New Service: Machined Enclosures

[The Tone God]

Hello everyone,

We are excited to announce that we are expanding our products and services for the DIY community. To start with we are offer machined enclosures starting with the 1590B and what we think is a decent range of hole options in both vertical and horizontal configurations. You can also order custom hole patterns if you have specific needs.

Machined Enclsoures

More will come soon.

As always feedback, comments, suggestions are welcome.

Andrew

[earthtonesaudio]

Your site makes it seem like you're selling whole enclosures for $3-$5.

[The Tone God]

Opps. Sorry, our mistake. Updated.

See...we can take criticism!

Andrew

[guitarrob]

This is interesting:

We reserve the right to reject a design without reason and without refund.


can you clarify that a bit?

[kevilay]

I actually work in tool and die and have machined my cases before. Im not really sure what your offering. Are you offering to take a standard case and mill or drill in some holes for pots and jacks in certain spots or are you actually machining full pedals to custom dimensions?

I would be interested in some BB cases with some holes drilled and a slot for a battery door

[The Tone God]

This is interesting:

We reserve the right to reject a design without reason and without refund.


can you clarify that a bit?

The clause is basically for people who try to waste our time with some silly design(s). Obviously its not in our interest to turn down reasonable work so I wouldn't worry about it.

Are you offering to take a standard case and mill or drill in some holes for pots and jacks in certain spots or are you actually machining full pedals to custom dimensions?

I would be interested in some BB cases with some holes drilled and a slot for a battery door

We are taking standard cases and doing the machine work. It wouldn't be possible to offer custom cases machined from scratch at that price.

No problem handling BB cases including the battery door. We are planning on offering the 1590BB size. Just have to finish the CAD drawings but we can throw up the custom option.

Andrew

[Ice-9]

Great idea Andrew.
Will you be drilling the small holes for potentiometer position locking and also if your milling rather than drilling is it possible to include the notch in the hole for a 3PDT footswitch for the same reasons. I would love to see a video on your webpage of the process being done.

[frank_p]

We are taking standard cases and doing the machine work. It wouldn't be possible to offer custom cases machined from scratch at that price.

Should state that clearly and change the blue color text.   It's difficult to understand what the page is about at first glance.  And blue on black is not putting what it is in relief.  Just tying to help.

[kevilay]

I am also curiou about the notch. 9$ foe a custom drilled case seems cheap. Do you include the case foe that. Or do we need to buy the case ontop of that k

[defaced]

We are taking standard cases and doing the machine work. It wouldn't be possible to offer custom cases machined from scratch at that price.

Should state that clearly and change the blue color text.   It's difficult to understand what the page is about at first glance.  And blue on black is not putting what it is in relief.  Just tying to help.

Agreed.  "Machining" is different than "drilling".  If you are indeed doing machining (rectangular holes for example where you use a mill bit), then that would be worth point out.  Right now it just looks like you're offering drilled enclosures and using the wrong process to describe it. 

[DavenPaget]

We are taking standard cases and doing the machine work. It wouldn't be possible to offer custom cases machined from scratch at that price.

Should state that clearly and change the blue color text.   It's difficult to understand what the page is about at first glance.  And blue on black is not putting what it is in relief.  Just tying to help.

Agreed.  "Machining" is different than "drilling".  If you are indeed doing machining (rectangular holes for example where you use a mill bit), then that would be worth point out.  Right now it just looks like you're offering drilled enclosures and using the wrong process to describe it. 

What andrew meant was that he is taking standard cases and machining it . Not drill it .
Not machine custom cases . Right now .

[The Tone God]

Great idea Andrew.
Will you be drilling the small holes for potentiometer position locking and also if your milling rather than drilling is it possible to include the notch in the hole for a 3PDT footswitch for the same reasons. I would love to see a video on your webpage of the process being done.

Thanks! I have done locating pins on other projects. The draw back is I usually make the holes 3.2mm but I don't like to make tool changes so when I machine I use the biggest tool of the smallest hole and do the whole case with that tool. With a smaller tool comes slower speeds so cases take longer therefore less output. That is why there is extra charge for smaller holes. I can do it its just a logistics thing. I'm not sure if people would be will to pay the extra for it as most are happy to save the money and break the tab off. If there is demand for it I have no problems offering that option.

The switch locating tab is a slightly different issue. It wouldn't be a clean perfect hole like a punch because you can't mill right angles. I'm just think the tool would have to travel outside of the bushing diameter in order to get the relieve needed. I did something similar with the isolated power jack on the Acute series. The holes are the "double d" shape so the jack doesn't move during tightening but I had to move outside the main diameter to get the clearance which gets covered by the nut. The question is how far out I would have to go and if it would be covered up by the nut and/or washer. I'll have to play with some tool paths to see what I can do. The other thing is I try to make the cases as part universal as possible so the switch holes are big enough for not just the blue 3PDT but Carlings and other switches. I have to see what their specs are for locating tabs. Again though costing may come into issue here.

Videos did come across my mind. I did some shooting when I was doing a batch of light plates but when I pieced together what good angles I had the video ended being very short. I have to do some playing around with the camera setup to find something that works as the shop is not really setup up for shooting but yeah I'll post some vids sometime.

