GVP A530 Restoration (Version 2)

[WonkeyDonkey]

Ok so a small update here, finally !

I wouldnt have taken this long except for a problem with a company I have dealt with (Until now that is).

The baseplate on this has been off to a 'professional' company to be worked on. The original idea was for it to be chemically cleaned and then chrome plated which would give it a real professional look.

In this case it turned out that wasnt possible. Throughout the life of GVP they supplied these base plates made of several different materials. Some were steel, some were aluminium and some were an aluminium alloy of some kind.

It turns out in this case that the baseplate is made of aluminium; what that means is that it can not be chrome plated as the chrome just wont stick to the aluminium.

Having spoken to the guy responsible several times, we settled with going for a clean and buff. This has gone well to a degree; but the issue with this kind of finish is that the surface is very vulnerable to scratches and smudging as it is not very hardy. He told me on the phone that the process had gone well and that it looked almost as good as chrome plating.

On to the pics then; this first one shows the bottom of the baseplate with its nice shiny finish, not a bad result overall :



When I turned it over and looked inside I was very disappointed though :



He had left it covered in some kind of residue, presumably from the polishing material they use, and had made no effort on it whatsoever. You can see the patch where i cleaned a bit of it to show the difference.

Next up I set about cleaning the inside as best I could by first of all getting rid of that residue :



And finally giving it a polish by hand with some wadding polish (Silvo) :



I reckon thats about as clean as it will go. The guy who did the polishing should have done the inside the same as the outside but didnt; it was also with that company for several months. I reckon the work done on this took no more than an hour or so, hence I will not be using that company ever again.

Still, the overall result is good enough and its enough to proceed.

 

[WonkeyDonkey]

Ok, so on with the next bit.

Apologies for the quality of the pics here, they are taken with an iPhone4 and due to the colours involved, dont focus so well.

The next step for this is the insulation layer. It was originally placed between the main pcb and the metal backplate. Although the pcb is screwed down against raised screw points on the backplate it still comes close to actually touching the backplate in parts where it shouldnt. There is also a small degree of flex in the pcb itself.

All we are doing here is insulating it to prevent any shorts etc.

Initially I got some A500 plastic insulation sheets and tried to cut them down but the screw holes were in the wrong place and they were not quite big enough to fill the space properly.

After trying a few other pieces of plastic sheeting which didnt work out so well, I decided to make my own.

The way I have chosen to do this is by using some plain old A4 sheets of paper and some plastic pockets of the type you can put through an encapsulator machine. I chose black paper in the end but you could use any colour or even just use the pockets on their own without any paper sandwiched in between.

I then cut out a template using plain white paper so I had something to mark against when cutting out the final shape.

First up then, the template I made from white paper :



And then the finished sheets after they had been encapsulated. I used 250 micron pockets which give us just the right thickness and makes it stiff enough that it doesnt bend and will stay in place properly :



I then cut the new layer out using the template and trimmed a little extra by the side opening :



Placing it next to our baseplate we now have a nice new insulating layer which completely covers the inside of the baseplate :



And then just drop it in :



Nice and simple