newbie

[H Fiddlefinger]

Hello everyone, I am a music technology student with a small amount of electronics experience(very small). Can anyone suggest an easy project to get me started? I am low on funds but I have a few radios lying around as well as a cheap dj mixer and turntable. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

[Minion]

What type of Project do you have in Mind?? there are a Lot of Beginner projects in many different areas or Electronics and audio...

Do you want to build a small amp?? Or a preamp??, or maybe a Guitar effects pedal or maybe headphone amp, or a Mic preamp??

There are so many projects that i would know were to start in pointing you to a project without a bit of info on what you are interested in...

Here is a site that has a Huge amount of audio projects and aclo sells PCB kits...

take a look....

http://sound.westhost.com/p-list.htm

[H Fiddlefinger]

Thanks. I'm going to try a CMoy headphone amp tutorial on tangentsoft.com, just got most of the parts today but I still need a few things. My iron is 20W, 3.5mm tip. Any advice on setting up somewhere to work and easy mistakes to avoid?

[Minion]

Well I suggest you make sure your Iron tip is Hot and is well Tinned...Make sure you don"t make any Solder bridges that will short out your curcuit ,and take your time and double check everything.. and make your solders short and quick so you don"t over heat any Components and don"t be afraid to use a lot of Flux...

Are you going to Make your own PCB?? or Buy one? or use Perf board?? I have a PCB design for the Cmoy that has it"s own Dual regulated PSU and is a 4 CH (2 headphone outs) version and it is on a fairly small PCB ,That is if you are interested in etching your own PCB....

Cheers

[Nordic]

I was going to suggest the cmoy... should be doable with a few radio's parts... You will need a dual opamp or two single ones... (look at the chip numbers on your boards and google them... )
resistors just have to be "close enough"... same for caps in cmoy...

To add to Minion... use flux, but wash the boards afterwards.. or they will burn and form nice carbonated shorts in the board material itself... I use acetone and kitchen towels with a brush afterwards, but alcohol is better as it will not hurt plastic components and strip markings off resistors etc....

Also wash and degrease board and your hands before you start soldering... solder will form bridges over the oily residues from your fingers... oily and oxidised = hard to solder (without adding new flux), shiny and clean = easy to solder

What the flux does is to clean the surface of the metal and makes the solder flow easier and bind (to clean/fluxed parts) easier.

[H Fiddlefinger]

I am going to use perfboard from radio shack and follow the instructions on tangentsoft as it is my first project, but I am intersted in etching my own, how would I go about it?

Also, what's the best way to degrease a board?

Thanks

[Minion]

Etching your own Board is a rather simple Process and there are many ways to go about it but the most popular Home etching methods are probably useing PNP (Press n peel) or photo paper,Magazine paper, transperancies and a Lazer Printer....

This site goes over the basics .....

http://diycircuits.net/makepcb/pcb_making


Once you get good at it you can really make some very good PCB"s and quite quickly..Yesterday I was able to design a 32w guitar amp ,then design the PCB and etch it and stuff all of the Parts and Solder them and wire up all of the Connecters and pots and PSU and put it in a chassis and debug a couple problems all in about 8 hours of work of which the PCB etching only took about 30 minutes....


Cheers