Fingolfen
Well-known member
- Build Rating
Back in December, there was a layout contest that I didn't get a chance to enter because I was still trying to do everything by hand, and quite frankly I ran out of time with the holiday season. However, I recently learned out to use EasyEDA, and figured that the Quark Auto-Wah from that contest would be a great early project to try - not only to have a cool envelope filter, but to really start figuring out how to lay out boards... so as is typical for me, I jumped in with both feet and went for it!
I'd previously tried other programs, but found them to be non-intuitive. However, EasyEDA made sense to me. I'd done a couple of other designs before tackling the Quark, so I'd had a chance for some trial and error. As with any layout program, you actually have to position all of the components and add the wiring yourself, but it does let you set up the board size and position all of the pads for hook-up wiring where it makes the most sense. Another nice feature of the program is you can add images and fonts to the program, which can then be used on the silkscreen on the PCB itself. I was therefore able to bring over the Steggo logo, and print the name of the board on the PCB in on of my preferred "Steggo" fonts. I was also able to use the right font for "Celestial Engineering." I also like to add Easter eggs on the board (such as "layout by Steggi" - Steggo Studios resident tech expert dinosaur, and the "...because who doesn't love dinosaurs?" tag line). Once the board was laid out, I ordered a few and got cracking!
Despite this being a prototype build, I went ahead and used my normal mix of components as I honestly don't have a ready supply of less expensive resistors and capacitors handy. The resistors are all 1% metal film (Yageo). The film capacitors are a mix of WIMA and KEMET - generally with 5% or occasionally 10% tolerance. The electrolytic capacitors are all Nichicon. I'd accidentally ended up with some fairly large footprint capacitors from Mouser, so I decided some of my own layouts could be set up to use them comfortably. All of the transistors and ICs are new production from Mouser as well.
One nice thing about this layout (which wasn't my first), was I'd figured out how to properly space the pads for audio in, power, ground, and audio out to where I could run ribbon cable between the PCB and daughter board like I generally do on all of my PedalPCB (and many other commercially sourced) boards. I was also able to set up the +9V in and enough ground pads at the top of the board so I could connect all of the jacks to the top of the PCB - making for a neat and clean interior. As with all of my builds, the jack connections are insulated with heat shrink tubing.
Once the pedal was together, I ran the initial test and not only did it fire up perfectly, but it's a really fun little envelope filter. Compared to the other envelope filter I've built, a clone of the Mu-Tron III, it has advantages and disadvantages. It's a lot more compact and simpler to operate than the Mu-Tron III, but it also doesn't have the staggering array of options the Mu-Tron does either. It's all really going to depend on what you need at the time!
For the enclosure I wanted to do something fun and I had to come up with a dinosaur that was as "out there" as an envelope filter - so meet the Kosmoceratops! I ended up snagging a really cool Kosmoceratops from Adobe Stock and editing it a bit in photoshop. I then use my "Greek theme" that I had used previously on the Monoclonius. Of course, I decided to go with blue trim rather than the reddish I'd used before, so I found a decent color in the art history palette on Illustrator.
This was an incredibly fun process from beginning to end. It was amazingly satisfying to start out with a schematic, take it through layout, board production, then populating the board and finishing a complete pedal design. Given it's compact size, I'm likely going to let it start living on the pedal board as it is plenty of envelop filter for anything I'd want to do most of the time - and if I need that extra bit of insanity, I can always pull out the Mu-Tron III clone if the situation calls for it!
Finally I want to give a big shout out and THANK YOU to @Chuck D. Bones for the awesome design and schematic.
Original blog entry (with more preamble and more info on Kosmoceratops): https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/06/one-of-steggos-first-layouts.html
I'd previously tried other programs, but found them to be non-intuitive. However, EasyEDA made sense to me. I'd done a couple of other designs before tackling the Quark, so I'd had a chance for some trial and error. As with any layout program, you actually have to position all of the components and add the wiring yourself, but it does let you set up the board size and position all of the pads for hook-up wiring where it makes the most sense. Another nice feature of the program is you can add images and fonts to the program, which can then be used on the silkscreen on the PCB itself. I was therefore able to bring over the Steggo logo, and print the name of the board on the PCB in on of my preferred "Steggo" fonts. I was also able to use the right font for "Celestial Engineering." I also like to add Easter eggs on the board (such as "layout by Steggi" - Steggo Studios resident tech expert dinosaur, and the "...because who doesn't love dinosaurs?" tag line). Once the board was laid out, I ordered a few and got cracking!
Despite this being a prototype build, I went ahead and used my normal mix of components as I honestly don't have a ready supply of less expensive resistors and capacitors handy. The resistors are all 1% metal film (Yageo). The film capacitors are a mix of WIMA and KEMET - generally with 5% or occasionally 10% tolerance. The electrolytic capacitors are all Nichicon. I'd accidentally ended up with some fairly large footprint capacitors from Mouser, so I decided some of my own layouts could be set up to use them comfortably. All of the transistors and ICs are new production from Mouser as well.
One nice thing about this layout (which wasn't my first), was I'd figured out how to properly space the pads for audio in, power, ground, and audio out to where I could run ribbon cable between the PCB and daughter board like I generally do on all of my PedalPCB (and many other commercially sourced) boards. I was also able to set up the +9V in and enough ground pads at the top of the board so I could connect all of the jacks to the top of the PCB - making for a neat and clean interior. As with all of my builds, the jack connections are insulated with heat shrink tubing.
Once the pedal was together, I ran the initial test and not only did it fire up perfectly, but it's a really fun little envelope filter. Compared to the other envelope filter I've built, a clone of the Mu-Tron III, it has advantages and disadvantages. It's a lot more compact and simpler to operate than the Mu-Tron III, but it also doesn't have the staggering array of options the Mu-Tron does either. It's all really going to depend on what you need at the time!
For the enclosure I wanted to do something fun and I had to come up with a dinosaur that was as "out there" as an envelope filter - so meet the Kosmoceratops! I ended up snagging a really cool Kosmoceratops from Adobe Stock and editing it a bit in photoshop. I then use my "Greek theme" that I had used previously on the Monoclonius. Of course, I decided to go with blue trim rather than the reddish I'd used before, so I found a decent color in the art history palette on Illustrator.
This was an incredibly fun process from beginning to end. It was amazingly satisfying to start out with a schematic, take it through layout, board production, then populating the board and finishing a complete pedal design. Given it's compact size, I'm likely going to let it start living on the pedal board as it is plenty of envelop filter for anything I'd want to do most of the time - and if I need that extra bit of insanity, I can always pull out the Mu-Tron III clone if the situation calls for it!
Finally I want to give a big shout out and THANK YOU to @Chuck D. Bones for the awesome design and schematic.
Original blog entry (with more preamble and more info on Kosmoceratops): https://steggostudios.blogspot.com/2023/06/one-of-steggos-first-layouts.html
