The finalish result
The audio active filter I built in September has been sitting at my operating position for a while now, doing its job quite well. But, it was past time to put some clothes on the poor thing. Achieving that goal shouldn't have been hard, but I had a few obstacles to overcome, namely I had no experience in actually using graphics software, I had no idea of how I was going to protect the graphics once I created them and my beloved and ancient Apple emac (running Ubuntu 12.4 for ppc) is dying of the dreaded capacitor problem so common to old Apples.
Getting a computer that works first
I replaced my emac with old Dell GX280 with Debian 7.3 as the OS. I'm not comfortable with where Ubuntu is headed so I chose to go back to a Debian Linux distribution. The Debian organization does just about the best job of supporting free (as in cost and freedom) software. I finally ditched my ancient CRT monitor in favor of a new ASUS LCD monitor. The change from the 4:3 graphics format to a widescreen format makes a huge difference when using modern desktops like GNOME and KDE.
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| My desktop as it looks today |
I installed just about every graphics creation program in the distribution and finally settled on two to try to create the front panel: Scribus and Inkscape.
Creating the panel graphics
Inkscape has a great interface and it's fun to use. The object creation was very quick and I was ready to print in no time. And that's when I ran into trouble. Inkscape was trying to send an unsupported attribute to the printer with each print job. So, I could go no further with Inkscape. I'll try to debug it later, but I was unable to print directly from Inkscape at that point.
So, on to Scribus. Scribus is actually intended as a desktop publishing platform and it is overkill for this type of work. However, the interface is very easy to navigate, the toolset is very complete and it's a breeze to get started. The best part is the detailed attributes that you can place on any object via a sidepanel that is accessed by the F2 key on any selected object. In my case, where I created the project before I got around to designing the panel, having the ability to specify the location of objects on the front panel down to .001 resolution was very useful. It also prints quite nicely on 110 pound card stock.
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| Scribus at work creating the panel graphics |
Applying the panel
I used a set of punches from Harbor freight to punch out the holes in the card stock panel print. I then used the card stock panel print as a stencil and marked the holes needing drilled onto a piece of OPTIX acrylic that I picked up at Lowes. Cutting the acrylic to size is a snap...literally. Just score the acrylic where you want to cut a line and snap it off over the lip of the workbench. Easy.
Drilling the holes was a little trickier, but still easy to do. I just marked the holes and drilled them. Drilling acrylic requires starting with a pilot hole and stepping up a size at a time through your drill index until you arrive at the size you need. It was a piece of cake with no splits or cracks.
One reason I chose the OPTIX acrylic over the plexiglass product is that the acrylic is only 80 thousandths thick and I wanted to hold the acrylic in place with the potentiometer panel nuts. The thinnest plexi that Lowe's carries is 94 thousandths, which didn't leave me enough threads on the panel nuts. In the alternative, I was going to oversize the pot holes to clear the nuts and drill some mounting holes and use screws to attach the acrylic. In the end, I didn't have to go that far.
I removed the nuts from all of the panel controls, slipped on the front panel and finally the acrylic overlay. I re-installed the panel control nuts and added some spiffy knobs from our friends at Tayda Electronics.
Unsolicited Plug: Tayda Electronics is AWESOME. Their pricing is incredible, they have great service and they have a very complete selection of components.
The end result
I did a few things wrong and managed to pit the acrylic by not keeping a clean workspace while I was working with it. Lesson learned. Overall I think it turned out pretty spiffy despite the pits. The printout/acrylic overlay is a simple and effective technique and it looks pretty good for a first try. Next time out, I'll make the graphics more interesting. I'm thinking maybe a Heath motif or something.
Now I have 2 keyers, a 40M transceiver, a 80M DC receiver, an Elsie 2 LC meter and a data/microphone interface box to give the same treatment...
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| More work to be done.... |
