drilling chassis mountings

[punkaled]

Hi,
Just a quick question,
When boxing your pedals up, obviously you need to drill holes for input and output, switch, and any pots, also its nice to add a DC jack. The problem i have is this -
The jacks, switches and pots are easy, just drill the holes and fit them through, i also bought a round DC jack to fit, trouble is, its not insulated, so the +ve would short against the box itself if i used it (i could use negative outside but thats far from ideal for several reasons).
Now, my local electronics bits supplier does stock plastic DC jacks with chassis and pcb mountings, but none of them are round they are all odd shapes (either square or U shaped)
and so finally i get to the question ( :? )-
How do you go about driling holes to fit these odd shaped connectors to the chassis? i don't have a router or anything, just a plain old drill. I suppose i could use a file to shape the holes but that would take forever, there must be an easy way to do it i guess, but how?

cheers,
Aled.

[mikeb]

There are 'nibblers' you can get that require a starter hole, and can then be used to take square chunks out of metal - however, I doubt these would work on cast aluminium boxes, and if you *must* insist on using non-circular shaped DC jacks then filing is the only choice. 5 minutes of hard work should do it, not too bad!

The best solution is to get the round (actually two sides are flattened, but for us mere mortals without a huge hole punching machine it doesn't make any difference) DC sockets that are isolated from the material they are put through. This saves a lot of work and worry, definitely worthwhile.

Mike

[niftydog]

easy way; 5000lb press with appropriate punch, die and stripper.

cheap way; drill slightly smaller hole, and file the sides flat.


I don't know, these youngens today, everythings too much hard work! I used to walk bare foot through ten feet of snow and ice during a tornado with two broken legs and an old yaks bladder for a school bag while crows pecked my eyes out and sheep nibbled at my hair which was so long because we could afford to sharpen the axe thanks to dads addiction to mineral turpentine when we got there, the teacher would whip our backsides until they were purple for being two seconds late and when we sat down we'd get splinters but we'd just have to put up with it or face another lashing.  Lunch was putrid, salted Gnu washed down with a pint of brine...

[punkaled]

yeah, as i thought.
Seems silly that they only stock these weird shapes or non insulated sockets, but then the shop near me does suck, and have a very small selection of metal boxes so didn't see the need to get the insulated type.

Maybe i could use the round metal ones if i drilled a larger hole and put some sort of rubber bush or grommet on then secured them to the case with washers, anyone tried this b4?

[BILLYL]

The grommet works well and is easy to do.

Go for it!

Also - you could drill the hole a little bigger and then BONDO fill it - smooth it out and thendrill your hole in the BONDO and fit the jack in.

GOOD LUCK

BILLY

[petemoore]

JB Weld epoxy 'spans' [can be glommed on thick and span a fairly wide gap like 1/8'' or better.
 ok that stuff...then maybe drill large, near the exact size of a nonconductive piece of hard round plastic flat piece, [plastic piece shaped like a dime or nickel] JB that in, let it dry, then drill/mount the jack in that.

[smashinator]

In my crybaby, the square dc jack is mounted on the board, and just lined up with a round hole drilled in the enclosure.  I don't know how difficult that would be to do at home, but I'm considering using that method to keep the box from looking TOO handmade. :wink:

[Eric H]

I don't know, these youngens today, everythings too much hard work! I used to walk bare foot through ten feet of snow and ice during a tornado with two broken legs and an old yaks bladder for a school bag while crows pecked my eyes out and sheep nibbled at my hair which was so long because we could afford to sharpen the axe thanks to dads addiction to mineral turpentine when we got there, the teacher would whip our backsides until they were purple for being two seconds late and when we sat down we'd get splinters but we'd just have to put up with it or face another lashing.  Lunch was putrid, salted Gnu washed down with a pint of brine...

THAT was brilliant...