Boombox, part 4

Status update..

6″ compartments are shaping up neat. Two layers of paint have been applied, so what little remains to be done is mainly the wiring chores. I’ll wait with this until I have the treble compartment ready to be wired up too. As a neat little extra detail for cabling through-holes, I now have some rubber grommets. These were sourced from the Panasonic speaker enclosures, where they were used to attach the decorative fabric in front of the speaker.

Rubber grommets, just loaded with high re-use value!

Boombox, part 3

With the sheet pieces cut, this project is now moving swiftly towards assembly! At the moment, there’s still a bit of CNC pending as I need to wait for some parts to arrive.

The final structural layout on the right side panel, left still has the old one.

Whilst doing the sheets, I also decided to cut a bunch of 9x9mm sticks. Their planned use is to make the top sheet assembly of the upper 6″ speaker compartment stronger. But, should the need arise I can use the extras as assembly supports elsewhere inside the enclosure.

Boombox, part 2

Plenty of movement with this project, namely in the form of enclosure materials and quite a bit of design changes!

Looking for what to make the enclosure with, I soon came across this damaged shelve in the dumpster. Made out of particle board and torn to sheets for the bin, most of the parts were slightly broken from the edges. Then again, with the bad parts cut off you still had plenty of usable material. Biggest downside immediately apparent: With these sheets being 19mm thick, whatever you build with them is not going to be exactly lightweight. But sure, I’ll accept free “raw materials”, at least for testing something. Once installed in the trolley, the weight becomes less of an issue anyway.  For outdoor use, the sheets will also need a layer of paint applied, something I was planning to do anyway.

x0x, enclosure

Switching to aluminium, more pictures less talk! :)

The milled top panel sheet ready for shaping.

x0x, enclosure mockup

Finishing the enclosure for my x0xb0x has been pushed aside for quite some while, or moreover somewhat forgotten. But things are about to change on that front! ;)

Wasting way too much time with undecisive pondering about what approach to take with the enclosure, I eventually decided to challenge myself by doing the “stepped” version and use CNC milling. If you haven’t been following my earlier x0x posts, this version has a small angled step between the keyboard and the potentiometers on the top surface of the enclosure. I’ve also decided to change the material from 2mm acrylic to 1mm aluminium, as I have some of this available and shaving off half of the height helps a lot with the slide switches. Thing is, it turned out that their shafts are just too short to remain usable with the 2mm sheet. Heck, even the 1mm sheet is problematic for one mod switch, so I still have to figure out what to do with it. The switch type I’ve used elsewhere on the synth isn’t available in the pole configuration needed for this one mod and I thus had to use a alternate type (shorter shaft).