October 14th, 2009 | 
Author: My Design – Creating the Front plate.
Like a real lab supply I wanted those 4mm banana connectors and I just started with designing my front plate with the signals that are available from the supply.
Screendump PaintShopPro frontplate design
Above is a screenshot from PaintShopPro in which I designed my frontplate. Most time I spend with aligning all items such that the end results looks really straight. In the above drawing only the places for the screws are missing. To determine the place for the screws I had to look inside the power supply to find a place where no electronic parts where.
Laminating the frontplate
After printing it on normal paper, I laminated it to give it some strength and protection against dirt. I cut away the plastic and ended up with a nice frontplate. Only the frontplate did not have the strength to hold connectors so I needed some material behind it. I started with a piece of aluminium plate that I had lying around.
Aluminium backplate gone wrong
As you can see on the image above the Aluminium backplate went completely wrong. Without the right drilling tools it is not possible to align the holes perfectly straight. So I threw away 2 hours of work on the Aluminium plate and made one from 5mm thick wood in just half an hour. Wood is really much easier to work with.
Backplate made from wood
After cutting the holes in the laminated print I put in the connectors and the power-on switch. As you can see on the image above it inmediatelly starts to look good. All connectors I ordered with Conrad (electronic parts supplier, like radio shack) together with lab cables and clamps.
Fontplate almost finished
Note that I have also made the holes for the screws. They match with the holes I made in the housing of the ATX supply. When you drill holes in a metal housing, so need to make sure that no metal parts get into the electronics!!! So take out all electronics before drilling the holes. It’s a lot of work but if you don’t your power supply is not safe and might burn out on powerup! So be careful with metal parts.
