Hexinverter´s Battery Acid layout

Mirmite · Joined: Mar 21, 2012 Posts: 9 Location: sweden

have been working today on hexinverters battery acid
anyone see any faults?

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

Posted Image, might have been reduced in size. Click Image to view fullscreen.

http://cv.hexinverter.net/?projects=batteryacid-v10
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15996745/da/WXP_driver/eagle.rar

Snaper · Joined: Feb 28, 2014 Posts: 217 Location: Hungary

Updated layout attached, tested and working!!!

Battery Acid.png

Description:

Filesize:

91.36 KB

Viewed:

989 Time(s)

This image has been reduced to fit the page. Click on it to enlarge.

IMG_1682.JPG

Description:

Filesize:

2.18 MB

Viewed:

871 Time(s)

This image has been reduced to fit the page. Click on it to enlarge.

bamboombaps · Joined: Oct 23, 2015 Posts: 66 Location: Glasgow

hey thanks for this! im building this now- can you help?

i dont quite understand how to wire the pots and sockets and what is the switch?

Snaper · Joined: Feb 28, 2014 Posts: 217 Location: Hungary

Hi, Sure, I will try.
Input and output pots are just attenuators, so leg 1 into ground, leg 3 is the input, leg 2 is the out.

About the dist pot and the switch, here is the original schematic :

http://legacy.hexinverter.net//files/projects/batteryacid-v10/batteryACID_v1.0_schematic.png

Leg 1 of the dist pot is not connected leg 2 is to the pad (on the layout), and leg 3 to ground.

As you can see, the switch is a simple spdt switch.

Do not forget, that the white little dots means that those jumpers are joined there, so you have to use two little jumpers Very Happy

bamboombaps · Joined: Oct 23, 2015 Posts: 66 Location: Glasgow

hey thanks alot for this, im waiting on the IC and pots but looking forward to getting it up and running.

btw all the pots are Log, is that correct? if not i have lin ones in my bits box

Snaper · Joined: Feb 28, 2014 Posts: 217 Location: Hungary

IIRC I used linear pots for all three what I built;)

bamboombaps · Joined: Oct 23, 2015 Posts: 66 Location: Glasgow

so i built this and theres something wrong.

when i turn the distortion pot up and down it just turns the voume up and down, there is no distortion to be heard at all.

the signal is travelling stright through without effect. when the switch is switched it only allows the distortion pot to adjust volume.

ive re-flowed the whole board but nothing

any ideas?

blue hell · Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 12:24 pm Post subject:

Grumble · Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2016 11:53 pm Post subject:

Any soundbites as how this module is supposed to sound? Rolling Eyes

Grumble · Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 4:37 am Post subject:

PHOBoS · Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2016 1:10 pm Post subject:

what are you using as your sound source ?
as Blue Hell mentioned if the level is too low it won't clip, but with the amplification being adjustable to >200x
and the voltage drop over the diodes being 1V that would be a very low signal level (< 0,005V). Another thing, if you are using
a square wave you might not hear the effect. Do you have a scope so you can see what the output level is ? an AC Volt meter
might work too with a simple sinewave on the input but a scope would be much more useful.

You say the distortion pot works as a level control so you seem to have something correct, because it simply adjusts the gain and
that would sound like that if the signal wasn't being clipped. Using the schematic posted here there are a couple things you could check:
1M resistor R4 (if it is too small it would attenuate the input signal)
10K resistor R5 (if it is too big the signal would also be attenuated)
1M resistor R1 (if it too small you won't get enough gain)
diodes D1, D2 (if not connected correctly the signal won't get clipped)

Also since it is stripboard there is a higher change of shorts between traces, but since you are getting a signal out I doubt that is the case.
And last but not least, as Snaper mentioned:
Do not forget, that the white little dots means that those jumpers are joined there, so you have to use two little jumpers.
If you didn't do that the circuit probably wouldn't have worked at all though, but I noticed that one of those connects the diodes to GND.

on a side note, the 1M resistor R8 seems useless to me. It is parallel to the 100K pot and too large to make much of a difference. scratch

bamboombaps · Joined: Oct 23, 2015 Posts: 66 Location: Glasgow

Snaper · Joined: Feb 28, 2014 Posts: 217 Location: Hungary

Phobos got the point there. I think checj the jumpers. The little dots means that there are actually two jumpers are connected together. (2 wires in 1 hole)

bamboombaps · Joined: Oct 23, 2015 Posts: 66 Location: Glasgow

PHOBoS · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2016 9:07 am Post subject:

Since you have a scope I am curious what the output level is.
Of course you can built it again from scratch, but because it is such
a simple circuit it shouldn't be too hard to figure out what is wrong.

bamboombaps · Joined: Oct 23, 2015 Posts: 66 Location: Glasgow

Here are a couple of pics. First one straight from the sine output of the 555 vco

Second one is with all pots cw. Input and output pots adjust level as expected. Distortion switch and pot do nothing , sorry this is different from what I thought I had observed in that the dist pot doesn't work at all. Even when bridged at the lugs with a wire to test.

20160425_211451.jpg

Description:

Filesize:

2.78 MB

Viewed:

409 Time(s)

This image has been reduced to fit the page. Click on it to enlarge.

20160425_211521.jpg

Description:

Filesize:

2.74 MB

Viewed:

370 Time(s)

This image has been reduced to fit the page. Click on it to enlarge.

PHOBoS · Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 2:27 am Post subject:

oh dear almost forgot about this. Maybe you already built a new one but what I see on the scope is petty much what I would expect.
but since you can't control it you probably get full distortion all the time.
Could there be something wrong with the pot ?!

lilpaula87 · Joined: May 11, 2020 Posts: 12 Location: Italy

Hi there, I’ve just finished this module but I’m not sure about its behavior.
In details, I’ve noticed:
1. The output level is lower then the input level
2. Passing through the module the sound loses part of the low frequencies
3. Turning up the distortion pot the effect amount grows as expected but when the pot reaches 9 out of 10 of the dial scale, suddenly the distortion boosts hudgely.

If you have built this module, could you please tell me if this is its normal behavior?