Scratch Build – In Progress Project C-Macc's 2 - Sub zero arcade system..... :)

If i understanded right, you're going to do kind of spectrum analyzer? It would be really cool feature, red leds with low frequenzes... etc. I would go with RGB.

 

spectrum analyser that's the word. yes i am. but across 10 sets each with there own spectrum.

So it will be 10 x 10 leds to wire in. the only problem would be 100 x rgb would mean 400 solder joints to make it. (Red, Blue, green, negative).

Hence the effect could be a little like a Christmas tree set of lights and i need to avoid that type of effect.

I have bought different leds ranging from SMD's to , 3mm , 5mm leds to test out how bright they are. Ill be Routing into the CP the channels that i need and then putting film under the plastic and then the light will show through the film. So at first you wont see any thing and no sign of light on the cp and as soon as it kicks in it should look quite snazzy.

Thats "IF" it works !!

If it does i may re do the whole Cp again from the start and make it better so that i create a star around the roller ball which will be a spectrum analyser ..

 

Soldering Tools

To do a good job and not bodge it to much there are some very cheap and inexpensive tools you can use in the aid of soldering. Many people just use their hands which is quite fine but there are some serious repercussions with this method in the least the ability to burn yourself very seriously.

So here is a list of just some of the tools that we can use in out arsenal.

Picks , brushes and Pointers.

These are excellent for removing and cleaning up joints and help in the movement of small SMD's. some people use their fingers as well but to be honest is not a good idea. when you use you fingers you end up transfusing grease form you hands to the electrical components which in turn can cause many problems. These cost about £3 for a set at the cheap end like mine or you can go for the more expensive set for about £10.



Tweezers

If you didn't know there are many varieties of tweezers out there and the most common is the version you pick up from you local store or chemist that are used to pull eyebrows or spelks out of people skin these are no good at all for soldering there just to clumsy. What you need is a decent pair with nice pointed tips or even the type that doctors use with a bend in them. The ones pictured below are clock makers tweezers and they have very very fine tips on them which is perfect for moving and handling SMD's and LED's. These Clock Makers tweezers cost about £4.50 for a set but you can pay anything up to £10 for a small set or even just one.



Clock makers , Jewellers eye glass

These come in various forms from x5 right up to x25 times. I personally have a x10 one which is excellent for checking soldering on SMD's and legs on chips. You can easily pick out bridges and mistakes with these. Not everyone uses them but since it only costs about £2.50 for cheap one it is a worthwhile investment in the long term.



Soldering Braid

Now when you make mistakes this stuff is unbelievably handy stuff to have around. Braid is used to Mop up excess solder and can help in the cleaning of mistakes and bridges that you may have created. It comes in various widths and lengths. However a little warning the really cheap stuff is rubbish and makes more of a mess than anything else. It only costs a few pence more for decent stuff. It should cost no more than that £1 to £5 depending on the length you buy.



Helping Hands

One of the best tools ever created for doing soldering. These little babies can hold you PCB steady for you while you work. Not only do they hold them they all have a nice medium magnify glass to help and aid in the LED's and SMD's onto you PCB or Bread board. I cannot stress how useful they are. If you only going to buy one tool then get one of these you'll never regret it. They cost from £4.50 to £10 and come in various forms.



Hobby Knife , Scalpel

Again another handy tool to have as these can be used for slicing and for many things such as cutting PCB lines or bread board. Again they do not cost much from £1 to £10 depending on what type you get.



Soldering station or Soldering iron.

There are many different types of soldering irons from gas driven ones to cold ones that only heat up once it makes contact with the Solder. I will only be concentrating on the normal electric soldering iron's as the other two are useless for what we need.

Now i own 2 different types. The first one is a plain old 18 Watt standard off the shelf simple soldering iron. It has been in use for many years and is what i used to mod and fix consoles and various other things. It has been a very handy tool and was perfect for my normal soldering needs. The only problem with it is that 18 watt is just some times to much or to little. These cost about £10 to £18
Pic below and yes it needs cleaning.




