x0xb0x Front Panel Redesign

Well, after a bunch of work over the past few days, this is how far I’ve come in the redesign of the front panel of the x0xb0x which I hope to build. It’s also come a long way from my original data sources, which were a DXF of the panel and it’s through holes (no text), a PDF which will become the instruction manual, part spec sheets looked up the BOM, and the TIFF used for the laser printed overlay seen here.

I also had to learn to use Illustrator, which is pretty darn useful now that I’m comfortable with it.

Now I’m going to go take a bath.

I’ll be letting the overlay ideas seen up above stew for a bit… As in, a few days or a week. I like what is there, but I want to be certain before I spend $30 – $50 to have it professionally printed.

Oh, I also have to actually receive the kit and confirm that the expected front panel size (as detailed in the DXF) is the actual size of the panel. If it isn’t I’ll have to… Do some adjusting. Or something. (I really, really hope this isn’t the case).

Today I also spent a good bit of time refreshing my soldering skills by stripping and partially fixing the PAiA FatMan seen here. It had been given to me about a year and a half ago, and it’s in really sorry shape. In short, it doesn’t work… The board is rather scratched up, there were a good number of bad solder points or mis-soldered parts, and most of the pots seem bad. So, I’m going to order up replacement pots and a new chassis, and whatever other parts I need to fix it… Then I’m hopefully going to make it work. I’d like to put it in a PacTec PT-10, which is what the x0xb0x uses, then the two could match nicely… That means there will be another CP to design… Ah well. :)

Oh, yeah. That’s enough babbling for now. I’ll go take that bath now.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah… I now have a nice, vector-based version of the all-seeing eye. This makes me happy. I’ve wanted such a piece of data for a while, and being unable to find one I just made one. I first scanned the logo from the side of a box of Illuminati cards, removed the word ‘Illuminati’, drew the lines around the bottom back in as needed, made it two colors, traced it in Illustrator, then used it. It was a good bit of work, but I’m glad it now exists…