wompa164
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2009
- Posts
- 182
- Likes
- 21
Hi everybody,
This will be my first attempt at building any kind of audio equipment or DIY project from scratch. It's going to be a learning experience for me, and I hope to document and share some of my discoveries with you along the way that might help other members if they decide to try their hand at a build. I've been offering Xbox360 related services for a few years now, so I've had time to cultivate and develop my soldering skills to a fairly high level of proficiency. I decided that building a Mini3 would be a fun and interesting test to see how much my skills have matured until this point. I spent a few weeks looking at various DIY kits before deciding on the Mini3 - I performed some initial research regarding the build, ordered all of the parts through Digikey and AMB labs and set off.
First off, here are a few pictures of my workbench and previous soldering work that I took for fun a while back. The pictures are a few months outdated as I've gotten some new goodies since then. My equipment is fairly entry-level (nothing too fancy, though I'm looking at pickick up a digital Weller station shortly) but I've got all of the essentials:
And so begins my build.
After doing a thorough check of all the parts I received and cross-referencing them with the published parts list, I gave each component a unique, sequential number in the lower-left corner of the bag w/ a Sharpie to help me keep better track of the components and for quick reference (instead of having to reference the part number and flip through 25+ components). A really simple detail, but one that's already paying big dividens during the build process.
Day 1: Soldered the opamps and first few resistors. Stopped early because I realized I was having a diffcult time preparing the leads, so I hopped on Mouser and ordered a few tools (namely a pair of Plaxo component lead snips, as well as a cheap component lead shaping tool. I was having difficult shaping/bending the resistors in a consistent manner and was getting annoyed with the lack of symmetry.
Day 2: Plaxo component snips and lead shaping tool arrived. The component snips were only $8.xx and were well worth the investment, as they make it very easy to cut the leads very close to the board and in a consistant manner. The resistor shaping tool was too big for the lead spacing on this PCB, so I've resorted to balancing the resistor body on a q-tip and forming the leads by hand (disappointing but I'm getting better at it). Stopped after soldering all the resistors and inspecting the joints with a jewelers loupe and my Fluke 117.
I'll be posting more pictures in the days ahead. The one thing I've noticed so far is that the plated through-hole design of the PCB allows a lot of solder to flow through the hole and accumulate on the component side of the PCB, which is kind of annoying and unsightly in my opinion but shouldn't affect performance.
This will be my first attempt at building any kind of audio equipment or DIY project from scratch. It's going to be a learning experience for me, and I hope to document and share some of my discoveries with you along the way that might help other members if they decide to try their hand at a build. I've been offering Xbox360 related services for a few years now, so I've had time to cultivate and develop my soldering skills to a fairly high level of proficiency. I decided that building a Mini3 would be a fun and interesting test to see how much my skills have matured until this point. I spent a few weeks looking at various DIY kits before deciding on the Mini3 - I performed some initial research regarding the build, ordered all of the parts through Digikey and AMB labs and set off.
First off, here are a few pictures of my workbench and previous soldering work that I took for fun a while back. The pictures are a few months outdated as I've gotten some new goodies since then. My equipment is fairly entry-level (nothing too fancy, though I'm looking at pickick up a digital Weller station shortly) but I've got all of the essentials:
And so begins my build.
After doing a thorough check of all the parts I received and cross-referencing them with the published parts list, I gave each component a unique, sequential number in the lower-left corner of the bag w/ a Sharpie to help me keep better track of the components and for quick reference (instead of having to reference the part number and flip through 25+ components). A really simple detail, but one that's already paying big dividens during the build process.
Day 1: Soldered the opamps and first few resistors. Stopped early because I realized I was having a diffcult time preparing the leads, so I hopped on Mouser and ordered a few tools (namely a pair of Plaxo component lead snips, as well as a cheap component lead shaping tool. I was having difficult shaping/bending the resistors in a consistent manner and was getting annoyed with the lack of symmetry.
Day 2: Plaxo component snips and lead shaping tool arrived. The component snips were only $8.xx and were well worth the investment, as they make it very easy to cut the leads very close to the board and in a consistant manner. The resistor shaping tool was too big for the lead spacing on this PCB, so I've resorted to balancing the resistor body on a q-tip and forming the leads by hand (disappointing but I'm getting better at it). Stopped after soldering all the resistors and inspecting the joints with a jewelers loupe and my Fluke 117.
I'll be posting more pictures in the days ahead. The one thing I've noticed so far is that the plated through-hole design of the PCB allows a lot of solder to flow through the hole and accumulate on the component side of the PCB, which is kind of annoying and unsightly in my opinion but shouldn't affect performance.
