I wasted a LOT of printouts and clear covering material working through this. That – was a challenge in itself figuring out how to roll on the clear perfectly, no creases or air bubbles. I found out very quickly that the printed picture of the panel would smudge easily, so I needed to add a clear covering on top of it. I tried a number of different photo paper to find one that I liked. * So, I would cut the panel, verify that the hole sizes fit all of the switches and lights. I went through about a ½ dozen types of MDF trying to find one that would cut easily on the laser cutter and not have to run it at 100% power or make two passes on cutting it. * After days/hours/weeks of drawing/re-drawing the panel, prepare to make it. Multiple layers are used in each one – one layer is used for the cutting of the panel with the laser cutter, the other is for the actual print out. * Identify all of the switches/lights/knobs, etc. * Have a rough idea of what I want to make – reference picture, drawing on a napkin, etc. So, distilled down here is the process I used to make a panel A tremendous amount of time was spent just figuring out HOW to make them, let alone doing the artwork for it or wiring it. In the end, I worked out a process that worked for me. I went through a lot of wasted samples figuring out making the two dance together. In addition, using it with the laser cutter is another project in itself. So along with everything else, I spent days and days learning how to create what I’m showing in this instructable. Not intuitive, but powerful, and very tedious to use. I use Rhino Cad and Photo shop but CorelDraw is its own animal. So I had to fork over the cost of renting the software for a year (vs completely purchasing it) otherwise my laser cutter was going nowhere – same as my project. Fortunately, CorelDraw sells their software on a subscription basis. I had never used this program before, but I was kind of stuck. The cutter supported a software add-in that worked with CorelDraw. After toiling with it for a day or two I realized very quickly that the program wasn’t anywhere near what I needed. When I purchased the laser cutter, it came with some free software. I tried to make everything reference a particular science fiction movie that I liked when I was a kid. Of course, time constraints hit home and it ended up being one large flat board. I had to work with.Īfter a time I decided to just make the individual panels and when I had enough of them figure out how to show them. that I would abandon that idea and make each unique – given the restraints of the tools I had and the switches, lights, etc. What happened over time is that looking at hundreds of example panels (my Pinterest board got pretty big) I decided there was so many different looks/colors, etc. I also, originally wanted all the panels, fonts, colors to be consistent – like it was from the same ship/manufacture, same touch and feel. So I had a grandiose cockpit that I wanted to build, wrap around, every switch or dial doing something. It has Three Arduinos and one pi in total. The video screen came from eBay and all of the Arduino’s and Pi’s came from Amazon. Also lights will be in the same format and be for 12v,24v,120v,220v so read carefully.Īnother thing about AliExpress, Amazon and eBay, I know a single vendor will sell their product in all three places because I see the same thing on all three with the same delivery times. Also, know the different between SPDT, DPPT switches, momentary vs latched. A 12v light for example may be sold by dozens different vendors all with different prices. On AliExpress, you have to really do your homework. Since they were pretty inexpensive and given the time delay for AliExpress (weeks typically) I didn’t want to have to over pay for a single switch on Amazon that I could get in two days but would cost as much as a half dozen of the same thing from AliExpress. When I started doing this I didn’t know exactly where it would go so I over ordered a lot of the switches, dials, lights, push buttons, LEDs in larger quantities that I would probably use. I found all of the parts on eBay, Amazon and AliExpress.
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