5/31/2008

Oh yeah, the words….

Heh, I just remembered that whole “I promise to write more” thing…

Okiedokie! First off,I guess I should clarify something: when I use the word “we”, I really mean “I”. I have philosophical issues about speaking/writing in first-person singular when addressing a largely theoretical audience. That’s the annoying thing about the internet – you never know if anyone is actually reading what you write.

For the most part, flight of harmony is one person. There is a theoretical second body but, for now, all the work is done by flight. (
“So”, you say, “what the hell has been going on recently?” Filling orders! The Plague Bearer has been quite a learning experience. Primarily that I REALLY low-balled the price. So it goes. These enclosures, although freaking cool, are very labor-intensive. However, I have some ideas for future enclosures that will raise the bar a little.

The concept of offering rack-mount versions has been brought to my attention recently. I think that is an intriguing idea! While my main focus is on the oft-neglected live-performing musician, offering studio versions makes damn good sense. To whit, I will work on some EuroRack format versions of the Infernal Noise Machine and version 2 of the Plague Bearer as soon as I am done with the current orders.

Another thing: Any and all comments are not only welcome, but desired! While I have received lots of interest and comments regarding both the I.N.M. and the Plague Bearer, I have only received ONE email regarding anything else. What do you really WANT? What is that complaint that you have had running in the back of your head, the one that sounds like “why hasn’t anyone made…”, or “That’s great, but it should do…”, or even “What the hell?” I highly suggest that everyone should read the manifesto on Deviant Synth. That should give you an idea as to what I am talking about.

Anyway, thanks for all the support! I hope we can all work together on pushing the boundaries of music to unforeseen levels!

~flight

posted by flight at 12:45 PM

7/07/2008

I is a good monkey!

The Parasite samples are up!

posted by flight at 2:07 PM

1/27/2008

Noch nicht fertig.

Okiedokie! The site is getting there. A few pages are still blank, so please bear with me. Be sure to check out the Devices page to see what’s cooking. I’m hungry, so I’m gonna go eat now. More later.

~flight

posted by flight at 7:21 PM

10/23/2008

Too damn busy…

Just to let everyone know:

I had to spend the past five days getting everything in order for the next announcement, so I’m a bit slower than I’d like to be in getting stuff out. I’m back on track now, but please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

~flight

posted by flight at 7:46 AM

1/21/2008

Bloody Hell…

Trying to re-vamp this website, please be patient.

posted by flight at 9:30 AM

10/01/2008

Feed fixed

Okiedokie, the feed should work now.

posted by flight at 6:52 AM

9/19/2008

FYI

My Lady’s mom is visiting for a few days, so I may be a bit slow in responding to emails through Monday. (I usually check my mail pretty obsessively every hour or so.)

~flight
(one of these days I have to come up with some tag line catch phrase…)

posted by flight at 9:17 AM

8/05/2008

PNW SDIY Meet

Just got this via the SDIY mailing list:
The PNW DIY meet will be on October 25, 2008 at Renton Technical College.
(South of Seattle for you out-of-towners)
Hmmm, I guess I better show up…

~flight

posted by flight at 2:40 PM

8/13/2008

It seemed like a good idea at the time…

Famous last words.

I was so excited to finally be using professionally-made PCBs. I spent a week researching the subject – how to make Gerber files, best layout practices (applied when possible, heh,) DRC (Design Rule Check) expectations and, most importantly, customer opinions.

I found this article to be quite helpful, and followed the links therein. After checking around I decided to go with Gold Phoenix. They had great reviews and are utilized by Sparkfun Electronics. I used the min/max tolerances stated here on Sparkfun’s BatchPCB site. The restrictions listed on the Gold Phoenix site are actually even closer tolerances, see #22 for “Outer Layer Line Width/Spacing”. I sent my order to Shane in Toronto, who was actually quite helpful and told me when my Gerbers were out of spec/missing dimensions. My Trace spacing was (accidentally – IMPORTANT NOTE TO EAGLE USERS: when you copy and paste your .brd file to make a large panel the DRCs do not tag along for the ride, you will need to re-enter them) 8mil for pours – tight, but in spec.

When the PCBs arrived – apparently, they had been delayed due to a holiday, the dangers of international commerce – I looked them over and thought they looked good. They had even made more than I had requested (as in the article on Near Future Laboratory.) Then I started building.

ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE. So far, 60% of the Plague Bearer boards have been bad, and the two Parasite boards I attempted to build were bad as well. The types of anomalies varied as well. As you can see in this image:
>
the etch was incomplete and left “short hairs” (my words) that are a pain to find. Each one is in a different place, some out in the open as in the image (and the easiest to find), while others were hidden under the silkscreening. You can also see a spot that has been over-etched. These errors all looked like a fiber had been laying across the board during etching.

The first few were discovered after I had built a couple Plague Bearers and found them working erratically. Then came the good old joy of troubleshooting! I’ve always had the approach of 1) Assume I screwed up or spaced out and forgot something, then 2) Verify components are good, and 3) Check the PCB. Which meant the errors took a while to find.

The short hairs are easy enough to fix once they’ve been found. Just a quick gouge with my homemade scraper/gouging tool and the boards were good to go. Now that I know what’s going on, I just check the boards with my continuity tester before assembly and fix the shorts. Not so simple with the Parasites.

>

As you can see in the picture, there is no pour due to component density. Therefore, these boards had the OPPOSITE problem: over-etching. It took me two boards and 14 hours a day for six days to find these bastards; they were all buried under silkscreening. The Parasite would work intermittently, flexing the board a little would make it stop working, or sometimes the unit would only work when warm – I found this one after I tested one, thought it good, and then went to bed. I checked it again in the morning and it didn’t work. What a mess.

Following all this, I’m forced to rescind the availability of the Parasites until I can get some reliable boards; these ones are just too much trouble to check. I’ll put some good news up in a few days, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

~flight

posted by flight at 3:57 PM

10/07/2008

Where the noise is…

There’s a forum discussing the Plague Bearer! Makes me as giddy as a school girl. Come check it out at muffwiggler, Several PB owners have chimed in their views, humanfaculties even posted an excellent demo of his Plague Bearer hooked up to his gear. Many thanks and appreciation to everyone, this has made it all feel worthwhile!

~flight

posted by flight at 8:22 PM