Nice! DO you shield it though? Like with foil or something? Or is it not necessary?
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No need to shield, just dont have any transformers inside the box.
Have a look at https://lookmumnocomputer.discourse.group/
Lots of us make DIY modular synths, in all sorts of boxes, with various front panels.
Or Juanito Moors on youtube, he made a modular synth from old food tins.
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Oooh! I see. Thanks!
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Some time in the last ~50 years, I made some electronic music hardware that had a ~1/8" redwood panel. My PAIA modular mechanical switch matrix used something like 1/16" aluminum for the panel.
5 years ago I built a MIDI board that was literally mounted on a thin piece of plywood. Pretty much throughout my life I built things from whatever I could scrounge. These days I’ve pretty much gotten lazy about building things. VCV Rack enables my laziness 
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Haha, well, that’s the DIY way, I guess, or ninja way, haha.
Well, it looks like I was worried for no reason. I’ll keep the topic alive by posting my progress though. Just for fun and encouragement for people to actually build stuff, haha.
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Hello Andre, I can recommend plywood for DIY use. It costs practically nothing, is easy to work with and is stable enough. I use 2mm plywood in my DIY project from the beginning.
In contrary to the MIDI hardware you can see in the photos above, I now use an Arduino or Raspberry Pi Pico controller for each device.
I wish you a lot of fun with your project and if you have any questions feel free to contact me.
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Thanks! I should read your topic!
Yeah! I see, so I can actually use it, I was thinking in the wrong direction, it seems like. I was expecting people to say something like “are you crazy? The whole thing would catch fire and you’ll DIE”. But it feels like everyone uses plywood! That is… calming
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I would think you could use anything. I always did what you state you don’t want to - cut panels from a big sheet of aluminum. Then I spray painted it and used stick on letters for the labels.
At the time I did work in a lab that had a metal cutter and a drill press. Have you considered buying blank panels and getting access to a drill press? I guess you have considered that and don’t want to go that way.
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Yeah… I want to make it as cheap as possible. In a good way though, haha. Problem with buying the blanks and drilling the holes is that it’s not free. I am considering an option of doing that though. I really am! But at first I just want to make it a cheapskate dream. So I am making it mostly of the details that I had found or I just had at home somewhere. I had to buy some stuff though, cause it was hard to find and I wasn’t sure about what I had. Like if it works or not. So it’s not completely free, sadly
It looks very cool! The blue ones are just classy. The grey one is… a bit dull, haha. The whole set looks like an old military thing… Or like a retro futuristic exposition, haha. BTW I was thinking about doing a similar thing with letters and numbers. And it turns out it really looks cool, just like I imagined!
Yeah, the grey one is unpainted, and looks terrible for various reasons. I made this stuff in maybe 1979? It worked very nicely.
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Here is my biggest panel, a 3He 4He gas handling control panel for my M.Sc. physics thesis. It was a dilution refrigerator that used a room full of equipment I built to take a 1 cubic cm volume down to 5 millikelvin.
My PAIA modular synth I built in 1973 and “rack mounted” in ~1978:
And lastly, my “Fresnel mirror” solar collector from about 1976:
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Oh wow. You mean like just 0.005 degrees higher than the absolute zero? That’s kinda scary, haha
The mirror is cool too! I saw this kind of thing on Mythbusters, they tried to ignite the ship with it. Like in the story about… Who was it? Archimedes? Whatever. Sadly, it doesn’t work with ships, seems like. But I see that something is burning on the photo! Not a ship, probably…
PAIA modular is very cool, by the way. I really think we need some kind of similar thing now too. There are cool not really expensive modular systems now, like Operator Modular and another one that I forgot the name of, it was actually a toy-sized, like a LEGO modular synth almost. But PAIA looks much more solid than all the options we have now in this segment. Well, that implies that PAIA wasn’t as expensive as other systems, I have this belief, haha
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I use Front Panel Express for my DIY modules:
These are all in Blacet Frac format:
Many people (including some commercial module producers) use PCBs for panels.
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I doubt I would (if I even can) use the Front Panel express, but out of curiosity, how much it costs? It looks cool! I guess it could be done at home too… I wonder how they print the text, it looks engraved… Hmmmmm
The original PAIA kits total cost me less that $200 unassembled. A Moog was going for about $50K at that time (I think). But, that was a lot of money for a 21 year old student. I started working in an experimental physic research lab the summer after my freshman year and I spent my first stipend checks on music.
I would not want to go back to PAIA though. That analog circuitry was notoriously difficult to tune and keep in tune and was extremely susceptible to hum noise. But, the principles were identical to what we have in modular now.
I loved having access to the physics machine shops. Physicists built most of their own equipment in those days.
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In the PAIA pic, it is hard to see, but the keyboard “panel” was made out of a piece of perforated phenolic circuit board. You can use almost anything.
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Could it be the cheap transistors and all that semiconductor magic? Cause I think maybe if you build the same circuit with modern stuff, it would be better… It’s more of a question though, haha. Maybe I should’ve end it with a question mark
Well, yes and no. Analog circuits were always temperature sensitive such that the synth would go out of tune as it warmed up and the room warmed up and the weather warmed up. Part of the high price for Moog was due to temperature compensation elements. Maybe higher quality transistors and ICs, but I do not know.
It was a great learning platform.
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The panel graphics on these are engraved and infilled but I believe they can also do proper printing now. I haven’t made any DIY modules for a number of years now but they were certainly not cheap and the cost is proportional to the number of holes and print items.The good thing is they provide you with the software to create the panel artwork.
I can recommend using kits from places like Thonk as they usually come with panels.That of course doesn’t work if you’re experimenting with other circuits though.
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