Lunchbox Amp 1 watt continued

I'm using the LASER etcher to mark where I need to cut and punch holes in Lunchbox Chassis ver 2.0. The laser isn't powerful enough to etch the aluminum, so I simply attach some masking paper onto the face. The laser then burns the tape where I need to cut.



It's only accurate to about a thousandths of an inch. My accuracy is a little little less than that, never could color within the lines.

Here's the sheet ready to be cut. I put a box cutter in the pic to give it scale.
Tiny amp chassis it will become.

Love the hydraulic 4 foot wide metal shear. My piece barely fit.

Version 2 completed. after I started adding parts I found out that two parts would interfere with each other. To the recycle bin this one went. Back to the Laser for version 3.

Here's version 3 prior to bending it into a box shape. Origami with sheet metal! While I was at it I decided to tweak some other stuff.

For the front of the lunchbox amp I decided to use perforated aluminum as a speaker grill. Here I just finished painting it gloss Black.

I then made a vinyl decal. I drew some centering marks so that it would be centered in the grill.

This vinyl decal I'm using as high-tech masking tape.

Peeling away the front part of the decal.

Where you see light coming through I plan on shooting with white paint. The Black Vinyl decal will mask the image.

After a coat of white.

Well that didn't work. Pulling the black decal removed the black paint that it was masking.

It's all good though. I thought of even better idea. I would paint the front black. I then would put the decal on the back side and shoot the backside white. This way there was no paint for the decal to remove. The result was that the paint spray coated the inside of each hole white. Looking straight at the grill only a faint image could be seen. At any other viewing angle the image becomes more and more apparent. Kind of like those 3-d hologram cards.

This is viewing at it from about a 45 degree angle from the top.

Enough about the Grill. I cutting wells in the back side of the front plate for all of the controls using a 1 1/8" Forstner bit. Each Pot is about an inch in diameter and so are the switches.

Now it was time to glue it all together.

I added a few clamps. Time for breakfast.