more on the housing - mounting stuff

It's been another busy and productive weekend - decided to spend some time getting the housing sorted and work out how to mount things inside. I picked up a bunch of 10mmx10mm aluminium angle strips from Bunnings which made the job real easy. I made a design decision here to use bolts+nuts rather tha screws for all internal mountings - this was to ensure nothing rattles loose or gets threaded, and I'm sick of self-tapping screws snapping when you're halfway through screwing them in. First I ran a series of strips vertically which act as bulkheads, then I would build modules onto horizontal strips which would fix down onto the bulkheads. This would ensure everything is tight, rigid and strong so I (hopefully) don't need to worry about crap coming loose when I take the deck anywhere. Also I wanted to make sure when you push a button you don't feel the whole insides moving - and my main aim with all this was to have nothing mounting through the top panel except the screws that hold the panel down.

First I decided to mount the MIDIBox modules onto perspex strips (Plexiglass) using countersunk bolts. This raises them above the conductive housing and then allows you to send bolts through from underneath to secure them.

For the faders/button modules I used ali angle strips in a kind of criss-cross way - the 3mm thickness of the strips was perfect and brought the boards up to exactly the right height I needed them in the housing.

Here you can see the housing with the bulkheads in, the channel pots and the DIN and AIN modules in place.

Now drop the fader/button modules in on top and we have a winner. There's just enough clearence underneath for board connectors.

I was totally happy in the end with all this - I screwed some things up and had to recut/drill some strips which was a pain but the end result has been just what I wanted - modules fixed in the housing and a nice strong build which should stand a bit of a thrashing at gigs.