Downsizing old devices – The Basics

A good friend of mine came to my home asking for help with his old stereo. He wanted to downsize it, as part of a home improvement project.

Before continuing, keep in mind that this guide is just an example intended to inspire you. It doesn’t describe how to downsize EVERY electrical appliance in your home, and obviously, the principle cannot be applied on all devices (specially old TV’s haha!)

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Just air

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Low-end stereos (like the one my friend brought) are basically a huge plastic box mostly filled with air: Removing the air will magically decrease the size. Middle-end stereos have a more complex and decent construction (they include huge transformers and heat sinks for example), and hence they are harder to modify.

In either case, strip the obsolete CD player, Tape Decks and other innecessary accessories: They are not required anymore, because your iPod will replace them.

At this point the volume reduction was great but not sufficient, so I decided to put the horizontal circuit board upright. I’ll show you that in a moment, but let’s see the electrical stuff first.

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Yeah, the electrical stuff!

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Relocating a circuit board will break the electrical connections. Luckily  these connections are very easy to extend

For example this function switch

First desolder it

I find the ribbon cable very good for the job. You can geit it for free on old computers, it’s used to connect the hard disks.

Stripping the plastic cover out of ribbon cables was a pain, until Ideveloped this very effective (and pollutant) way

My lighter ran out of gas at 3 AM

Despite the dramatic flame, the isulation will be warm to touch. Use your nails to pull it out

Ta dah!

The switch after soldering

And repeat the procedure as required…

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The hardware stuff

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This is a very project-specific problem, so I cannot provide you specific step-by-step.

In my case this is my FM dial, it was linked with a set of gears placed 90° apart…

…So I just glued both gears together, and it’s done.

To keep the circuit board in vertical posicion, I have recycled the original structure.

Cutting the pieces is very easy with a heated knife.

You can experiment with hot glue, and if the result is good, use superglue to place everything on its definitive position.

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Almost finished job

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As you can see, the only remaining steps are cutting the unnecesary base and making a new (smaller) box.I rely on my friend to do this part of the work because he has better equipment.

So I will upload the pictures of the final product soon!

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EDIT:

My friend never completed the box, so I did a cheap (and a bit exaggerated) Photoshop trick to give you an approximate idea of how it will look when finished.

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