Cockpit update

[richard hutchinson]

Hiya all

I am in the throes of making my fascia for my cockpit. As I am on limited budget, I decided to use grey 1.5mm PVC plastic. Easy to cut, drill and best of all about £3.00 a 500 x 1000mm sheet! A good sharp Stanley knife, a set of hole saws and away you go. To make the template I used clear sandwhich bags on a roll. Pulled off a few bags and when the screens are on, they will stick with static so well, you can easily mark out centres of gauges and edges etc.

After that, I transferred this info to a cardboard template. I drilled both sides clamped together. As the pilot and 1st officer are duplicated and I am using fsxpand, it was important to get the panels the same exactly. Cut out the squares for the ND and PFD. Finished article mounted using double-sided sticky pads. Best of all, the plastic is Boeing Grey (well, near as dammit).

Available from www.plasticonline.co.uk

Hope this helps guys like me on a budget.
full cockpit.jpg

[richard hutchinson]

Further to my last post, the details below for this company might prove handy for those who need services of CNC routing etc. This is what they do -

Welcome to plasticonline.co.uk - plastic stockists and fabricators

Retail Engineering Design Ltd (Plastic Online) not only has a substantial range of plastics materials, but also provides a variety of services for it's clients around the UK and Europe.

* Plastic Fabrication
* Thermoforming
* CNC Router Work
* Retail Sales
* Machine Guards



* Signs & Acrylic Letters
* Menu & Brochure Holders
* Point of Sale Displays
* Display Units (custom made)
* Prototypes



* Cut To Size & Full Sheet Sales
* Acrylic (Perspex®, Plexiglas®)
* Acrylic Tube & Rod
* Polycarbonate, PETG
* PVC Foam, Polyethene

[No Longer Active]

I enquired to plasticonline (as I found them on ebay) and they declined to cut a panel for me using a CAD drawing and said that I will need to find someone who specialises in laser cutting to do the job!

From my experience, not too helpful, but they are good for cutting a custom sized square piece of plastic!

[richard hutchinson]

Hiya

That is strange as they do offer CNC routing as one of their main services.

Oh well.

Richard

[No Longer Active]

My guess is that they are very selective / fussy about the work they carry out!

All I wanted was a GA clock fascia cut from CAD, but they wasn't interested!

As said...Oh well....their loss!

[mounty]

Hi There,

Really like your approach! Do you have any other pics - construction etc?

Thanks

Rob

[Ronson2k9]

You could use a dremel mototool or other such cutter with a circle attachment to cut circular holes in nearly anything clean and efficient. I'm thinking of getting one for doing the panel and the plexy 'Glass' inserts for the gauges. I have an older Craftsman Mototool but I'm finding hard to find parts for so a new tool is in order.

Just thinking about that process for a moment .. I'm going to have to place a piece of wood smaller then the circle I'm cutting below the panel to hold the cutter attachment in place to make sure the hole is clean and clamp off the panel so it can't move during the cutting process. I'm thinking masonite or plexiglass for the panel then painted and so on. I have a bit of both lying about so a bit of experimenting is in order. Masonite is cheaper and would be easier to paint/glue but plexi could leave a cleaner cut.. Sheet metal isn't out of the running yet but again when attaching stuff to the back of that. I would really need to make a frame for that to sit on and so on.

Decisions Decisions.