First ever Electrical DIY Project - Simple Pedal Order System

[Axkoa]

I'm 2 months into my Engineering degree at University and I'm already craving doing some DIY projects. The perfect opportunity came to me, my University opened up a workshop on campus for Engineering students that lets us go in and work on anything that we want, no need for proper justification. This workshop has soldering irons, wire, 3D printers, multi-meters, a laser cutter, and tons more stuff including consumables. I feel super lucky being able to access this for essentially free!

My idea for this is pretty simple, eventually I want to make a system that you are able to change the order of the pedals on a pedalboard without having to unplug them, as well as being able to take the pedals off of the pedalboard without having to unplug the input, output, and power jacks from the pedal. I would like to one day have this on a small LCD touchscreen, something like the Line 6 Helix, but I'll wait to do that for when I actually understand more about electronics than I do now, further on into my degree.

Firstly, I did a bit of research on some stuff. I started to understand more about how connectors work. I had originally designed both my base and the part that will Velcro onto the bottom of the pedal using a 9 Way D Sub connector, but after some help by a couple of you I decided to change that to an XLR jack for my input and output signals and a simple 2.1 mm DC Barrel Jack for my DC power.

Day 1 - Friday 07/04/2017:

Woke up early to head into University to start sorting out 3D printing out a prototype chassis for the design. I had completed the design the night before.

One thing you can't really see is how small the design is. Though they aren't scaled at the right sizes in that pictures (thanks paint.net), the real size for the big hole in the top left is actually 22 mm! Which is just too small to chassis mount an XLR Female Socket. The hole for the XLR Male Jack in the bottom right design is just the right size.

I got into University and with some time messing around trying to 3D and fixing up the designs for mainly the tabs I were going to the top and bottom parts together with, I finally managed to start 3D print it. I haven't really got many in progress shots but I have just one that my mate took for me whilst I wasn't there.

Whilst this was printing I decided to try my hand at some soldering, luckily I had my friend to help me out with holding stuff I wouldn't have been able to do this AT ALL. It seems like you need an extra 2 hands to solder...Firstly I soldered the two 1/4" jacks that I would be using the connect to the XLR in the top part of the design, the one that would connect to the bottom of the pedal. Probably if I did this again I would by some better cabling, the cabling works (I tried it the instant I got home) but it would be nicer to get something a little sturdier, though I'm not entirely sure. Thoughts? Both sides of this cable have 1/4" jacks on it but I'm going to cut it into quarters so I get 2 individual jacks that I can connect straight to the XLR jack.

While it was STILL 3D printing I also soldered together the power jack that would connect from the power jack in the top part of the unit to the power in the pedal. This was pretty easy to do and I ended up putting some heatshrink on it because; why not? Pretty happy with how my soldering turned out on this and I'm fairly certain it works fine, well the multi-meter told me it worked...

So after 5 FREAKIN' hours of printing it finally finished, 20 minutes before the workshop closed. So in that 20 minutes me and my mate got a couple files to it and made the corners less dodgy as well as cleaning out the holes a bit. On the bus trip home I also mounted the parts that I could, the two mono sockets I have in the base as well as the two 2.1 mm DC Power Sockets in the base part. But here are all the 3D printed parts!

I learnt a lot throughout the day...mainly not to get your hand too close to the solder incase it spits at you. But overall it was a pretty fun Friday I had.

On Saturday I decided to change my design, and instead of 3D printing it I was going to laser cut it out of plywood. Now a list of some things I've also changed...starting from the base to the top unit.

• Spread out the mono sockets more, I tested out later and I couldn't fit the two pancake jacks into the sockets as well as a right angle power jack. Spreading this out as well as bringing the power jack higher should help it.
• Changed the overall height of the base from 34 mm to 45 mm. This coincides with my decision to have the chassis mounted XLR Female Socket on the base instead of the top. I have no idea why I had it that way in the first place...but I've fixed it.
• Designed the whole base and top units with tabs that mean that it would be able to be glued together, hopefully this should look a lot better as well as work better.
• With the top unit now, made the hole smaller for the XLR port so instead of the Female it's the Male.
• Instead of having a singular hole for all of the cables to come out of the top unit, I have 3 different holes, one for each type of cable that comes out.
• Changed the height of the base from 20 mm to 45 mm as well...So I can properly mount the Male XLR Jack.
• Changed the design from a irregular hexagon (?) to just a rectangle. Did this so I can actually properly laser cut it.

