Panels & badges

I wanted a panel for an electronic project I'd built, in the past I used letterset, rub on dry letters, even when protected by a coat of lacquer, they either don't look right or soon flake away, they sure do look odd when the letterings a 'midgets whisker' out surprising how the eye soon picks that out.

Thought I'd try an inkjet printer and coloured card, after printing, I trimmed the card to suit, in my case I wanted a cut out slot for the LCD display... then I laminated it and trimmed again, I left the lamination in place over the cut out slot... looks brill, to me anyway!!!

I did use a PCB cad program for this but any program will do, easier if there's a measuring tool that can measure millimetres.

I had no luck sticking the panel with super glue mind you, didn't roughen the aluminium up... laying as much double sided sticky tape as you can to cover the area, this is the type that comes with a white backing tape and being thinner than normal Selloptape stuff.... and rather sticky to add, this worked a treat.

I do have a lable maker machine but the letterings and width are usually too clumsy.

I thought I'd give it a mention incase anyone wanted a badge or panel!

Dave

Edited By Sparks on 10/04/2012 10:15:50

Edited By Sparks on 10/04/2012 10:16:31

Hi Dave,

You might find this front panel design software useful. It has also occured to me that the toner transfer method of making PCB's could be used to make front panels.

Les.

Press and Peel.... I use it for etching copper, but as you hinted it can be used for screen printing such as panels etc.

For PCBs I use Labcentres Proteus CAD, the link you gave looks very interesting, I'll give it a try sometime, I've bookedmarked it for now, thanks.

Dave

Computer drawing or CAD program for the artwork, print out and laminate (cheapy machine from Lidl) does the deed for me. Gluing is hit'n miss. Itysy bitsy chrome screws backed up by the nuts for switches, knobs and whatever seems to work fine in my hands but nothing I've done has huge areas of exposed plain panel.

Have also had good results with printing onto sticky backed paper and spraying with several layers of PCB lacquer for protection after sticking to the panel. Fine for interior use, not sure that I'd trust it in a workshop environment tho'. PCB lacquer is safe over laser printing, some of the other varieties aren't. Never tried with ink-jet print. Finding the split lines so the backing can be got off exposing the stickum can be "frustrating", main reason I abandoned the technique.

Clive

Been doing this for years on industrail ink machines, easy after a few months to peel off and stick on new lables, nothing lasts on those machines.

Suggested it to Tony Jeffree and the early Division Masters has this same overlay, later ones were commercially done.

Also did a Shumatech DRO overlay and printed this onto OHP film in full colur them laminated it. The reason for this was I wanted the DRO window to be red to stop the flicker of the digits in the background.

Someone on the Shumatech forum found out if you filter the window with red toffee wrappers or similar it made the numbers clearer.

John S.