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  1. z2amiller

    Pitfalls and Tips: Designing effects PCBs

    Heck yeah! Screw soldering wires to things! The only problem with the layout + my drill pattern is that once you've soldered in the footswitch, the board isn't coming out unless you cut the headers that attach to the footswitch. That's probably fine. If I cared, I could switch to low profile...
  2. z2amiller

    Pitfalls and Tips: Designing effects PCBs

    I've added the templates to my github repo: https://github.com/z2amiller/pedalfx/tree/main/template If you want to use these templates, copy them into your KiCad template directory. ( Mine is in ~/Documents/KiCad/9.0/template ) I've put the control layout dimensions, the daughterboard...
  3. z2amiller

    Getting Started with PCBA at JLCPCB

    Good News Everyone! As of about a week ago someone committed a patch to the Bouni KiCad tools to fix the in-app search functionality, and the components are searchable again. You don't need to update the plugin itself, but you do need to re-download the parts library ("Download", in the upper...
  4. z2amiller

    Pitfalls and Tips: Designing effects PCBs

    I forgot to mention before - I'd love to hear any other useful tips and tricks that folks have for improving their designs or their efficiency! Also, I forgot a couple things in the 'Mistakes' section (speaking of Mistakes): Label Pots and Switches Depending on which footprint you're using...
  5. z2amiller

    Rats nest connecting to what exactly?

    I've seen that sometimes. It looks like it's supposed to be connected to VREF. I assume VREF is on the top layer somewhere? If VREF is a filled zone, it's possible that your VREF zone is orphaned. e.g. your cap is connected to VREF zone but the VREF zone has been disconnected by a trace or...
  6. z2amiller

    Pitfalls and Tips: Designing effects PCBs

    Pitfalls and Tips: Designing effects PCBs Intro Following up on my ‘Getting Started with PCBA at JLC’ document, I thought I’d create something similar documenting some of my big mistakes and learnings from creating these PCBs. This isn’t my job or my background, I’m just doing this for fun...
  7. z2amiller

    Designing power section for a phaser.

    Honestly this looks like a pretty standard power section to me. You could save some space by going SMD, especially if you're doing sandwiched boards if you need more vertical space. SMD caps and chips are going to be half the height or less. In KiCad you can have 'design blocks' that you can...
  8. z2amiller

    Electro caps vs MLCC SMD caps?

    There's been a lot of 'ink' spilled on this on various forums. The general advice that I've synthesized is that MLCC caps are fine if you use NP0/C0G dielectric caps in the audio path, but that the other MLCC caps can be microphonic at audio frequencies (e.g. they can become both a microphone...
  9. z2amiller

    DuoPhase build troubles: squealing, high end roll off, signal degradation, unwanted parallel audio and LFO

    re: the weird IC voltages, that looks like it is correct for this circuit. Ideally, the signal in to an op-amp sits right in between the positive and negative voltage rails. The op-amp can be fed with a bi-polar supply, that is, a voltage that is positive and negative relative to ground...
  10. z2amiller

    Pots with too short legs

    Yeah - the pedalpcb 'standard' has the pots and switches mounted on the 'back' or non-component side of the board - so the pots stick through the enclosure and anchor the board in place, and the components are all visible. (which is handy for trimpots, internal switches, etc). If you were to...
  11. z2amiller

    Power I/O Module problems (SOLVED)

    Is the bare wire of the + rail touching the left leg of the top middle pot? It looks like it's touching in that picture but it's hard to tell in three dimensions. The bare wires like that could certainly short when stuffed into an enclosure (which maybe is why it worked and then didn't?)...
  12. z2amiller

    DOD 250 OVERDRIVE type pedal I’m trying to recreate. Need insight

    I think the two tantalum capacitors are 1uf: It looks like it also has LEDs for clipping as well as what looks like a germanium diode bottom right. (1N34A maybe?) If you are brave about desoldering, getting the component values of everything that is hidden/sanded should be pretty...
  13. z2amiller

    SOLVED Caesar Chorus no LFO

    It sounds like one of the legs of either R100 or R101 are not soldered, or the trace between R100 and R101 is broken. Probably whatever leg of R100 connects to R101, given that all of your VREF_Bs also seem to be floating and/or ground. You should be getting R100 = 8.8/4.4 and R101 = 4.4/0...
  14. z2amiller

    SOLVED Caesar Chorus no LFO

    First thing I see is something really funky with VREF_B. That should be ~4.5V direct to pins 2 and 5 of IC1. I'd check anything around there, specifically - your divider resistors look correct but you might want to doublecheck. Also any component that takes VREF_B - e.g. the rate+depth pots...
  15. z2amiller

    Thomas Organ Crybaby

    From the looks of it, the lifted pad will be easy to deal with since it appears that it's connected to the component right beside it. You can probably just ugly bridge solder across when you solder in that component. Looks like a pretty simple layout!
  16. z2amiller

    Getting Started with PCBA at JLCPCB

    Good news is, you _should_ be able to see this state of affairs in the UI. After you upload the BOM and CPL files, it shows you a rendering of the board. And someone at JLC does check it, even it you don't have the option checked, when they're setting it up they'll email you if they spot...
  17. z2amiller

    Getting Started with PCBA at JLCPCB

    The bom looks like: Comment,Designator,Footprint,LCSC,Quantity 10K,"RV1,RV4",RTRIM3362P,C118956,2 Conn_01x03_Socket,"J1,J2",JST_PH_B3B-PH-K_1x03_P2.00mm_Vertical,C131339,2 100pf,"C19,C21,C22,C23",C_0805_2012Metric,C1790,4 1n5819,D1,D_SOD-323,C191023,1 100R,R1,R_0603_1608Metric,C22775,1...
  18. z2amiller

    Getting Started with PCBA at JLCPCB

    I've been adding some THT parts to all of my designs. Sometimes box film caps for larger values, and always JST connectors for the footswitch board. It adds a bit of cost (since there's a $3.50 THT setup cost even if you just add one component) but it's worth it to me for time savings. I...
  19. z2amiller

    Panelizing and having break-off parts produced.

    Couple of things: - If you have it done with PCBA, to use their 'Economic' service, you'll need to create the panel with mousebites instead of V-cuts which also means that you need to panelize it yourself rather than using the built-in JLCPCB panelization feature (which uses V-cuts). You can do...
  20. z2amiller

    Park and ride, signal not getting through

    Yeah - TL072s are relatively cheap in quantity and they're in almost every pedal. And if they're not in the pedal, a lot of the time they can be subbed for whatever opamp anyway - dual opamps have a standard pinout so things that call for NE5532, RC4558, etc can generally at least function with...
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