Finished: YuSynth VC-LFO

[dstrength]

Just finished another module. Thanks again to Yves for all his efforts....

Dave

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[yusynth]

Beautiful panel design, I like it !

[yusynth]

Hi again

I've added your nice photos to the gallery section of the LFO page of my site

[dstrength]

Thanks Yves! I'm glad you like it. When I first started building my modular, I began with the MOTM kits. So, I've kept that form factor.

As I made the first few modules, I bought ten 8-packs of patch cables, so I had ten each of eight different colors. To keep things straight I settled on a standard for each color, i.e. orange for raw waveforms, red for processed audio, yellow for midi cvs, green for generated cvs, blue for gates, and so on.

Eventually, when I started making my own front panels, I settled on a similar scheme for these. Again, Green is for CV generators like LFOs and ADSRs, hence the color.

I order pre-laser-cut blanks of 6061 from Speedy Metals in the US. An MOTM sinlge wide blank runs under $2.00 US. Then I'll drill the holes myself with a step bit and drill press. I paint it flat black, then spray the back again with a Hammer finish spray.

I use Alumijet printable aluminum for the graphic and a regular old inkjet printer with a straight paper path. Once printed, I give it a coat of Krylon to set and protect the image. Then I drill the Aluminum graphic separately with the same step bit. The Alumijet sheet comes with a 3M adhesive backing, so then I just peel and set it to the blank panel. A few more coats of Krylon seals the edges and glosses the front, then a final coating of Shellac to give it a little lustre and it's ready for building.

It's a little labor intensive, but the finished product gets a me a 1U color panel for under $4.00 US....oh, and it's kind of fun.

Thanks again!

[Abby Normal]

Wow, that's a fantastic looking panel. Where can you buy Alumajet? What printer are you using? I don't know of any straight feeding printers, but I'm not savvy with these kinds of things.

Thanks for posting. Do you have any other pics you can share of your modules with DIY panels?

[dstrength]

Alumajet is a poduct of HorizonsISG http://www.horizonsisg.com/

They've got pricing on the site, and they sell sampler packs. I use the Satin finish white. I like the look of the silver...but I could never find a fixative that wouldn't cause the ink to bleed on the finish. So I stuck with the white Satin.

I just got a new Krylon product called Digital Photo Fixative that I'll try shortly...which is aimed at fixing Ink Jets.

I'm using an old Epson 890. IT's technically a 'J' paper path...but it's closer to straight than most J models. What will not work is a C path where the media feeds into the front.

Honestly, there was alot of experimenting involved to find a balance that works. It also comes down to the type of ink in your printer. Then, if you want your colors to match, you have to experiment with the color profiles of the printer since this media isn't standard. But, that takes a few prints before you figure out what works for you. I think the sampler pack was $25US for 5 sheets of different types.

I posted the minimoog filter a few weeks ago in this forum. And I'm working on a panel for combination of two Yusynth VCO's...I'll post that when I"m done.

If you decide to try this route, I"ll gladly post my graphics files. I do the front panels in Adobe Fireworks. That's a graphic design package and far from any CAD functionality...so setting up the coordinate system was a pain...alot of spreadsheet calcuations to get the DPI offsets for the MOTM dimensions. The file's are in .PNG format so any graphics editor should as Photoshop should be able to open it.