Panel cutting day!!

[tmbg]

I talked with my partner (who's far more expert than I), and he says the plasma cutter will do a nicer job than the water jet will. The water jet will do THICK material, my plasma machine will only do up to 1.5".

[aparchment]

So guys:

What is the best way to lay out the panel and get a dxf file to take to a machine shop? Epanelbuilder?

Antony

[briand]

Someone posted a pic of their panel cut with a plasma and it looked bad. Don't remember who though.

[briand]

http://www.rv8.ch/index.php?topic=instruments


He called it laser, don't know if thats the same as plasma.

[rob]

So guys:

What is the best way to lay out the panel and get a dxf file to take to a machine shop? Epanelbuilder?

Antony

Antony,

The "best" way to do it is to use a CAD program...notice I said best, not easiest. The CAD program that I have is a couple versions old, and it is freaking tough to use. What one would think would be an easy task takes quite some time to do. I used ePanelBuilder a bit when I was playing around with panel designs, but I am not sure it is possible to get the level of precision available in CAD. Is that a big deal??? Who knows....

[aparchment]

Are you sure it was a "laser?"

[tmbg]

hahahaha


no, plasma and laser aren't the same. I'm really surprised that a laser cut looked THAT bad though!


Anyway, like I said, once I get the machine in I'll play with it and see what sort of results I get. Hopefully they'll be acceptable!

[aparchment]

Rob:

When working with the CAD program did you use instrument dimensions from the manufacturers' web sites or did you get them somewhere else?

Antony

[rob]

Antony,

For my Garmin stack, I started with the dimensions from Garmin, but I waited until I had all of the avionics to double check. If I recall, I did have to do some minor height adjustments compared to the Garmin dimensions.

For my AF-3400EE, I used the dimensions that Rob Hickman has on his website. I think his is in PDF, but it was pretty easy to draw this instrument out.

For the others (airspeed, ADI Pilot II, and altimeter), I recieved some files from other builders that had done the work before me. They all worked out just fine! I think I did have to make the ADI pilot II cutout myself, but it wasn't too tough.

When we did Chad's panel, I asked him to email his manufacturers for drawings of their products. He just had to go with mis-shaped stuff! They were really good about providing DXF files to him. The only drawback we had doing this was one of his instruments (the Enigma, I think) came in a metric format, and all of our other stuff (including the panel from Van's) is in imperial/standard. We finally figured out a way to scale the metric drawing appropriately so that we could paste it onto the panel. That was the only real drawback.

Let me know if you are interested in messing around with this stuff. I would be happy to send you those sample instrument shapes. I think I have 3 1/8" and 2 1/4" shapes, if needed.

[aparchment]

Rob:

It would be great if you have sample files that I could review.

I will PM you my email address. I would post it, but spammers are nasty beasts.

Antony