Weekly update 8

Hey everyone,

This week I will try to keep it short since I'm in the middle of soldering the motherboards.

Motherboards

The KNTRL9 has 2 PCBs: the main board with all the controls on it and the motherboard. The motherboard came without the components soldered on. Because of the chip shortage, the factory could not source the microcontroller chips so I decided to try and source them myself. I was able to buy a batch straight from the factory for the normal price (prices now can be as high as $28 per chip!). I was lucky because the next day they were sold out again.

Anyway, the result is that I would either have to look for a company in Germany to do the assembly, or do it myself. Since it's such a low number of boards, I decided to do it myself.

I currently soldered about half of the boards in 3 days. This is a lot slower than I expected and planned for so this will be notable in the planning (I expected to do the entire batch in 3 days).

Main boards

The main boards luckily have the small components already soldered on. I do however need to solder on the potentiometers (rotary and slide). This is planned for next week.

Woodwork

I have the CNC machine booked for Friday, Saturday and Monday so I can finish the woodwork.

Manuals

The manuals came in this week.

Box

I am waiting for the packaging firm to send me the final drawing for a go. Hopefully that will happen this week and the boxes will arrive in two weeks.

Other parts

Almost all parts are in. The only things I'm still waiting for are the panels (should come in today or tomorrow) and the slide potentiometers (they were delayed and should come in one or two weeks).

That's it for this week!