Friday 13 March 2015

Super Sloth & Chaos - NonLinearCircuits - Build notes

A nice and easy build today.
The NLC Sloth/Chaos is a really cool module to have.
I have one in Serge format but it's equally useful for my Eurorack gear.
I can best describe this as a very slow LFO. Cycles can last between 15 secs
& 15 minutes. Andrew has two versions.: Slow or Super Slow. I'll probably
build both, but this page will be for the Super Slow Version.

Three-toed-sloth (Bradypus variegatus), Lake Gatun, Republic of Panama

Here is a link to Andrew's NLC website where you can purchase these Sloth PCBs.
His main website is here.
And his blog.
Muffs Thread.
The Build notes & BOM for the Sloth are here.
2nd muffs thread.

First some pics of the virgin panel & PCB:

.IC and Power headers first:

Resistors & Caps next.

The components for the Sloth & Super Sloth are different. 
For the Super-Sloth version, C3, C4 & C5 must be bipolar/non-polarized 10uF capacitors. 
For the standard Sloth these can be regular 1uF(not-electrolytic)(4.5mm spacing) caps.

The LED is also not your standard one. It's a 2 pin bipolar to show positive & negative voltages.

The two huge caps used are C1 & C2 - 1000uF electrolytic (polarized) / 35V
The 3 smaller caps are for C3,C4 & C5. They are 10uF/50V - NonPolarized.


LED next
The LED must be a two pin bipolar type to show positive and negative going voltage.
It's one colour when the voltage is +ve & another when in the -ve zone.


The final piece is to pick the LED resistor. It's marked RL on the PCB. Andrew suggests values in the range 330R to 10K

The 330R seemed too bright for my LED and 10k too dim.
Experimenting with a few different values of the LED resistor.
I finally went with a 1K resistor.

The LED is a 2 pin bipolar. It will change colour to show positive & negative voltages.

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I was really amazed how the sloth does go to sleep.
At times it is inactive or an hour and you can be forgiven for thinking its not working.
Then suddenly things happen.

So decided to build a standard Sloth today.
This uses 100uf caps for c1 & c2
 The LED resistor is 560 ohms.
 C3,C4 & C5 are  regular1uf non electrolytic.(You can prob try using surface mount here).
 C6 & C7 are surface mount.10uF (16V)

Works a treat :-)

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