Finally doing the dirty... drill me yeah baby yeah

 Oh yes, after lots of boring bits, bagging components, placing multiple orders, finally, finally, finally I've got round to doing something that is actually interesting. Also as I've neglected to post anything for a while, this could turn out to be quite long... I'll probably split it over a few to segregate by section of what i've been doing, so chassis work, mounting, heater wiring and hooking up power wires. Oh, I also seperated components into seperate boxes. One for chassis bits, other for electrical components. Reminds me I still haven't ordered the bits I forgot to get, should really get on that as there's a few things I didn't think of, and annoyingly, a few bits that were not on the BOM (even MORE annoying)

So, what have I been up to? I left you, dear reader, on a proverbial cliffhanger (well, maybe not, but if you're an accountant, or have a fetish for excel spreadsheets, I do apologize for the sheer amount of excitement contained in the last post). Since then, well, a lot of stuff involving power tools has happened. And screws. So If you get excited about drills, screws, nuts, bolts and twisted wires, then this post is most definitely for you, so go get your Kleenex, sit back, and in the words of Frankie Goes to Hollywood: "Relax"

Mr punchy the hole marker

Anyway, first off, I did a load of component mounting, and drilling of holes. To start off with, I positioned the PCB on the inside of the amp. Normally I'd choose a location like I did with the slo, but as the chassis was sort of predrilled already for the board the guy that makes them sells, I figured I'd try and use as many of the same holes, or at least one, if possible. Turns out, a few were there, but others, not so lucky. Took the board out, and marked the mount holes on the PCB with tape to be able to tell where they are. Then I positioned the board across as many of the preexisting holes already. Following that, taped the board down, and using a permanent marker marked the positions of the new holes. Simple enough eh? Also, I found this a bit easier than the last time where I used a cutout of a printed copy of the board. At least this way it means that you now it is to scale, as, well, it is the actual board and not a copy...

Following that, removed the board, use the punch marker thingy to punch a small indentation to use as a place to position the drill bit, and drilled pilot holes. Following that, drilled all of them out to 3mm with the appropriate drill bit. Then, as I don't like the look of screws sticking out from the chassis (pan heads) I went and countersunk all of them with the appropriate countersinking drill bit, which is just an invaluable tool. This time I have one that is standalone, and doesn't require clamping onto a drill bit. Means I'll hopefully break less drill bits. I've also been using an electric drill, whilst not as violent and quick as a mains one, it does mean I seem to be a bit more controlled, so that's nice. I did find, however, that when using the step drill bit with it that it is not powerful enough to actually do anything fun, so powered drill still rules for that...

So, once that was done, i found some standoffs (10mm) and figured I could use them, but quickly discovered that I can't as i'd need 5mm length screws either side. So I've ordered some 20 and 30mm ones. I'll have to figure out what I can get away with once I've populated the board and see how much clearance there is to the bottom of the chassis with those deliciously fat lethal voltage carrying capacitors (them smoothing ones for the power supply, the ones you don't want to lick unless you're either a little bit thick, or have a death wish). Besides, I'm also going to be mounting transformers and the choke, so there needs to be clearance for those bolts.

So next up, I went about mounting transformers and choke. Unlike last time where I made paper cut outs, I went with a place and mark approach like the PCB above. I used masking tape to help position (giving me an edge to line up the transformer against) and thus also allowing clearance on sides and front/back which I'll need for putting it into a headshell eventually. once positioned, I then used the same permanent marker to colour in the area where each bolt should go (4 per transformer, 2 for the choke). At this point for transformer orientation and placement I had a look at some online pics of a be100, and just roughly eyeballed it to be the same. 

Again, using mr punchy the metal poking hammer stick device, got small indents for the drill to be placed on, and drilled a pilot hole, then widened to 3mm, then widened to 5mm for transformers and 4mm for the choke. I'd found that when drilling the pcb mounts that I got burring on the inside of the chassis, and that that led to wonky strandoffs unless cleaned up, so I did a light countersink to tidy up the holes and remove excess metal from the inside of the chassis.

That all done, I used tape (again) with the transformer in place to mark out where I wanted to drill holes for the wires to go through. For the choke I reused a PCB mount point I somehow drilled out of position, in aid of that not going to waste. PCB has enough mount points so this isn't an issue, and also keeps things relatively neat without a random hole that when stared out asks many questions. That and it looks crap. At this point I got to use the step drill bit. Too much fun, so you've got to stop yourself from making massive holes and practice restraint. You don't want it looking like goatse, but more like a hole that is just the right size. Plus, you want a grommet to fit in it (nicve rubber surround to stop the chassis cutting into the wires, as as much as attaching a few hundred volts to what should be ground is, it's not advisable, as the effects thereof are apparently a lot less pleasant than what cartoons implied they'd be when you were a kid...

That all done, put the grommets in and then I mounted transformers with bolts after feeding through all the wires. I had forgotten to get some, but found out that racks screws are the exact size (M5) that I need, so used them. Plus, they were black, so matched the transformers. Colour coding is important you know. Mounted choke, and then all done for this bit.

Finally moved on and put all the tube sockets in. This bit ended up a bit more fiddly due to having put the transformers on first, and also because I'm adding shields for the preamp valves. Not the worst, but I'd probably do this first next time. Quite like the look of the gold shields, match the plexi panels. Kind of made me wish the chassis had a gold sheen to it on the outside, but, can't have everything. Besides, as I want an old school vintage plexi style headshell for this, you won't be seeing it anyway... Which also reminds me, I need to find the same stick on skull logo I used on the last build, but in drug dealer gold...

Then with them all bolted in, went and did the power sockets. Mounted this from the inside of the chassis, for a cleaner look, and this time actually added the valve retainers I didn't do on the last build (as forgot about them, until later on, at which point it was a pain to unbolt them and add them in, so, learnt that lesson for this build).

I also sort of solved the missing bias pot problem. As I ended up with a spare 25k linear pot, I drilled a hole for that just behind the power valves, so that the bias can be adjusted from there, hopefully shouldn't be too hard to reach, but figured it the only point it'd be viable to put it on the chassis that made sense. 

All in all not too hard, just takes a bit of restraint to stop yourself drilling holes in everything (there must be a term for it, drillaholeamania or something fancy in Greek/Latin). Also, as trhe chassis isn't powder coated on the inside, it's a lot less prep than the slo as you don't have to grind away the paint, which did take up a lot of time on the previous build, even if it did end up with some cool ass videos of sparks flying everywhere, and sparks, and fire, are always cool (and some would say essential parts of a metal video).

At this point figured it was time to stop, and also this post, as it's kind of covered this bit of the build. I've done more, but figure I'll just do separate posts for them to stop being long winded and boring.

More on that next time, as I'll actually be doing wiring things innit. Anyway, here, at the end, is a pic of how things are looking after this stage, and also the wires all tape inside to keep them out the way for the next few bits

Pic with filter for instawhoreagram