Here are the new designs for the laser cutting.

So that's my first overall update! I hope you enjoyed reading it (if you read it all  :icon_thumright. I would be incredibly grateful if any of you that has some more knowledge about this kind of stuff could give me some hints.


Thanks!
Cameron

 

[BigSteve22]

That's pretty cool. I didn't know it takes 5 hours to print out a plastic box! At least it looks like your enjoying school, don't forget to study too......... :icon_thumright:

 

[Axkoa]

That's pretty cool. I didn't know it takes 5 hours to print out a plastic box! At least it looks like your enjoying school, don't forget to study too......... :icon_thumright:

I'm not really sure why it took so long really. The 3D printers we had at High School were quicker, but smaller base. What are you talking about...this is studying  :toothy12:

 

[BigSteve22]

That's pretty cool. I didn't know it takes 5 hours to print out a plastic box! At least it looks like your enjoying school, don't forget to study too......... :icon_thumright:

I'm not really sure why it took so long really. The 3D printers we had at High School were quicker, but smaller base. What are you talking about...this is studying  :toothy12:

:rock-on:

 

[T89Rex]

That is super cool that that's available to you. Are you at UQ?

 

[Axkoa]

That is super cool that that's available to you. Are you at UQ?

Nah, I'm at QUT. UQ is too much effort to take two buses to and QUT seemed to have a better practical degree.

 

[stratamania]

Glad you are having fun with this.

Do you have any drawings to help visualise how your idea and box is going to work ?

I may be missing something but it seems that you are making something to plug the pedals into that in turn plug into a board. So if you want to move something you are stiill unplugging something else instead of the pedal.

Anyway for some ideas you might want to check out http://www.pedalboots.com for mounting ideas. 

For reordering without unplugging looper systems such as the Gigrig G2 or Boss ES-8 are able to do this.

Good luck with your project.

 

[Axkoa]

Glad you are having fun with this.

Do you have any drawings to help visualise how your idea and box is going to work ?

I may be missing something but it seems that you are making something to plug the pedals into that in turn plug into a board. So if you want to move something you are stiill unplugging something else instead of the pedal.

Anyway for some ideas you might want to check out http://www.pedalboots.com for mounting ideas. 

For reordering without unplugging looper systems such as the Gigrig G2 or Boss ES-8 are able to do this.

Good luck with your project.

Currently what I'm doing right now is just sort of a base understanding of the idea that I'm looking at doing in the future. When you unplug with this hopefully you'll only have to pull once instead 3 times.

Eventually I want to have it that you won't have to unplug from the pedalboard, as it will be a pedalboard in itself with the mounting inlayed into the board. Not entirely sure how I would do that right now...but it's just a little hobby for me to start to understand electronics and guitar stuff.

Thanks!

 

[stratamania]

@Axkoa, ok that makes sense. Definitely something you will learn and get experience from which is always good.

 

[Logrinn]

Looking good Axkoa.
If I understand you correctly, you're trying to do a sort of "patch bay" for pedals? All the pedals are connected inte this bay design and when you want to disconnect/change order of them, you just swap cables between the bay?

 

[Axkoa]

Looking good Axkoa.
If I understand you correctly, you're trying to do a sort of "patch bay" for pedals? All the pedals are connected inte this bay design and when you want to disconnect/change order of them, you just swap cables between the bay?

That's essentially what it is currently. But I hope to have it so you can change it using a touchscreen in the future.

 

[Logrinn]

Awesome.

I recently got a switching pedal from Decibel11. Their PedalPalette. This one allows me the swap order of pedals (loops) and also to hook them in parallel, which is how I use my pedals. It's not the most common practice - but, boy, what a sound I've got. :headbang:

 

[Axkoa]

Awesome.

I recently got a switching pedal from Decibel11. Their PedalPalette. This one allows me the swap order of pedals (loops) and also to hook them in parallel, which is how I use my pedals. It's not the most common practice - but, boy, what a sound I've got. :headbang:

Essentially something like that but the actual pedalboard!

