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Designing a Layout

A project log for Dirty Dan Compressor

Fast Compressor built with minimal components

john-wetzelJohn Wetzel 05/07/2023 at 02:190 Comments

Generally when I build a circuit myself there are two ways I design the boards. If a design has a relatively high complexity I use kicad to design a pcb and engrave the boards myself. This circuit was below the complexity where that seemed to matter.

It was a matter of using a program called diylayout creator (it used to detect as a virus for some reason so, you know, heads up). Building a circuit with diylc is more of a challence of seeing just how small you can get the circuit. It's a lot like playing that old game where you have to move the blocks around to get another block out. You just have to start somewhere and keep moving things around until you get it all to fit.

Generally speaking, quad op amps make for poor stripboard layouts. the power rails being right in the middle of the ic wastes a few lines just getting power there. With two dual ics you have the option to flip one upside down and have them both share the same ground or power bus. Either way, I managed to whittle down my width to about 22 rows, or just over 2.2 inches. Unfortunately this wouldn't fit in the 1590b size box that I had been planning on using.

Luckily, I had a 125b box on hand that I'm much more fond of using - that extra bit of space makes it so much easier to fit jacks and such things on - the depth makes it so you can have several components overlap if you need to. I was also in luck, - forgotten to me the enclosure had already been drilled for knobs and such in exactly the amount I needed.

Once I had settled on a board design I needed to start on actually making the board.

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