[sdiy] Kraakdoos output revisited

[Metrophage]

My Kraakdoos was blazingly loud at first, since I used a 4-ohm speaker
from a (then) broken Casio. I put a "mod-pot" attenuator in there so
it'd be safe for the baby to play with. He loves it!

--- The Peasant <ecircuit at telus.net> wrote:

> Then I attacked the non-working unit, and found the problem to be
> excess solder flux on the contact pad connections absorbing 
> moisture from my fingers and shorting out. When I tried to measure 
> for leakage, with my fingers removed of course, the moisture 
> evaporated and no leakage was found. However, if I exhaled some 
> moisture laden breath onto the contacts, the sound would change 
> dramatically. A bit of flux remover and scrubbing appears to have
> solved that problem.

Interesting, so that Kraakdoos is even more interactive than most, with
extra contacts! I used to have this happen all of the time with stuff I
tried to build. What I did was tweak my soldering style so that I use a
very hot iron and as little flux as possible, and sometimes just use
"no-clean" solder. Also an issue is that my gear is usually in
basements, garages, and other horribly damp places. If I'm working on a
kit PCB I put it out in the sun for a while, or in a window, so that
the heat dries it a bit. 
 
> So both of my weird problems were, as usual, caused by myself.
> Nothing new here, move along, move along....

As John Cage said, sometimes an apparent mistake might be a hidden
intention! It can be inspiring to not make multiple boards alike. 

CJ


		
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