PicAStar-Box-G3VPX


Pic-A-Star - building a box for it

I decided early on that I would complete all the modules and have Pic-A-Star working on a breadboard before building a case.

In designing the case, key decisions were:

Initial Decisions:

Construction:

img1

Rear view of front panel showing pan-headed 3mm brass plated screws soldered in place to support the display and status boards.

 
img2

Front view: A piece of red filter material will be positioned behind the panel

 
img3

Rear view: The leftmost cable is to the keypad and will be shortened and rerouted.

 
img4

Detail of display board and rotary encoder mounting.

 
img5

Positioning and soldering the brass screws was easy. They were fixed to the boards and the nuts adjusted to
have the screws resting on the back of the panel. Spray flux was applied before soldering.

 
img6

The case completed. Note the rectangular cut-out in the fore-aft partition at the rear. Partition wasn'twanted here
but strips of PCB retained at top and bottom to brace the back of the case

 
img7

The PA + heatsink are on a U-shaped aluminium sheet forming the top, bottom and back of the PA enclosure. The BPF compartment is on the right. Brass shin was soldered to the long outer edges of the the underside of the BPF unit (in addition to the recommended central shim). The floor of the comapartment has been tinned to provide better contact (bare copper will corrode)

 
img8

Further view showing construction of PA compartment. To join PCB to aluminium, brass angle from B&Q was soldered to the PCB board and screwed to the aluminium.

 

created with darktable 4.6.1