Next we have my best friend my soldering station. Now this little beast has a variable heat source for controlling the amount of wattage that the soldering iron gets as well as a Heat pen for flow soldering and all so adjustable voltage so i can test out my project's without using other equipment. It may look expansive but only cost £75.00





Now if your going to get into soldering components a lot i suggest getting a work station as its benefits far outweigh any soldering iron and they needn't be expensive. the one above all so came with leads to connect many different mobile phones so that you could power them up and all so crocodile clips and more.

Solder

There are many different types of solder so you need to chose one that suits your needs. If working with SMD's hand doing by a soldering iron get the thinnest you can or solder paste. If anything else you can use any standard stuff. Like normal though the more you pay the better the solder.



De soldering Pump.

I prefer Solder wick to this method but it you make a big blob this can help the start of the cleanup operation. So again its one of those thing's that is just good to have just in case you need it.



Flux

Now flux is quite important when working with SMD's as it help the solder to stick to the SMD quite well. I user a Flux pen on all my work and it has a shelf life of around 2 years. I think i may have passed that now so i need to order some more.



Fibre Pen

Fibre pens are really handy to have esp when working in modding and needing to get access to a track that is under a thin layer of protective coating. I have gone through about 20+ refill with this thing so it gets hammered allot. Its all so excellent for cleaning certain areas. Just don't over do it as this tuff can rip though protective layers like mad.



Thin nosed pliers and wire cutters.

Needless to say what there are for.

 

Oky here is how to solder (This is not perfect but will do for now)
The parts in the pic below are what im am going to solder to a bread board. The reason for these parts is i need to see how bright the leds are as i need to use the correct Leds before i start making my string of leds for my project. On my work top there is all so a SMD (see if you can find it lol) ...
Parts ->



Now First you put each LED into where you would like them to go. normally people don't bend them but since it's the only way i can hold them into place i do bend them. The longer leg By the way is the positive and the shorter leg is the negative.

Led on the bread board ->




Next you need to solder it in. To do this depending on if you are left handed or right handed approach your leg with the solder coming from the left side and the soldering iron from the right side Like the Diagram below. Heat up the leg with the soldering iron on the right and then apply the solder on the left. If done correctly the solder will flow around the base of the leg and nip the leg into place as it cools.




Now the solder did not flow all the way around the leg so i quickly touched it up again just to make sure




Do this all the way along. The black bits on the solder is because i never bothered cleaning my soldering tip (cos im a lazy bugger). Then fit the rest of the components and solder in again.





Here you can see the top side nearly complete. The underside you'll notice some scoring this is were i cut the strip board to allow the resistors to work correctly.




A quick test to check out the LED's to my surprise the top two 5mm leds are supposed be different MCD's (how much light they produce) and after looking carefully they are the same. So when on ebay don't believe everything you read ...





Next ill show you how i do my SMD's once i can find it lol.. All so a note to my self get Practising .... I could clean up the solder with the Solder mod but im not going to as it is a waste and this is just me testing out my led's.

 

Great guide, i especially like it since I'm able to solder, just not well.

 

wel last but not least and trust me we took over 50 pics and 1 turned out lol. To solder the SMD the best way is to put a dab of solder down and then using a set of tweezers move the SMD into place and then heat up the solder. Then once it is in place Put a dab of solder on the other side still holding it down with tweezers.

here is a Drawing of how to do it because my camera is just not good enough to show the smd being soldered into place sorry.

Pic of the SMD to be soldered !!!!



Trying my hardest to get a pic in progress



So here is a diagram instead ->



Then here is a pic of it being tested ...



When doing this type of soldering its best to use a Eye magnify glass with a min of x10 so you can see what you are doing.

Hope this helps people.

 

tranc3 you don't have to be good at soldering to make it look good mate. I'm rubbish latley but at least it all works lol ... Part of modding is learning and that's the fun bit ....

