The Production Line - Tips and Ideas Inside

[Paul Marossy]

I've been wiring/assembling pedals for someone for a few weeks now as source of second income to make up for my hours being cut at work a couple of months ago. Learning from the first fifteen units that I made, here's some things I created to make things go quicker and easier.

This is a jig that holds the enclosure so I can solder wires to the switches and jacks with less hassle. It also makes for an easier installation of the PCB. The pivoting aluminum angle piece on the left is for pre-wiring the pots. This cuts my time spent wiring the pots in half! I can pre-wire a pot in about a minute. 



Here is the jig with an enclosure on it. The little loops guide the wire as I pull the wire thru it to the required length before clipping it - this goes really fast and easy. The wood is just a piece of scrap 3/4" plywood I had lying around that looked like the right size for the job. I like that it is round - no corners to get in the way.   



This is a wire spool holder that I quickly made from some 7/8" dowels and a scrap of 1/4" plywood. It's amazing how much a simple thing like this can help me to be quicker and make it simultaneously less aggravating to deal with! After this picture was taken, I added a little fold down carrying handle to it.





After I am done with a batch of pedals, I need to test them all to make sure that they all work. The way I have been doing it has been a pain in the neck, so I designed a new testing fixture last weekend. 

The first thing I do is feed the pedal a test signal from my DIY Audio Oscillator that I built a few years ago from the schematic at geofex.com - http://www.geofex.com/FX_images/q+dosc.gif



This is the testing fixture with a half completed pedal on it. To the left is an old RadioShack Archer mini amplifier that was given to me which I use to verify that the circuit is working. Very simple and hassle free. It's mounted at an angle because that was the only way I get get it onto that piece of scrap plywood and I was being outright lazy. It actually works out really well because it's very ergonomic this way - the fingers on my left hand can very easily reach around and turn the volume up/down and/or shut the amplifer off.



Here's a side view. The handles are to make moving it around easier. The mini amplifier is secured with a short piece of pipe strap - works great for this sort of thing and is very cheap.



I made this completely from things I had lying around, it didn't cost me a nickel, just a little bit of time and planning on my part. Notice the little well where the enclosure sits. This is so that it doesn't move around at all. For powering the pedal, I wired a battery snap to a DC plug so I can test it without having to hassle with actually plugging a battery onto the battery snap, and no wall warts to mess around with, either. All I have to do is plug the battery into the DC jack! It takes less than a minute to systematically check a completed pedal. 




Here's the trio of helpful pedal building tools all together, posing for the portrait.   



While I was at it, I decided to rework the audio oscillator circuit which didn't quite work right. It was one of the first things I decided to build when I took up electronics about seven years ago, and it took me three tries to get this simple circuit right!    For those who might be wondering, it is built into an old computer A/B Box that I got at a thrift store for a dollar or two.




The idea behind all of these things is to minimize the amount of time and effort required to wire these pedals so I can make more money per hour of work since I get a fixed amount of money per pedal. The only way that I know to do that is to be as efficient as humanly possible!  I have also found thru experience at my consulting engineering job that when you have multiples of something to do, it is best to group things by task and then bang them out. Works well when applied to this as well.   

Just thought I'd share this here in the hopes that maybe someone will benefit from this.

[aron]

WOW. Great ideas!

[Paul Marossy]

Dude, they make life SO much easier!

[DougH]

Very cool, Paul! Thanks for sharing!

Along the same lines, I found a Radio Shack folded aluminum enclosure that makes a decent 125b-size drilling jig. Clay Jones suggested that one to me.

I love your wire spindles. I have a horizontal shelf above me I'd like to fix a horizontal dowel to for putting wire reels on. That would allow pulling the wires from directly in front and overhead.

[Paul Marossy]

I love your wire spindles. I have a horizontal shelf above me I'd like to fix a horizontal dowel to for putting wire reels on. That would allow pulling the wires from directly in front and overhead.

Thanks! I've seen the overhead horizontals done before, but I found that you have to move your arm up and down a lot in that scenario when you're wiring 15 or 20 pedals at a time. With this spool holder, my arm stays at the same level most of the time. I just set it behind my work and pull wire as needed. YMMV.

[DougH]

Good point!

[frank_p]

Perhaps, may I say that in that situation, Paul: necessity is the nature of your inventions.  GREAT !

[Paul Marossy]

Well, they do say that "necessity is the mother of invention". It's in action here, too.

[Mark Hammer]

Necessity may be the mother, but repetition is the obstetrician.  It's seeing the same problems/delays come up again and again that prompts the ideas.  For example, one of the things that I'm sure every pedal builder here can attest to is that you don't know how long the wires connecting pots, switches, etc need to be the first time you build something.  Knowing how long they need to be well in advance speeds up build time considerably.  That's why the second time you build something, it always comes out so much better-built.....and faster.

You're a good man for sharing this Paul.  Hope you benefit from it more than anyone else here.

[BDuguay]

Nice!
And I thought I had my sideline work down to a fine science.
Do you mind if I borrow some of your ideas?
Thanks for sharing.
B.

[Paul Marossy]

Necessity may be the mother, but repetition is the obstetrician.  It's seeing the same problems/delays come up again and again that prompts the ideas.  For example, one of the things that I'm sure every pedal builder here can attest to is that you don't know how long the wires connecting pots, switches, etc need to be the first time you build something.  Knowing how long they need to be well in advance speeds up build time considerably.  That's why the second time you build something, it always comes out so much better-built.....and faster.

You're a good man for sharing this Paul.  Hope you benefit from it more than anyone else here.

Yeah, someone has to deliver the baby! 

Nice!
And I thought I had my sideline work down to a fine science.
Do you mind if I borrow some of your ideas?
Thanks for sharing.
B.

Go right ahead, that's why I shared them here. 

[GtrmanMoe]

Great ideas as usual, Paul.  I've been meaning to organize my work area and streamline the process a bit.  This definitely gives me some ideas. 

[Sir H C]

Great ideas, one I have is that I made a piece of cardboard with all the lengths of wire I needed for a pedal (with color for each).  That way I could cut the lengths at once for several pedals and go from there, also used a 5 or 6 sectioned plastic bowl (for snacks I think) to put the wires in with a label for which were in there.  Then I could wire up pretty quick.

[Paul Marossy]

Great ideas, one I have is that I made a piece of cardboard with all the lengths of wire I needed for a pedal (with color for each).  That way I could cut the lengths at once for several pedals and go from there, also used a 5 or 6 sectioned plastic bowl (for snacks I think) to put the wires in with a label for which were in there.  Then I could wire up pretty quick.

Good idea. However, with teflon wire, you have to be careful when stripping the wires. Sometimes the wire pulls thru the insulation a little bit. So I prefer to strip the end of it then clip to the needed length, solder and then strip the other end of it.

[Cardboard Tube Samurai]

Are there supposed to be pictures in that first post!?!? 

[Paul Marossy]

Are there supposed to be pictures in that first post!?!? 

Yes. Are you not seeing any?

[Ben N]

Man, Paul, you, you, you have a gift! That is just awesome, beautifully thought out & executed. Thanks for sharing.

[Ice-9]

Congrats Paul, thats a great jig you have there. I'm envious

[Paul Marossy]

Now if I could only play a jig! 

[flo]

Are there supposed to be pictures in that first post!?!? 

Yes. Are you not seeing any?

Nope, can't see any pictures also...
I'm using Firefox 3.0.4 on a Windows XP pc.