Should state that clearly and change the blue color text.   It's difficult to understand what the page is about at first glance.  And blue on black is not putting what it is in relief.  Just tying to help.

Are you talking about the blue link colour on the pages ? Ok I should expand the description more.

9$ foe a custom drilled case seems cheap. Do you include the case foe that. Or do we need to buy the case ontop of that k

The $9 gets you the case and four holes. Two holes on the side(s) for jacks, one footswitch hole, and one knob hole. What a bare bones effect usually has. Everything else after that (i.e. LEDs, extra foot switches, jacks, power jack, etc.) are added options you select from the list and check boxes that match your approved design. The total is then presented when you add it to the shopping cart.

We don't make money on the case, we make money on the machining.

]Agreed.  "Machining" is different than "drilling".  If you are indeed doing machining (rectangular holes for example where you use a mill bit), then that would be worth point out.  Right now it just looks like you're offering drilled enclosures and using the wrong process to describe it.

Yes we are milling not drilling holes, well unless they are very small holes. I speak in general terms by saying "machining". We'll expand the explanation some more on the site and give a list of the differences and benefits of our process.

We can do things like slots for linear pots, nearly square holes for PCB mounted power jacks, segment displays, etc. We can also handle other case sizes not listed yet up to say the 1590DD. We can work in other materials as well like plastic for example the light plates we make.

I think we have offered up a good collection of 1590B layouts, particularly in the horizontal range. I did think about a horizontal "sequencer" layout for nine pots, eight individual 3mm LEDs, mini switches, etc. but it may end up being fairly expensive and I don't know what the demand would be. We will be offering 1590BB layouts but next I think we are going to offer the 1590A. Those seem to be popular and there is no one I know offering machined layouts for the 1590A. Since its a small case I can see it being difficult for beginners to do the work so to have an accurately machined case takes the guess work out. I think it will be enjoy.

We are hear to listen to you folks so let us know.

Andrew

[frank_p]

Should state that clearly and change the blue color text.   It's difficult to understand what the page is about at first glance.  And blue on black is not putting what it is in relief.  Just tying to help.

Are you talking about the blue link colour on the pages ?

Yep.  Ultramarine blue is drowned in the black.

[PRR]

> the blue color text.   It's difficult to understand what the page is about at first glance.  And blue on black is not putting what it is in relief.

Agree. The link-text totally vanishes against the good-white text and the black background.

Also the font is 9 pixels tall. I tolerated that when we used 240-line TV sets for "text displays" but it's awful small for 1000-line monitors and older eyes.

[teleK]

throwing in my two cents, it would be nice to have a "basic" model that may or may not cost less. But more just a simple thing for people who dont want to go through designing one and instead just having two pots, LED, in, out, switch, and power that a person can order. But maybe Im missing the point of marketing towards custom.

[The Tone God]

The links were blue as this is sort of the universal standard colour for links. Let see. Should the links be hot pink, neon green, bright yellow ? Ok I updated the link colours. I have update the font size as well. Font size is set by a percentage of the user screen resolution so it was not hard coded to that font size to make it difficult.

Let me know how it looks now.

throwing in my two cents, it would be nice to have a "basic" model that may or may not cost less. But more just a simple thing for people who dont want to go through designing one and instead just having two pots, LED, in, out, switch, and power that a person can order. But maybe Im missing the point of marketing towards custom.

You may have not noticed but there are predefined layouts both in horizontal and vertical formats that customers can select. No need for drawings, approvals, etc. These cases are slightly cheaper then getting a custom case designed. I think these layouts will cover the majority of customer's needs. The custom option is only if there are specific needs that are not met by the predefined layouts.

Horizontal Layouts

Vertical Layouts

By the way welcome to the forum!

Andrew

[Ice-9]

Yes andrew that looks much better and clearer to understand what exactly you are offering.

[theehman]

Just nitpicking, but it would look more professional with the spelling corrections:


Smaller then 6.35mm hole(s) ( +$1.50 )


Smaller then 3.2mm hole(s) ( +$5.00 )

should be

Smaller than 6.35mm hole(s) ( +$1.50 )


Smaller than 3.2mm hole(s) ( +$5.00 )

[defaced]

Yes we are milling not drilling holes, well unless they are very small holes. I speak in general terms by saying "machining". We'll expand the explanation some more on the site and give a list of the differences and benefits of our process.

We can do things like slots for linear pots, nearly square holes for PCB mounted power jacks, segment displays, etc. We can also handle other case sizes not listed yet up to say the 1590DD. We can work in other materials as well like plastic for example the light plates we make.

Excellent!  Thanks for the clarification. 

[The Tone God]

Just nitpicking, but it would look more professional with the spelling corrections:


Smaller then 6.35mm hole(s) ( +$1.50 )


Smaller then 3.2mm hole(s) ( +$5.00 )

should be

Smaller than 6.35mm hole(s) ( +$1.50 )


Smaller than 3.2mm hole(s) ( +$5.00 )

Updated.

There is also a better explanation of the milling advantages and possibilities.

Andrew