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Moon Patrol and Me - DONE!
Paladin:
Oil the bearing on the router bit? Um... yea, I knew I should do that... :banghead:
Seriously, thanks for the tip. I'm still new to using my router, and it didn't even cross my mind that I should do that. You most likely saved me from trashing my flush trimming bit!
Portnoy:
It is amazing how long each step takes me. I spent more time staring and planning in my head then I have building. Occasionally I even have my morning coffee out in the garage with the cab…staring…planning…hugging….I mean, um…never mind. The good news with that is I have yet to regret a cut except for 2 but they were easily hidden. So, taking advantage of this holiday weekend I was able to so far get my control panel mounted and Lexan cut. The Lexan took most of my day and was the most nerve racking to date. I purchased a hole saw because I didn’t want to take any chances on cracking the Lexan and / or screwing up my button holes in the MDF since they came out so purty. What a waste of $20. The Lexan cut very easily but 2 bad things happen, 1. the Lexan heats up creating a melted lip around the cut that would need attention in order to get the buttons to sit flush and 2. I would have to pry out the Lexan disc and remove the melted Lexan from the teeth after each cut. Basically looked like this…
I ended up using the spade drill bit originally used for the button holes and quickly realized my early concerns were unfounded. Lexan is also more flexible than I had originally thought.
The bottom of the control panel is mounted by brackets up top
And down below.
Now my issue was how to have the control panel easily removed for maintenance. I decided to use these.
The screw inserts would go into blocks that the rear of the panel will rest on and glue to once everything lined up correctly. Rather than measure and cut a block of wood and be off by a 16th which is always the case for me (I need laser guided tools) I just stacked MDF blocks the same height as I did the front ribs. I can glue, been doing it since kindergarten, I even know how it tastes.
Screw knobs underneath…
Now the top removes very easily and surprisingly enough is pretty stable if one was to pull up on the panel. Just to be safe I will make a catch out of MDF for each side that looks like this,
One half attached to the bottom of the CP and the other to the side of the cab. This way, once I slide the CP forward and screw the knobs down ( or up in this case ) you won’t be able to pull up the part of the panel that’s closest to the player. I’m sure my local hardware store has some simple pin and catch thingy but if not this will do fine.
blueznl:
Any images of the finished cab?
ChadTower:
Looks great. Love the fresnel story... man I should try and find a couple of those to play around with.
Portnoy:
I keep hoping the next stage will go faster than the last. It just doesn’t work that way for me. I spend more time looking for tools that I just put down than I do using them. So, I ran into in an issue with the car speakers I wanted to use. The magnets were too strong for the screen and I really can’t mount them anywhere else due to the design. I decided to research shielding. I read about bucking magnets and then I remembered, it just so happened that I had a pair of old and broken HK bookshelf speakers I was saving for parts. I held one of them up to the monitor and what do you know? No warping of he picture. Inside I found a very large bucking magnet. I also was able to pop the metal grill off the front and cut it down to size for my needs.
I wanted to make sure that the speaker section of the cab was easily removed in case I needed to change a blown speaker or just change to a different pair, etc. The box is one piece with separate sections to isolate the left and right channel. All glued with the exception of the back.
The back piece has the bucking magnets attached with Velcro.
To attach the back and keep it tight I once again used the brass inserts…man I think I’m in love with these things! The vice grips were used to keep the half inch MDF from splitting whilst I screwed. That’s right, I said whilst.
Now, I must say, after seeing what Mountain did with his speaker grills on the last cab he left off with, I drooled a little, perhaps allot. I wasn’t laminating my cab but I knew then I had to have something like it. It’s not nearly as slick but for me I’m quite proud!
Here is the box sitting right over the speaker grills.
The L brackets on the underside will not be visible once the Bezel goes in, my next project in which I will loose my tools.
Untill then...
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