Epoxy resin pedal finishing guide

[SillyOctpuss]

Is it raunchier? Vicar is pretty straight laced and does do a good job while being safe for general consumption. I could tell from when old man launched the bottle at the screen that it was going to a little ridiculous in the good ways

It's absolutely ridiculous but not raunchy. It's really surreal at times. It's hard to describe and needs to be experienced. Let me know when you've watched more and what to think.

 

[Eagle]

These look incredible, does any manufacturer use this process ?

 

[SillyOctpuss]

These look incredible, does any manufacturer use this process ?

Cheers Andy. Most manufacturers are going to be using UV printing. Tbh if I was building large amounts of pedals I'd be UV printing too but I think resin works really well for small batches like mine.
Powder coated enclosures covered in resin are really glossy and damn near indestructible. I've got pedals I made 10 years ago that still look brand new.

Resin used to be popular on the DIY pedal scene but a lot of those builders have moved onto UV printing too. Tayda electronics will print on an enclosure now for very little money but I'm sticking with this process. It works for me and I love the results.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

So it's been six days since pouring my resin, definitely time to get these finished so I can get some circuits dropped into them. It takes about 72hrs for resin to fully cure but I tend to leave it up to a week.

First step is to pull the tape off the inside of the enclosures and then if you want a professional looking job we need to fill all the pores in the resin. If you don't do this some of the small bits of resin and dust from drilling will go into the pores and stick to the surface causing pitting and making the finish a little cloudy. If that happens you either have to wet sand and polish the resin or do another pour on top to get it back to what we have here. I've forgotten to do this step before and it's terrible to get to this stage and then ruin the finish on an enclosure.

You'll need some paper towels and Rain X - I'm not sure what the equivalent product will be called in the states. It's basically stuff that bikers put on their helmets to fill the pours on their visors and will make the rain or water just run off.

Just squirt a bunch onto the paper towel, wipe it on and then wipe off with a clean piece. Once this is done we can get onto drilling out the holes and we're done.

To drill out resin you'll need stepped drill bits, do not use regular drill bits or they'll lift the resin from the surface of the enclosure. Now I don't use a pilot hole on these I just go straight in with the stepped bit, just line it up by eye.

It will make a bit of a mess

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Once you've drilled out the holes then we're done. Seven enclosures all ready for circuits.

Before

And after

I'll update each of these as I finish them with demos if people are interested? I can also go over biasing the fuzzes and selecting transistors if anyone wants that? Let me know.

 

[EOengineer]

This was an informative and enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing @SillyOctpuss .

 

[riffy]

This is simply outstanding! Love this!!!