Thursday, August 11, 2011

ARRL Homebrew Challenge 3 radio update: front panel layout on re-used chassis


One of the most important parts of building anything in your basement laboratory is a good front-panel layout.

Re-using old parts and equipment is tricky. As can be seen above, there are many 'extra' holes in this chassis that i must either use or cover up. At the same time, i want the layout of knobs, toggles, buttons, displays, etc to look nice and be ergonomic for the end user.

To do this i un-bolted the front rack mount panel and placed the necessary controls and connectors on the front panel in various configurations until i found one that i really liked (shown above).

Now i am looking forward to machining out the front panel, it should have that 1950's cold war vintage look that i try to give all of my projects.

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