[SiBurning]

First Victim

erikzen's Grado SR-40

Removing the cushion.

Attempt #1: Under the Knife
This didn't work too well. The pad shredded a bit.

Attempt #2: Between the frying pan and the fire
Abandoned after melting a hole in the cover

Attempt #3: Instruments of Torture
Finally, a good way to remove the pad without damage. Heat the rounded edge of a steel rule, then gently slide the rule under the pad.

The first victim didn't fare too well under experimentation

But the cup came out cleanly

The second trial

The second victim escaped with its dignity intact

But the cup was a bit warped and circuit board got separated

Looking for the wire...

Nothing here

side view

Nothing here either

Oh, there you are, both of you

Removing the cups... It appears there's some kind of glue or weld at each of these bumpy things

 

[SiBurning]

The Victim

Under the Gun

Gutted

Didn't have time to recable

 

[SiBurning]

This victim had already been tortured near to death. Before coming to the house of pain, this little wince already had a little switch surgery resulting in the removal of a push button switch and one tiny SMD pad.

Can you see it?

Can you see it now?

Here's Gene practising his 1337 soldering skillz on a throwaway circuit board.

And Gene attempting to solder some 30ga wire onto what turned out to be a non existent pad.

Did I say tiny? It was downright microscopic. The trace was nowhere to be found, and there was no trace of the trace it connected to. Gene did manage to plob a blob of solder somewhere north of where the actual pad used to be. The missing pad is between the two blobs on the right of the missing part. I know it's nearly impossible to see anything.

Verdict
I'm gonna call this victim DOA and hope noone bothers to call Kaitlin Costello.

Note to self: upgrade the camera optics.

 

[SiBurning]

erikzen already posted some nice pictures of his Atomic Gun Amp.
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f24/ny...ml#post5625947

Here's the back of the board

Kerry finds a broken connection... Then another...

Is it the capacitor?

Let's bypass it.

The kneebone's connected to the ring tip... Now I just hook this to my thumb and...

Blow on it, then repeat after me "orkwa amnda ouya"

Ah, sweet success!

I just love The Village People through my iBuds

 

[SiBurning]

Kerry shows off his completely handmade circuitboard, complete with through hole vias.

Here Kerry wires up the vias

Which, of course, must be soldered on both sides

Not much time left, so at least get one SMD part soldered.

Flux

Slide the chip into place

Sodler one corner at a time

Missing picture of Kerry painstakingly soldering all 8 pins, pin by pin
XXXX

Chip on the old board

 

[erikzen]

Steve, thanks so much for having us over. I can't wait to do it again except my wife says I'm grounded for the summer.

So let's recap. I brought two projects, a Grado SR40 to be rewired and a pocket amp that I thought had one wire disconnected and that I was going to case up. Plus, I brought my camera to shoot the meet.

Open up the camera bag, turn on the camera. No memory card. So much for that.

Then on to the headphones. First I butchered the pad on cup number one. After successfully removing the pad from cup number two I proceeded to melt the driver of cup number two rendering it useless for all practical purposes.

On to the amp. After soldering the loose wire, I had an amp that produced 100% THD and S/N = 0. Luckily Kerry showed up and traced the circuit. In addition to finding another loose wire, he determined that my ground bridge was failing. After an hour and a half of troubleshooting, he resoldered the bridge and there was actual, decent music. But by that time I was already late so couldn't get the casework done I planned on.

Wait, why do I want to do this again?

Seriously, it was a good time and many thanks to Steve for his hospitality, awesome tools and good coffee. Big thumbs up to Kerry for getting my amp functioning. I would actually like to do this again. I can learn a lot from you guys. But like I said, I'm grounded.

 

[SiBurning]

That was fun. And exhausting. All the pictures are posted above. The play by play is pretty much summed up in the pictures. I'll leave it to the others to post further impressions. For now, I'll focus on what it was like hosting this.

There was one main workstation where I do my own work. All the main instruments are on that table. I think it would be good to put all this test gear on a wheeled cart. It would save space on my main workbench, free up the table top for other duties when not used for electronics, and allow other people in the room to use the main equipment.

I put a 16"x24" baking mat down on the main station to protect the work surface. It's heat resistant to 480F, and it does hold up against liquid solder, but probably won't stand up to the heat of an iron. The mat feels sticky--not icky sticky, just plasticky sticky. Solder kind of splasehes and sticks to it, and is easily peeled off later. Thanks to rembrant for this idea http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/bur...9/#post5210353

A second station was a folding table and folding chair. A half-sheet 11"x17" silicon baking mat served to keep the table neat and clean and free from burns. The station also had its own power strip. For soldering, the soldering station fit on the table with enough space for a small project, solder, wire, and a small tool or two. A couple of nearby computers served as a table for equipment, in this case, just a heat gun. For equipment that isn't too heavy, a second folding table could be used instead. I have 2 Tektronix TM503 mainframes that can hold 3 pieces of equipment, and it's just perfect for this situation. I'm going to get a few more modules for future meets.

