Friday, September 3, 2010

Front Panel Completed

I managed both an afternoon and evening construction session yesterday and finished the K2's front panel. The left-hand view shows the completed front panel board at the end of the afternoon session, while the right-hand view shows the completed front panel.

Despite the scariness of the instructions for the LCD backlight/diffuser and the LCD itself, construction was very straight-forward. The lesson again seems to be: "follow the instructions very carefully and all will be well." There was really nothing difficult about getting these components in correctly, including the "exactly 1/8 in." directive for placing the backlight assembly; using the provided spacers, you really couldn't go wrong. I did have the same moment's pause that other builder's reported on whether or not the LCD had a protective film on the back (and I actually just checked again that nowhere does it say to remove the backing from either side of the backlight assembly!).

Only glitch: the double-sided tape for holding the green bargraph filter in place crumbled when I tried to remove the second backing paper. Fortunately, I have double-sided tape around the house, which did the trick. Actually, I needed the double-sided tape to hold the two "self-adhesive rubber pads" in place as well.

Hint: used one of the LCD backlight spacers to position all the little knobs.

Next: sort out the all the parts for the RF board.