[sdiy] Designing front panels for synths

[Pete Hartman]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 10:54 AM Mike <drheqx at heqx.com> wrote:

> I like that idea. The PCB can give you several features that
> would make the front panel a functional item. embedded LEDs, ringed
> holes, a ground plane, etc.
>

It can become problematic, possibly, to get power to the panel for LEDs.
I'm sure the same headers used between a "panel PCB" with components like
jacks on it could be used (or for aesthetic reasons more likely to use SMD
headers on the panel side), but it then becomes more difficult to
troubleshoot a complete circuit because the previous "panel PCB" may well
be sandwiched in the middle between a main board and the panel itself.
There are certainly cases where that wouldn't necessarily be so, but given
common practice of main board -> panel components board -> actual panel,
which avoids having to try and organize your main board around the holes
for the panel components, the middle piece of the sandwich becomes
inaccessible without resorting to dupont wires in place of the normal
headers.  Yuck.

That said, I think PCB panels are quite nice even without active components
on them.  They're certainly less expensive than metaphoto, don't require
special setup costs, etc.  I did even once try with "aluminum PCB" material
but found that my preferred fab house did not do a great job of silkscreen
on the raw aluminum.  There was a lot of confusion in the setup as well
("what do you mean there is no copper??").

Pete
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