How do you silk screen your panels!

[No Longer Active]

Can someone be kind enough to explain how the many builders that make their own panels, silk screen white lettering and graphics onto panels?

All most every panel for every aircraft needs text, logos, lines etc, and i was wondering how its done (especially for home builders)

Abit of a mystery to me?

Can anyone help?

Cheers!

Alex

[BHawthorne]

The ones I've seen are laser etched, not silkscreened. There are laser etching/cutting machines for around $1000 on ebay. I'm sure someone in the community has one.

[tomenglish2000]

Im CNC cutting and engraving mine. Well not yet, havent finished building the router, but soon!

I will be using 6mm white acrylic.
I cut it to size and shape inluding recessed areas for the leds round the back, then paint black (to stop any light leakage front and back), paint brown (767) and then engrave legends onto it to reveal the white acrylic.
I then engrave copper laminated boards to make circuit boards for components, fix the components to it and fix it behind the acrylic.
Simple and in the long run cost effective. The money I spent on the machine and materials will be less than paying another company for the parts (especially 767 parts which no one is making to a satisfactory standard).

Tom

[salautom]

Engraving (with a cnc machine) is one of the options to build/finish your panels.

You can have a look to my own build CDU (you can find it on my site at 'Pictures')

indeed an other option (for building buttons/korries) is printing on self adhesive transparancies (and stick a couple of the together)
(see at 'donwloads' on my site for building korries)

succes building.

[fweinrebe]

You can use white Acrylic (Perspex) and spray paint it with the colour needed. Then CNC the letters and cut the holes.

I used 1200 grain sandpaper to make the Perspex a little bit rougher so the paint can stick better on it.

I read that silk screening is better to do when you are making a lot of similar parts.

[Jake 747 400]

Thats what Ive been trying to find out too, I cant find any korry switches for the life of me. So I decided to make my own.
I have the actual button caps made, and i have the legends on my pc, but i dont know how to put them onto the caps. The caps are clear acrilyc.
Ive heard you can print it on to a thin lexan sheet, but Im not sure.
I just have no idea how to put the legends on.
Jake

[RadarBob]

For Korries,you can print the legends onto OHP transparency sheets, then cut them out and put them on top of the clear acrylic tops.

However, it is difficult to get the thickness of ink onto the transparency, so you can get round that by putting two copies on top of each other as suggested above, but getting the alignment right is a bit fiddly.

May be better to sandwich them between layers of acrylic with thin layer on top as I have tried glueing them on, but the glue can make the ink run.

Wickes do some quite thin clear acrylic for glazing, that might do for the top layer.

I read somewhere that tracing paper is good for PCB transparencies because it is cheap and has better toner adhesion than transparency, so it may be an idea to try colour laser onto that.

Cheers,

Rob

[Efe Cem Elci]

For Korries,you can print the legends onto OHP transparency sheets, then cut them out and put them on top of the clear acrylic tops.

However, it is difficult to get the thickness of ink onto the transparency, so you can get round that by putting two copies on top of each other as suggested above, but getting the alignment right is a bit fiddly.

May be better to sandwich them between layers of acrylic with thin layer on top as I have tried glueing them on, but the glue can make the ink run.

Wickes do some quite thin clear acrylic for glazing, that might do for the top layer.

I read somewhere that tracing paper is good for PCB transparencies because it is cheap and has better toner adhesion than transparency, so it may be an idea to try colour laser onto that.

Cheers,

Rob

As Rob said, you'll get much better results using a laser printer on tracing paper (such as used by architects) as opposed to transparencies. Might not even need double layers, especially since its hard to line these up perfectly and you're left with limited possibilities in regards to gluing them together.

[Jake 747 400]

Thankyou.
Im going to try that tomorrow.
We have a laser printer at school, plenty of tracing paper.
Just trial and error, see what happens.
Thanks again.
Jake

[Rodney]

Jake you might also have a look at an Avery product that is made in full sheet clear or white with one side sticky. Works great in ink jet printers. Avery product numbers are; 18665 clear, and 5265 for white.

[RobiD]

I built a small cnc machine to make my own panels and korries.

I use 3mm white acrylic to start, sand well, then paint with 4 or 5 coats of the colour of choice (mines black).

For switch, led, rotary mounting, I have a 5mm mounting plate at the back. I then design the panel including text and lines in Coreldraw for the front and back pieces in one go, then separate them into front and back (this is so the cuts are exactly the same on front and back pieces, then export into plt format, import into RAMSGold to generate the gcode.

I then start with engraving the text and lines using a finely ground (to a point) 1mm drill bit in order to just cut through the paint and reveal the white acrylic underneath (this is a great method as you can now also backlight the panels).

Once the engraving is done, I then cut out the display/switch/rotary holes and finally cut out the outside of the panel.

Then I mount the 5mm clear acrylic, cut all the inside holes first then make the outside cut. They should then fit together perfectly.

Providing you have made the cnc machine reasonably acurate (in other words, a circle is a circle and not and oval), the text should look good.

I have my whole cockpit done this way and when I'm locked inside it (figurativly speaking) and it's dark other than the panels all lit up.... all I can say is... it was worth the time spent building the cnc machine.

The Korries I cut out of 6mm perspex as 9 pieces and then glue them all together.

The labels: I use 1mm clear acrylic sheet, paint it black on one side (3 or 4 coats) then design the labels in coreldraw (an important point here is to use a single line font) and before exporting, reverse the text so it is backward. Export to plt, import to RamsGold, produce the g-code and do the engraving.

What you get is labels with the shiny clear side facing you with the black on the back and the engraving on the back. Looks very professional.

Hope my little bit helps too.

David

[sbecker777]

I do a similar thing for my 777 Korry buttons. I have a pdf guide showing how I did it. My website is: http://home.roadrunner.com/~mbecker/Overview/Entries/2008/12/5_Switch_notes.html

Steve

[kukmasta]

Hi Steve, can you tell me about your DIY CNC machine.
Regards,
Chris