Holy Fretboard, Batman!!

Post date: Apr 26, 2014 2:58:11 PM

I made some holes. Then I made some more. This time in the right place. Fortunately for me, I take baby steps. I laid out the entire hole pattern on the back of the fretboard by hand. I know that's silly, since I already had the centroid data in the pick-and-place file for the PCB design, so it would have been easy to offset it and just program up a CNC mill and just hit go. But that would be the smart way to do things...

Instead, I drilled out the pattern and noticed that I didn't like the way the holes lined up in between the frets. I started with a small drill, so I could offset the holes and drill them out larger. I used on 0.125" end mill (I would have preferred 3mm), so that I did not get significant wander. I offset them to the center of the space. The spacing between holes in the other direction relies on my original hand layout, so they at least should be close (again, much better if you have access to a CNC and the centroid data).

I still need to mill out the pockets on the back to accomodate the parts. I plan on using a 3/8" end mill and opening up a pocket just big enough for each LED and it's bypass cap. I don't want light leakage between LEDs, if at all possible. More on filling the holes in another post.