I finished building the Zynthian 5.1 kit yesterday, and got my first sound out. Great building experience! It was really enjoyable to follow the detailed description. Still, there are things that can be improved of course:
When attaching the RBPi5 to the main board the text says that the flat display cable should pass through the rectangular hole. This can be misleading, but the pictures clearly show that it doesn’t.
I got the hiccups when I reached chapter 4.3 about plugging the flat ribbon cable into the control board. The pictures show a white connection socket in the lower left corner. My control board doesn’t have this socket, but luckily it was never used in the instructions.
A slightly confusing part was chapter 5.2 when plugging the control flat cable into the main board. The picture shows the control part sitting 90 degrees on the side, with the cable sticking up. In reality the cable is pointing down, and has to be bent upwards to look like the picture. For a moment I thought I had turned the control part wrongly.
Last, the six screws on the sides were a really tight fit. Two holes on each side lined up perfectly, but the third did not align well. It was still possible to get those screws in as well after some struggling. A precision problem, or meant to be this way?
Anyway, thatnks for a great experience. Time to start playing!
This has been mentioned before. I think the issue is that some people are less familiar with self tapping screws, maybe expecting threaded slots and machine screws. Zynthian uses self tapping screws to fix the metalwork together which saves fabrication cost and is an established practice for metalwork construction. The first time you fit the screw, it cuts its own thread into the metal work, hence you must apply more pressure. On subsequent construction it should be require less force. Always be careful to avoid overtightening screws.
As @Lumm says, insert all screws to align metalwork before tightening down. If you were working on a safety critical device (not a zynthian!) then you would torque in a star pattern (opposing fastners) in an attempt to reduce warping the surface. I tend to do this for any construction, through habit.
Ok, I also practice tightening the screws at the end, alternating oposite screws etc. I might have missed it this time, and I thought it would be impossible to get the last screws in because the holes were only half overlapping. Self tapping screws explains why it was still possible. I thought the holes were threaded. Now I know