A third space--an uncomfortable corner of the desk--was for the inspection microscope: a Meiji EMZ-TR trinocular stereo microscope with the oblique viewing attachment. (The third -ocular is for the camera.) The oblique viewer lets you see stuff from pretty much any angle. It's done with mirrors. Without it, you can only see straight down. I got a cheap video camera for it, but there's obviously more to it than I know, as you can guess from the pictures. The main problem is the camera has its own idea of where to focus, which disagrees with the eyepieces by about 8". It also doesn't support zooming in any way shape or form. I think this is all a matter of getting the right lenses. Just dropping in a cheap camera works, but not optimally. The second difficulty is lighting, which I just haven't set up yet.

Setting up stations, finding tools and supplies, looking on head-fi for stragglers, and generally worrying about nothing took a fair amount of time. Of course, the worrying part is variable and possibly optional for some. For the other stuff, it would probably help to have all the tools and supplies in order in one or two known places, with everything easy to find, and clearly labelled. Then people could just find things themselves. So I need to reorganize.

Not that setting up was the big time waster. The real time killer was that we paired off for almost everything. Of course, that's a good thing, and probably the whole point of having a meet. It only means that less than half of what was planned got done, and a lot of unplanned stuff happened instead.

I think the meet went kind of well. Some good ideas were exchanged. My Grados got opened, so I can now recable them. I doubt I would ever get around to them if erikzen wasn't opening his. Not everything was successful, but some things were. We wasted a lot of time on that Dell PDA, and killed one set of cans. More important to me, we finally got a DIY meet together after years of talking about it. And that's a good thing.

 

[erikzen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SiBurning /img/forum/go_quote.gif That was fun. And exhausting. All the pictures are posted above. The play by play is pretty much summed up in the pictures. I'll leave it to the others to post further impressions. For now, I'll focus on what it was like hosting this.

First off, let me say as a guest, you did a great job of hosting the meet. Your workstations were impressive. Your tools were all top quality. That soldering station was something else. The desoldering gun was fantastic. I've never seen anything like it in a private home. You need a special key to work the thing.

Playing with the heatgun was fun. And it was just about a perfect set up where you had the secondary work station. I probably should have dialed that heat gun back a bit to blowdryer temperatures.

Quote:

I think it would be good to put all this test gear on a wheeled cart.

I think that's an excellent idea.

Quote:

A third space...was for the inspection microscope.

Although it may not have been set up perfectly, that microscope was very cool. We were examining the little Grado knubs for miniscule globules of glue and infinitessimally small wires. It was like CSI: Forest Hills.

Quote:

Setting up stations, finding tools and supplies, looking on head-fi for stragglers, and generally worrying about nothing took a fair amount of time. Of course, the worrying part is variable and possibly optional for some.

I think there's always going to be distractions when you host a meet, especially at your own house. You want to make sure everyone is taken care of, and that of course takes time. Organizing differently may help, but there's always going to be a certain amount of randomness when a few people get together, even well behaved guests like us.

Quote:

The real time killer was that we paired off for almost everything. Of course, that's a good thing, and probably the whole point of having a meet.

I'm partly or perhaps wholly to blame for pairing up. Kerry spent a good amount of time troubleshooting my amp while I basically watched, trying to follow how he was testing and trying to learn. I was thankful he was willing to spend time on the Atomic Gun, when he could have been building a Blue Hawaii. Thanks Kerry!

Quote:

I think the meet went kind of well.

For me it was great. I got a working amp out of the deal and gained some experience. I only hope I wasn't holding things back.

Quote:

And that's a good thing.

A very good thing. Thanks again for hosting!

 

[erikzen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SiBurning /img/forum/go_quote.gif erikzen already posted some nice pictures of his Atomic Gun Amp. http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f24/ny...ml#post5625947 Here's the back of the board

I told you it was fine craftsmanship.

 

[erikzen]

What's really a shame is that I forgot my memory card. I should have taken photos of all of your equipment.

 

[SiBurning]

Thanks for the nice comments and feedback. Means a lot coming from you. In a way, it's kind of good that only a few people could make the date. Kind of an easy entry to see what works and how to set things up.

Pairing and sharing is the whole purpose of this kind of meet. I wouldn't worry about Kerry. He could easily have soldered that without showing us how. That's not why he came. Or should I just let him speak for himself? I certainly didn't do this to sit by myself and solder. Anyway, four dudes each sitting by themselves soldering isn't a very interesting meet.

Most of my equipment's already online in http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f6/rev...ations-416001/ which I have to continue. Maybe I'll revive the workshop thread and post the whole setup.

Glad you came.

Sorry about your summer.

 

[Kerry]

Steve,

Thanks so much for hosting this event. I love your setup. I enjoyed trouble shooting Erik's amp. Glad we could get it working.

Sorry we couldn't get Gene's portable working.

Had to spend some time with the wife and then got to work soldering up my balanced / single-ended filter for my DAC. I'm just about done. I will post some pics in the morning and add some more comments.

 

[Kerry]

Here is the result for my balance -> single-ended filter for my DAC...

Hooked up to power and testing...

Listening to Santana through it now

I'm looking forward to future hands-on DIY meets. I really thing this is a great way to share what we learn and have some fun in the process.

Thanks again to SiBurning

 

[SiBurning]

Love those connectors. That's the way top hook up wires. That board is just awesome--all those tiny parts with so much space. And compeltely hand made. Dig the cool tweezers, too.

Didn't get good pictures of the board. Here's my best shots of the vias, front and back. They're pretty much hidden under the dip sockets.

 

[SiBurning]

Time to try this again

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f24/ic...7/#post5639649