Look at all the colors!!

With DIY electronics, decorating the enclosure is one of the more difficult parts. Doing stompboxes over the years has been fun, but coming up with a durable, legible, cost-effective, feasible way to paint or plate or whatever has been an exercise in frustration.

I didn't know how I was going to do the panel for the MFOSSU. I had found several transparent label-type products online, but they were either too small or too expensive or both. So yesterday I was babbling my troubles to my wonderful wife while we were out driving and we drove by a sign shop. She asked why I didn't have them print it for me. Of course! The panel (which I bought at a hardware store) is 1/16" thick aluminum sheet--pretty much the same stuff street signs are made of! I'm glad one of has half a brain. So I'm thinking they can do lots of colors including white, which is really tough to do with laser printers. Up till now I was thinking I was stuck with black print on raw aluminum or something like that.

Most modular or vintage synths are pretty plain graphics-wise. I figured hell, if I'm making this I can do whatever colors I want. That way it won't get confused with everyone else's MFOS synths at a gig, right?!  

Here's my scheme:

I lost some of the crosshairs for the holes. Oh well, I can do them later by hand. It's because I suck at graphics. If I was good, I'd do a layout from scratch. I was pushing my abilities just adding the colors to MFOS' layout!