My first DIY modules - starting a Kosmo format build

If I didn’t know any better I’d say I’m getting better with practice :smiley:

Well…mostly. I still managed to make some dumb mistakes.

Namely I forgot to put my etchant in a heated bath…so it took longer than normal…and didn’t etch quite as well. It was hard to tell when to pull it as a result and while it looked fully etched. There were a lot of “whiskers” bridging various traces :frowning: Also - I didn’t quite position the board on the negative correctly and one trace almost got cut off on the right side. enough of it was still there to have continuity though so I ran with it.

Oh - also I damaged the mask along the bottom…but since it was all ground I wasn’t too worried. I gave it a bit of sharpie to help…but it still got a bit etched.

Not my best board…but should be good enough!

Ok…maybe this one is cursed. Broke 3 drills drilling it. Well, re-drilling a few of the holes by hand because I needed them a little larger.

But…not going to let that stop me:

Alright…one other mistake. I had planned on putting the fine tuning trimmer on the other side so I could adjust it with the module installed. But…not going to happen. I forgot there’s no way to solder it when it’s installed that way since the pads are hidden under it. Plus I forgot to add a hole for it in my panel anyway.

Speaking of the panel - it took just over 2 hours to print…and finished at almost exactly the same time I was ready to install the board in it :slight_smile: I started the print just before I printed the negative to etch the board. So etching and assembling the board took almost exactly the same time as printing the panel to go with it.

It definitely makes for a more sturdy module!

I still had some debugging to do on it though. I stole the jacks from my other DIY 3340 to save time but the outputs are in a slightly different order this time so I had them mixed up at first. Super easy fix.

Bigger problem was once again PWM wasn’t doing anything. Oh nuts…not this again!

But I was able to track it down to a solder bridge due to the lack of solder mask (Soldering the pots is a bit tricky with no pads on the back…and getting the iron in there I accidentally caused a bridge.) And one trace that was still shorted out to ground due to the incomplete etch.

With those two issues fixed it works perfect!

So - now I’ve got 3 VCO’s for my case. I definitely need to finish that other power supply so I can get all these in there. I think the mega drone is going to move to it’s own case for now until I finish up the other case I’m working on.

And I need to wire up this ARP4072 and see if it works still.

So I’ll probably hold off on the Kasu3340. Try a few other boards first and work up to it. I still want a nice snare. Or a 808 clap to go with my 808 kick…of course I still need to finish the trigger outputs for the sequencer and finish the case and power supply for the sequencer so I can use it without boards laying out and janky wires to a bench supply!

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