Any thing else that comes along is just a bonus ...

 

Thanks for the little guide on soldering, I always tend to have trouble with it.

 

this is the plan of attack for my 5 Led spectrum analyser / strobe / chaser ...



I think how ever the spectrum analyser section may not work ...

This would need to be repeated 2x on each string that i create ...

Im going with 5mm Leds for the RGB set up and have 50x of them. What ill try and do is create a Star sign around the roller ball.

For any one interested in the roller ball that was going to be Laser etched in 3d . It melted in the centre lol ..... we though that might happen and as far as we knew has never been tried before .. now we know why !!!! We still have two left to play with though so attempts are going to be made on them.

 

nice led skills...

wow thats a small smd... gees... good work!

 

Been having a long hard think about lighting on this mod and this is a second PCB possible design that i have come up with ....



Why hasn't any one come up with these ideas before for custom lighting PCB's ....

Ive adapted my design to general purpose so that basic you can custom light with strobe, chaser, sequence, VU meter and so many more and it can all be easily done. You can buy boring old single lighting but with this you can do what ever you like easily ....

Now were can i get these prototype cheaply? If we could get them down to say £1.50 to £2.50 per PCB i think it would sell quite well. Imagine how much time this would save...

 

Oky ive been waiting now for 3 weeks for the Xerc CME To arrive and this morning a package arrived . But it not what i ordered and is useless for the needs of this project. I have been totally let down By the company and my project is way over due because i have been waiting.

This has annoyed me completely and i just be can not be bothered any more with this due to the fact that it was going to be shown off at a arcade convention that i was planning to attend but this is not possible now. Im seriously annoyed ...

I give up. Been let down by to many company's and people to carry on this. Just sick of being messed around.

www.sickmods.net Thank you so much for making me wait so long and eventually letting me down ....

 

Man that is a real shame, I hate it when I get screwed over by the big guys in the business (thanks DFI), although they did eventually come through for me, took them 2 months though.

 

oh yea. I'm getting ready to invest in some helping hands and a few other tid-bits, going to be doing some work on a set of speakers and a few other things, your guide definetly helped. Im pretty excited to see how your lighting turns out!

 

Edited due to it all being sorted ...

 

That's bad, i hope that Sickmods.net will fix their mistake asap.

And thanks for the Mame Controller guide!

 

ek, hope that gets fixed soon!

 

Well im amazed got a email back and a refund and a apology from the owner.

So they didnt steal my money at all (thank god).

And was a mistake that is going to be corrected all though it wont be for a few weeks. ...

Never mind.

So system still on hold till i can get another one.

La carotte d - that's fine mate if you need any help im always around or pri message me.

 

Well in the back ground of all the mishaps ive managed to get my self a water cooling kit together for a total of £68.00 thks to people such as tiny tom.

So far i have a

XSPC 1x (2 x 120mm) Rad
XSPC Delta V3 CPU Waterblock
2 x Res from TT (will be upgrading to 2 loops eventually)
12V Laing DDC1+ Ultra 18W (MCP355) (was damaged but got it working for free)
2 x Metal 120mm Silver Fans and Shroud for the rad.
1 x Old style 240 V 1/2" Pump (will use that on second loop once i get a rad for it)
1 x Criti Cool for the old pump
1 x DD Maze 3 CPU Block
1 x DD Maze 3 Chipset block
1 x DD VGA Block
2 x meters of tubing.

Don't know yet if the DD blocks will be of any use but there were free so i cannot complain. If i can get them to fit on my 8800 GT with Sinks for the ram ill be sorted.

Just need another bargain rad and ill have my cheap duel water loop system. But cannot complain since all that kit has cost me no more than £68.00 inc delivery.

 

My 240mm AlphaCool NexXxos rad cost me $60AUD, and I thought that was a good del. What you are getting is insane for the price, congratz mate.