DIY Pedalboard - 3d printed & Aluminium Extrustions 400mm x 300mm

[Woodinblack]

It does mount with two bolts through the bottom (note that mine aren't like the ones in the picture, I used the adjustable feet that came with the original board, as I got the power bar separately later, and prefered the other feet.

Can't see what the bolt is offhand, other than it measures 7mm with a caliper across.

 

 

[SpondonBassed]

3 hours ago, Si600 said:

@Woodinblack has one, we could ask him to measure it up....

 

...behind the bike sheds preferably.

[stewblack]

5 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

I keep having intrusive thoughts about integrating one of the Harley Benton PowerBars into one of these. I don't need more power on my pedalboard, I don't even need a new booard. But I'm still thinking about it 😅

 

https://www.thomann.co.uk/search_dir.html?smcs=81f6e8_6233&sw=spaceship power bar&sp=bloomreach&category[]=GIEFNT&cme=true&filter=true

They are absolutely brilliant.

[Woodinblack]

5 hours ago, stewblack said:

They are absolutely brilliant.

 

They are, and really low noise. Wouldn't change mine. Well, I might for the battery one now.

[rwillett]

I got a cheap dedicated compressor pedal a few days ago, a Donner Compressor.  Looked cheap and I thought I'll have a look at that and I'll put it on my pedalboard.

 

Well, what a disaster that was. The pedal is very small, I hadn't quite appreciated how small. It's metal and well made BUT it almost falls between the rails on the pedalboard. Thats not the biggest problem though, nothing I have will actually stick to the bottom of the pedal. So none of the Velcro I have stays on. The rubber appears to be some sort of inert rubber that is very non-slip but at least three different velcro tapes just slide off it as if it had some sort of repulsion built into it. NASA needs to know as this could be cheap way to launch rockets.

 

It turns out that its not just me and other people have the same issue. (https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/guitar-amps-gizmos/83801-attaching-mini-pedals-pedalboard-velcro-aint-workin.html)

 

So rather than peeling off the rubber from the bottom of the pedal, I designed printed a new base that simple screws in AND is quite large so it spans the pedal board rails. The old base is in the box, I used the same screws that came with it.

 

 

 

I suspect that all of the Donner mini pedals have this issue, nice pedals but a little tricky to fix with Velcro.

 

 

If anybody wants a base let me know and I'll print one out and send it for free. Rather annoying TBH.

Rob

[rwillett]

I took a punt and ordered a M-Vave Pedal Power adaptor AliExpress. At £8 delivered, seems worth trying out.

 

Well it turned up today, just over a week or so from ordering.

 

Its small, seems well made, comes with eight PSU cables for pedals and one USB-C cable. The eight PSU cables alone are worth more than £8 IMO.

 

 

Plugged a power cable in and it at least lights up. The blue LED's are very bright as per normal.

 

I was looking at creating a small 'travel' 300mm pedalboard so this seemed ideal. So I knocked up a quick design

 

 

The Pedal Power unit is the middle khaki bit

 

 

I'm printing the side pieces for the pedalboard and the holder for the PSU now. I'll put some sort of cable lock on the USB-C to protect it as its dead easy to pull thecable out.

 

Rob

 

 

[Richard R]

@rwillett - what do you use for your designs? I am checking out a Makerspace and as I am brand new to all this I'm incluned to use the same software as others there while I learn.

Most people there seem to use Blender, one or two use FreeCad.  Blender is a  different mindset to the CAD background I used to have in the late '90s, but is definitely quick to get going.

[rwillett]

@Richard R

 

I use Fusion 360, most of my designs are parametric. This means I adjust them using a value in a form rather than on the screen. This makes design a whole lot easier. F360 is very good for this type of design.

 

e.g. Here's the width at 25mm.

 

Note that the bolt holes are in the middle of the open section, not the middle of the whole width. One parameter change to 40mm

 

The holes are still spot on in the middle of the open section. So I design with this in mind. It's no programming, but it's having a logical mind to design with change in mind.

 

I don't use Blender though I tried it out a few years ago and didn't get on with it. I'm not a good designer, TBH I'm not even a bad designer yet. FreeCAD was a miserable experience on a Mac so that got thrown. OpenSCAD is very program focussed, but even as a developer, it was too much to learn, so I went with Fusion 360 as it's basically free for non-commercial use. You don't get all the bells and whistles of the paid version, but I never need them.

 

If you want to do the job properly, then get Fusion 360 and learn how to use it. There's loads of videos, and I wouldn't change now at all. Its not perfect, none of them are, but I've done the simple stuff above and the the guitar below. Takes time to learn, but it gives a design idiot such as myself the chance to do a half decent job. I'm sure a proper designer would laugh at my efforts but I've built five guitars so far and four are still playable. The first was quite bad though and is in the garage to remind me how bad I am if I get cocky.

 

 

Feel free to ask questions,

Rob

 

 

Edited Saturday at 13:24 by rwillett

[Richard R]

I get the feeling Blender is fundamentally coming from a creative rather than engineering standpoint. The idea is to start with lumps and then change them. Which will be fine for some stuff, less so for others.

 

I'll check out Fusion, thanks for that.

[rwillett]

That might be spot on. Fusion is based on extruding stuff and taking stuff away. 

[rwillett]

Here's the first pictures of the pedalboard with the Pedal Power strip (click on them to make them bigger). These are 500mm wide, basically I chopped a 1m bar in half.

 

I had gray on the printer so used that. I think it looks quite classy in gray and black.

 

 

The bottom. The little orange bit is the cable tie to keep the USB-C cable connected.

 

 

From the back.

 

 

After wiring it all up a couple of problems are found:

 

1. The wires are too short, they need to be a longer. I had to reverse the Pedal Power as the 300mA outputs were at the wrong end.  I've had to cram the pedal board a bit to get the cable tuns to fit.

2. The Pedal Power can't handle all the devices coming on at once. Specifically the ToneX pedal. This isn't a major surprise or drawback. Pull the power cable out of the ToneX, turn it all on and then put the power cable into the ToneX. I suspect normal pedals would be fine, but I'm sure cleverer people than myself can answer that. Just powered the board from a better plug. my Macbook power adaptor, and it works fine

3. the f$%^^&&*(()ing Behringer pedals having their power supply on the side is a complete PITA. Why? FFS Why?

 

 

However for the cost of a few hours design, a few hours printing and some cheap extrusion, it looks good.

 

Rob

 

 

 

 

Edited Saturday at 16:08 by rwillett

[tauzero]

2 hours ago, rwillett said:

2. The Pedal Power can't handle all the devices coming on at once. Specifically the ToneX pedal. This isn't a major surprise or drawback. Pull the power cable out of the ToneX, turn it all on and then put the power cable into the ToneX. I suspect normal pedals would be fine, but I'm sure cleverer people than myself can answer that. Just powered the board from a better plug. my Macbook power adaptor, and it works fine

 

I encountered this using a medium current power bank - using the super duper one, it coped fine.

 

PS. I think there would be room for a power bank under there too, so you could make it a freestanding board with just input and output wires.

Edited Saturday at 18:10 by tauzero

[rwillett]

13 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

I encountered this using a medium current power bank - using the super duper one, it coped fine.

 

PS. I think there would be room for a power bank under there too, so you could make it a freestanding board with just input and output wires.

 

I tried using a small battery for phone usage but wouldn't work with the ToneX. I have a very large one that was being charged overnight but we've had power cuts on and off all night, so need to check on stuff. At the moment wifi screwed and other stuff not working so suspect the UPS's eventually gave up the ghost.  That's the morning focus