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Thursday 11 February 2010

Some CAD work on the avionics panel

Just a quick CAD drawing that I did today (it was very quiet in work!). I only have a Qcad trial in work so it kept closing every 10 minutes, but I managed to get most of the switch holes in place This is the second panel that houses all the toggle and pushbutton switches that sits alongside the primary 6 panel. It will be painted in black with white lettering. I've been swapping around different switch configurtions and positions to come up with the most suitable design. I am hoping to use these two panels as a testbed for my Cessna Glasss Cockpit project to see how the laser cutting company handles my CAD files and materials. I may be able to go for some sort of plastic panels rather than aluminium, maybe out of polycarbonate to have backlighting on the stencilled letters. It would certainly save weight. My old project was very heavy with just the sheet metal alone. The laser company said that they could do backlighting if I leave the painting and finishing up to them. Even though I already have the left side panel cut out of 4mm aluminium and painted, I may get another one done from these CAD drawings. The painters (a car re-spray company in Bridgend) only painted and baked one side, so it's beginning to chip off at the top. That is NOT good! It was a bit of a rush job to be honest. I still haven't opened my Saitek radio unit yet, as it's a birthday present...damn! I got the good wife to do a rough measure of the outline so I could plumb the numbers into the CAD software to get an outline of the unit. I am hoping to get some photos done of the 3d render mockups so i can take them to Lasers'R'Us (that's their real name!) and start the ball rolling and get some costing done.

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