Shorter Knob, PCB revision
Posted: 28 Aug 2022, 20:41
Hi all, Here's a hack I did to reduce the height of the (tu)usdx knob. It was too tall for the case I wanted to put it in, so here's what I did:
1) Drill a hole in the board at the center of the encoder location. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! This PCB is a four layer board and the two inner layers are power and ground. Shorting them will likely cause permanent damage, risk of fire, world destruction and/or make your pet goldfish hate you.
2) Clean and inspect the hole and the copper planes to make sure there are no shorts.
3) Remove C32 and C33, the two SMT caps for the encoder wheel.
4) Clip the keying peg on the encoder, as you would do for the standard installation.
5) Carefully bend the encoder leads upwards. You probably can only do this once before they would break off.
6) Insulate the board around the hole, the area on the RF board and the encoder shaft with Kapton tape or similar.
7) Install the encoder in the hole from the bottom, add the nut (the washer is too big to include).
8) Solder the encoder pins. I had to run some wires from the top of the board to the bottom for the encoder switch, since the holes were not easily accessible.
9) Solder C32 and C33 on the top of the board to the encoder pins.
10) Test for shorts (you're on your own for this, since I just crossed my fingers and hoped there were none)
11) Plug in power, hope that nothing blows up and test the encoder and buttons.
12) Reassemble with new shorter knob.
13) Enjoy!
I'm hoping DL2MAN will see this and make a modification to the PCB to enable this change.
Good luck, and don't blame me if you fry your radio!
Robb
K5RAB
1) Drill a hole in the board at the center of the encoder location. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! This PCB is a four layer board and the two inner layers are power and ground. Shorting them will likely cause permanent damage, risk of fire, world destruction and/or make your pet goldfish hate you.
2) Clean and inspect the hole and the copper planes to make sure there are no shorts.
3) Remove C32 and C33, the two SMT caps for the encoder wheel.
4) Clip the keying peg on the encoder, as you would do for the standard installation.
5) Carefully bend the encoder leads upwards. You probably can only do this once before they would break off.
6) Insulate the board around the hole, the area on the RF board and the encoder shaft with Kapton tape or similar.
7) Install the encoder in the hole from the bottom, add the nut (the washer is too big to include).
8) Solder the encoder pins. I had to run some wires from the top of the board to the bottom for the encoder switch, since the holes were not easily accessible.
9) Solder C32 and C33 on the top of the board to the encoder pins.
10) Test for shorts (you're on your own for this, since I just crossed my fingers and hoped there were none)
11) Plug in power, hope that nothing blows up and test the encoder and buttons.
12) Reassemble with new shorter knob.
13) Enjoy!
I'm hoping DL2MAN will see this and make a modification to the PCB to enable this change.
Good luck, and don't blame me if you fry your radio!
Robb
K5RAB