1 knob in, 5 to go...

I got brave today and decided to drill some holes in my Blaupunkt. I'd been putting it off for weeks and was getting sick of the back case being off the TV with the innards exposed.

So, I pulled the chassis and daughter boards out and started scratching my head. How on earth was I going to going to get some 10mm holes accurately drilled into the front of this thing? Where to put them and how to measure them?

I decided the only way to proceed was to measure things up and then draw a mask. That way I could sticky tape the mask to the casing, line it up carefully, cross my fingers and then pull the trigger on the cordless drill.

Here's how it looked:

Mask taped down and midpoints marked with a Sharpie

First hole drilled

4 holes down. Not perfect... but acceptable

So far so good... but then time got away from me! The problem with soldering in the evening is that there's just not enough light. Without a flood of daylight it's just to hard too accurately place things and see exactly what you're doing. So, considering it's a Sunday, it looks like my room is going to be in crazy state until I next weekend (unless I magically find some free hours after work one night). Bummer. The good news is that the Phillips tube I transplanted in from the Loewe Contur I scored the other day is looking awesome. Just want to get this thing finished already!

Ugh! What a mess!

Tube balanced against a toddler's chair

Overheard view of the precarious mess

Chassis and case need to be exposed to hook the controls up

And... one knob in place! Works well. Really well. Just need those other five...

Width knob in place

The cool thing is that I now have three of these chassis. If this works out, I'll be able to perfect the process for the other two TVs. Phew!