Electronic Drums

Building the drum pads

Now that we've constructed the piezo sensors, we need something to attach them to that we can strike with drum sticks. I've seen many different designs, including some that use rubber as well as others that use a mesh created from fiberglass screen. I used gum rubber for mine. Some argue that the rubber drum pads don't have the feel of real drums, but since I wasn't going for a realistic feel it wasn't a big concern of mine. Besides, I think they felt just fine. I purchased some 1/4" gum rubber from McMaster Carr. If you are not familiar with this company, it is an industrial supply shop that carries all sorts of useful stuff for projects. Their prices are reasonable and service/delivery time is unreal. I live about 3.5 hours from one of their warehouses, and it's not uncommon to receive an order the next day using standard delivery. I cut the rubber into a circle using my bandsaw. I tried using a router with a template at first, but this was a terrible idea because the rubber tended to grip the router bit instead of being cut cleanly. I epoxied this rubber circle to a square piece of 1/4" plywood that was about 1.5" wider than the diameter of the circle. The extra width allows for some foam to be placed above and below the plywood to allow for movement and buffer the case from being affected by the vibrations of the drum pads. More on that in Step 4. The finished piece looks like the image below: The keyboard pads were constructed using the same concept - just different shapes. The piezo sensor constructed in Step 1 is now epoxied to the underside of the plywood. Home Step 1 - Building piezo sensors - the heart of the sensor - transforms vibrations from the drum strike into voltage which varies based on the intensity Step 2 - Building drums - my design uses gum rubber epoxied to thin plywood Step 3 - Building the case - holds the drums and electronics, also isolates the drums from each other - UNDER CONSTRUCTION Step 4 - 16F690 firmware description - UNDER CONSTRUCTION Step 5 - Circuit design - UNDER CONSTRUCTION Step 6 - Putting it all together - UNDER CONSTRUCTION