Knob for Bang & Olufsen MCP 5500 by ChicagoKeri

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Tired of your cracked, scuffed, distorted or just plain old BORING volume control knob on your Bang & Olufsen Master Control Panel 5500, 6000 or 7000?
Then this project is for you! A replacement Volume knob for your MCP 5500. This version is designed so that it prints reliably without supports when Face Down. This also allows a plain or textured front surface depending on which printing surface you choose.
The Knob seems to be happiest when printed from PETG. The sizing fits just perfectly snug on the original 16500 ball bearing. It will be necessary to affix a label with alternating black and white stripes around the perimeter for the optical sensor to read. The label can be printed out and glued on, or printed on a stick-on label. I created mine with a Dymo label printer, the pattern being composed of black 9mm wide by 8mm long rectangles spaced 8mm apart, with one overlapping. Altering the size and number of rectangles will alter the sensitivity of the volume knob, so you might print more but shorter rectangles for a more responsive action or fewer taller ones to give a slower and more "choppy" action.
By the way, the optical sensor itself tends to fail. It is not a commonly available part but can still be found if one searches enough.
Installation is tricky because of the fragility of most of the MCP.
When disassembling the MCP, one must remove the back, then the knob microswitch, then disconnect and completely disengage the fairly long wire set going into the back of the knob for the "Status" switch.
Removing the central screw and the metal 3-legged spyder thing allows the knob / "status" switch to be gently pressed out from behind, carefully feeding out the long wire. With the knob out, the small optical sensor can be seen .