The TNH Amp, 2.0 - Chassis

...maybe it was just the school year, and the home renovation, and spring/summer yard/garden work - but we FINALLY got back to working on the TNH amp. My goal is to finish it before August 1 - because that will be 1 year!

Today we began by drilling the chassis. I like to use a standard Hammond 2x8x16 aluminum chassis. The aluminum drills well and takes paint (and Bondo) well. We counted that this simple piece of metal will have 51 holes in it! That's a lot of drilling. Of course, every hole needs to be double checked with the parts to see that they are the right diameter. All of the holes are circular, drilled, except for the mains power entry. That has to be an odd shape to accept the IEC power connector (that's the style that you find on the back of some appliances like computers). I like IEC connectors, but it is a pain to use nibblers to nip the metal out little by little.



Here is the chassis with every hole punched in it. The two big ones on the top are for the preamp and output tube mounts. I have to use a unibit (stepper) because they are so huge (the largest one is a full inch). I've heard of some people doing this with hand-drills and spade bits and it's incredible that they have success. Nothing makes amp building nicer than the $99 drill press that we use.

Tyler wanted to move the controls around so that there is a reasonable gap between the input jack and the first knob (gain). That is where some artwork, or lettering, etc., will go. That will be shown next, after it is painted. (It's in the basement with a primer coat now - no need to take a picture of that, though.)

We used dish soap to get it cleaned up, and put some Bondo (car repair filler) in some of the corners to make the chassis look more consistent. When it is painted up, it will look nice.

I'm getting excited about lettering this amp, it should be fun.

--gh