EuroRack Easy Mult and Getting Front Panels Fabricated--Cheap!

 I said last time I'm taking a break from digital, what's easier than a passive mult for a Eurorack Synthesizer?

You can buy these online, but making your own is easy and inexpensive. Get the gerber, schems, etc from my wonderful sponsor, PCBWAY's, project page, here.

USING THE MULT: The top 3 jacks and bottom 2 are wired together, but if you insert a plug into the 4th jack down, it becomes a 3x3. 

As per the post here, PCB material can make great front panels, but sometimes it's hard for the fabricator to know if you want a front panel or if you just forget to include traces in your gerber (!).  

I get around this by putting a small SMD pad on the front:

.....as well as a few fake parts--usually pads for SMB resistors--on the back, along with some fake/meaningless silkscreen legends.  

This usually gets fabricators to put their job number on the side that users don't see; in my experience their job number gets added to the "busier" side of a two sided board--so put a few fake SMD and traces on the back of the front panel.  

Finally, equest that your front panel be done up in black....

As usual, thanks to PCBWAY for sponsoring this blog and keeping it all going.

Now, your front panel goes through the fabricator's algorithm. Before long you have a ready to use front panel.

(quick post, thank goodness.....) 

Again, the link to the Eagle files and gerbers--the PCBWAY project page--is here. I include 2 front panel variations, one has a center drill for your Eurorack screws, the other has a milled oval. So look for 3 gerbers on the project page. The front panel that has two milled ovals for rack screws will be a bit more expensive to fabricate but will give you more options as far as where you can rack mount it. You may want to change the location/size of the top and bottom drills, or change the milled oval, but for what I do, the less expensive to fabricate, simple drilled version worked fine.