 

[Axkoa]

Day 2 - Monday 10/04/17

I Laser Cut my new design today!!!

I was super pumped to do this today, I was hoping that it would give me a lot cleaner finish and look a lot nicer than the 3D printed version. Also I was able to change the design, as well as being able to file out the inside of holes if they were too small.

To start off with, a picture of the parts being Laser Cut!

It was so cool watching this being Laser Cut, not only did it smell nicer, but it also took about 0.06% of the time...took about 2 minutes to print all the parts, and it did look a lot better.

Next up I started gluing it all together as well as putting all the electronics inside and soldering them. I'm not going to show any pictures of the inside of the units...you don't want to see that.

Now you can see my expert system of mounting the XLR and power jacks...

A Hot Glue Gun.

Let's not speak anymore about that...

I finished it! Here are a ton of pictures of this prototype, A WORKING PROTOTYPE.

And a video of it being detached and reattached.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/IPlb-k6jTFE[/youtube]

A couple of things you may have noticed is how damn tall it is...after putting it together I realised it didn't really need to be that tall. It makes it a bit wobbly, but it still holds up when I press the pedal button down. Another thing to think about is that the power doesn't work into the pedal, I'll have to look at that, probably on Wednesday.

Overall I'm really happy with it, it works perfectly with my guitar just as I hoped!

Thanks everyone!

 

[BigSteve22]

Nice job! Looks like a really useful concept, sort of a "Plug-N-Play" pedal board. Quick and easy indeed.

It was so cool watching this being Laser Cut, not only did it smell nicer, but it also took about 0.06% of the time...

Also looks like you have a good start on this whole engineering thing too! Remember, most people look at an 8 oz. glass containing 4 oz. of water and say it's either half full, or half empty. An engineer looks at the glass and says it's twice a big as it needs it be!

Keep up the good work!  :icon_thumright:

 

[Axkoa]

Day: Whatever (I'm going to start calling this something else) 20/04/17

I redesigned it! Taking in the considerations that I found out when putting together the last version I changed up a couple of things.

The first main design change is that instead of having the base freestanding, I'm going to have the entire thing in a pedalboard form that is laser cut out of MDF. But before I go over my other changes...here is the design!

The dimensions of the board are as follows:

• 130 mm x 266 mm base.
• 46 mm tall at the front, 71 mm tall at the back. Angle of around 8 degrees.

Here are my design changes:

[list type=decimal]
[*]Smaller part that Velcros to bottom of pedal, it has been cut down to 56 mm x 21 mm x 40 mm.
[*]On the top of the board (the one with all the labels of the Pedals), there are 3 cut out zones for the pedal and the bases to go into with the pedal resting on the top, I'll have a video up of this one I've put it all together...
[*]Changed the connection points (XLR and Power) for the Base sections to the opposite side of the power instead of on the bottom of the base, this means that the pedal will be more supported by the base, i.e. not as much wobbling around.
[*]I'm using different types of XLR jacks and sockets this time. The male jack will be a Neutrik chassis-mounted protruding jacks, this meant that I was able to have the small part that connects to the pedal a lot smaller than before because there won't be as much hardware inside of it. The female chassis mounted jack, which mounts the bottom side of the sunken box, the side closest to the pedal number, will be just a stand Neutrik one.
[/list]

Essentially that are all the changes that have been made.

Currently...

Thanks everyone, I'll post an update tomorrow once I've laser cut it out!  :toothy10:

 

[Logrinn]

Nice. Looking forward to seeing it "in the flesh". :icon_thumright:

 

[Axkoa]

Nice. Looking forward to seeing it "in the flesh". :icon_thumright:

Fingers crossed I have all the dimensions right...I'm also waiting for the Neutrik parts to arrive so I won't be able to put it together properly till next week  :sad:

 

[Axkoa]

Laser Cut out!!! 21/04/17

I'm super happy with how this pedalboard turned out. I haven't got any of the signal electronics in it yet because my XLR jacks and stuff aren't here yet  :sad:

Not much else to talk about!

And a cool photo of the angle...Don't mind the sticky tape holding it together...

But yeah! Pretty happy with how clean it looks (from a bit of a distance). Should be good once I get everything together.

 

[Logrinn]

Very cool! This might very well be the thing of the future. :icon_thumright: ccasion14: