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I'll admit, I haven't read all of the thread yet, but a massive congratulations to anyone trying to lose weight and managing to lose some no matter how much you've lost.

I saw some posts about the vegan diet and I work with a few people that are vegan, and many that have tried it. Some of the people that tried it got quite ill on it as they weren't getting the right nutrients on it. I'm not saying it's a bad diet, but someone needs to do research on it to make sure they are eating enough of the right foods, which is the same for all diets IMO. For me personally, I couldn't do it, however, I have cut down on the amount of meat in my diet and try to have 2 vegetarian days a week.

I have found that exercise and eat what you want, when you want, but in moderation works well for me. Several years ago I had to have a knee operation and lose weight and build up my leg muscles. I'm 6'3" (192cm) and weighed nearly 120kg. I lost a lost of weight by eating more while reducing how much saturated fat and sugar I was eating, plus cycling. I now seem to hover around 95kg and want to lose some more, my problem is that I'm picking on food all day. If I go into the kitchen, I'll get something to nibble on from the fridge or the cupboard and that's my downfall. Would love to get closer to 85kg and this thread in giving me inspiration to do it!

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I ordered 2 Alpha Dog boards absolutely ages ago but never got round to building them up due to struggling to label the enclosures. I've got a few friends interested in VFE pedals, and with being able to do the labels now (when I've ironed out a few kinks), so I thought I'd order to more boards. Got another 3x Alpha Dog, 5x Distortion3 and 5x Merman.

I used the part guide from the build doc on the switching boards, but for some reason I've deleted all the resistors off of it apart from the 1K ones. Hoping I've got all the resistors in my parts boxes!

Should keep me busy for a while

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If the cause is how different powder coats react to the glue or decal, especially where the decal papers the melt the outline into the powder coat, I may have found a potential solution. Reading the instructions again, it says to dry it use the oven, hair dryer or microwave. That to me suggests that once it's fully dry from the hair dryer, the decal can then be removed. Then it says to harden the ink it can be placed in the oven. I'm going to be trying that as well as the hair dryer should get the powder hot enough to start melting. Having said that, the powder I use cures at 180'C, but for the decals the ovens are 100'C so I thought the powder should have been ok.

*EDIT* Just watched their YouTube video again, and they dry the decal using a hair dryer, remove the decal, then place it in the oven. I'm going to be trying that.

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Ah that's not good reading about your chrome box! Such a shame as that box would have looked amazing if it worked.

I haven't had time to do anymore testing yet, but I've got a few theories. My red boxes don't look as bad as your one, I just tried to catch the marks in the light as best as I could. I've just looked at some blue boxes that I did, and you can barely see where the decal was. Also, there are none of the water type marks on them. A lot of my powder came from a local powder coating company that was throwing out a lot of their old, out of date powder (although it was stored correctly so it's still good to use), the issue with this is there could be different types of powder that I'm using, so unfortunately I can't test the different types of powder theory. I'm going to paint up a few more scrap enclosures in the red powder and use your suggestion of the hair drier to see if that works on them. Thing is, the blue enclosures I used the same method on and they turned out as close to perfect as they could be.

After putting the decal onto the enclosure, I then just put them straight into the oven for 10 minutes, but I've had massively varying results. With the hair drier, did you take the label off when it was dry then put it in the oven, or leave the decal on when it was in oven?

I'm in the process of making a few drilling templates so I can get a bunch of enclosures drilled and then coated on my days off. I've just got my new powder coating gun, I just need to get some fittings for it then that's good to go!

Ah thanks for that. I assume it's safe to keep the current ones in and see how they go? One of the local companies I use, they have to be ordered in quantanties of 10 (only need 3 of each) and it's going to cost £6 in postage, unless I stick on some enclosures that I really don't need more of at the moment.

The 100N one I had to order some caps for that as I seemed to have missed them off of the parts list ordering, so at least I've got the correct ones there!

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I use the Madbean Eagle CAD libraries, but when I do SMD boards I need to create my own transistor parts and that. I use the data sheets for the pinouts but that's about all I know of datasheets.

Thanks again, fingers crossed the builds go well. I've ordered a few other VFE boards as well. My biggest concern is drilling the enclosures correctly, unfortunately being in the UK the pre-drilled enclosures that PPP do can't be justified because of the shipping costs. I've recently started printing a drilling template using OHP transparancy sheets with so rather good results so far. It just means started a drilling template from scratch and taking measurements from Beans template. I'll do a little tutorial on it soon as it seems a fairly accurate way of drilling enclosures.

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Cheers for the reply. I ended up using the pre-made parts list from Mouser for now. I plan on building a lot more of these projects so I'll go through the data sheets for the relays soon to see if they would work. My datasheet knowledge is limited to the front page when I need to know the pin outs when making SMD parts in Eagle!

I'm in the process of attaching all the wires to my Dreamtime builds and just ordered the last capacitor that I needed. However, I've noticed that C2 and C8 are supposed to be MLCC caps. I've used normal ceramic disc caps for them (I clearly didn't read the build doc properly!), will they be ok or should I get some MLCC caps ordered and replace them?

I've got 2 Alpha Dog boards sitting here for the last few months and I'm finally getting the parts ready to build them up (along with some others that I've just ordered). I think I've found the relay that I need from one of the local companies that I order from, but I'd just like someone to confirm that it's the right one. It's this one here https://www.rapidonline.com/panasonic-tq2-5-low-profile-dpco-1a-5v-coil-relay-60-4245

That pedal looks absolutely fantastic! Loving the eyes on it.

How did you find lining up the label? I had pre-drilled holes in the enclosure, and then drill markers on the decals that I used to line it up with.

I haven't had a chance to play around with them anymore yet, I'm hoping my next lot of days off work will give me the time to do it though. Just received my new powder coating gun so I plan on spraying up a load of enclosures plus a few spare ones to carry out more tests with.

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I'm going to try using your technique on them tomorrow. As I said above, your box looks fantastic!

Yeah I powder coated the enclosures myself. I'm fortunate that I can use my mum's garage or my dad's barn to do it in (and more importantly, I found out my dad has a space heater in there!). If it wasn't for that I wouldn't be able to do them as I don't have anywhere I can do it at mine.

I had a quick look at them earlier, the white ones don't seem to have any marks on them, the green ones just seem to have a tiny line where the edge of the decal was, the red ones are how they are in the pictures above. I'm going to try wiping them with vinegar tomorrow and see if that makes any difference.

I'm also wondering if it's something to do with the amount of glue that I used. It was one of the enclosures where I didn't have a paint brush to put the label on with and instead put it on with a little squeegee so was guessing the amount to use. I'm also thinking the blue enclosure didn't work properly because I just tipped glue out of the pot onto the area.

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Wow, that label looks absolutely fantastic! Did you leave the film on when it was in the oven? And did you have any of the paint issues like I've had on those red enclosures?

What circuit are you putting into this enclosure?

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I just got halfway through writing my message out saying the water tap I used is connected to a water filter as our water here is ridiculously hard, then I remembered I used warm water which is connected to a water softener when it enters the house. Even with the water filter, my coffee machine still clogged up on a regular basis, so I use the bottles water that we get at work for it and it's been fine since (Only saying that to show that even with a filter, the water is hard!). So that could be caused be the salt from the water softener. I'm glad you said about that as it wouldn't have even occurred to me to think that. I'll try some vinegar on it in the next couple of days.

However, the main issue seems to be where the decal has been peeled off affecting the paint (like it's started to melt). I'll try some experiments with the water though. Also, going to try drying one with a hair drier, peel the film off, and then put it in the oven.

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I was rubbing it with isopropyl alcohol. Their videos and instructions say to use alcohol, so it should have worked. I'm going to double check the bottle tomorrow to make sure that I was using the right stuff. Either that or I'll try the vodka as that's alcohol hahahaha.

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Ok, I spent the majority of the afternoon in the garage. I tried screen printing, had mixed results. Although I think it's fair to say that I really don't like 2 part catalysed inks! May put that idea on the back burner for now.

Onto the film decals.....

Acetone removes them straight away, although I remember the powder coat being more resistant to it, but unfortunately not this time. Trashed a back plate trying it. However, laying a decal on top of one already there can be done quite easily.

I did 5 enclosures in the oven earlier, they turned out great. Approximately 12 minutes in the oven for them, however, where the film was, you can see it (as per the other enclosures). I've got 2 flood lights attached to the rafters in the garage and I'm not sure if they amplify the issue. I'm going to try clear coating them to see if that covers the issue. My other idea is to dry it with a hair drier (as that shouldn't get hot enough to start melting the powder coat), then remove the film then put them in the oven to harden the toner.

Or maybe I'm just being overly pedantic and worrying over nothing.....

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