but doesn't take to long to master.

My feelings on the relay based bypass thing is that it is only worth doing if you are planning on adding some functionality that a standard on/off switch can't do. Like the momentary function for example. If it is just a pure on or off function, is it not worth it. In my opinion anyway. Especially since you can get some nice softer latching footswitches these days.

Yes, I do solder the SMD components by hand.

The PCB is spread out a bit because that was the maximum size I was trialing; 59mm x 59mm. Probably could be half the size if I condensed things down. Probably even smaller if I used all SMD components.

The ribbon cable is called Flexstrip and is meant to be better than the regular grey stuff you see in a lot of pedals. Better in terms of spreading the tension across the entire length of the section rather than at just the ends. Or so the blurb states.

[chur]

That is epic tidy, well done sir!

[jeremyb]

Its actually criminal that your enclosures aren't see thru!

What can you tell us about the circuit?

[FuzzMonkey]

You're a clever fellow. I like the idea of the mute function preventing poppings

The mute idea has been around for a while now so I am just standing on the shoulder of others who came before me. The downside is that the signal cuts out altogether for a few microseconds as the switching takes place. Some people are bothered by that; others not so much.

[FuzzMonkey]

That is epic tidy, well done sir!

Thank you kind sir.

[FuzzMonkey]

Its actually criminal that your enclosures aren't see thru!

What can you tell us about the circuit?

It wouldn't look as nice from the top looking down.

The circuit shown is just a Marshall Bluesbreaker. I had never played one and got caught up in the hype around the recent release of the reissue and Reg's take on it. So wanted to try one for myself.

But I have a couple of things in the works.

[Cdog]

Sweet design!