Me and Laser-printed panels

[Ronnie.Johannesson at mta.uas.se]

Hi, I(Um new at this list so let me introduce myself!
My name is Ronnie, 28 years old and computer engineer at a university hospital 
in Uppsala, Sweden. I(Uve been into electronic instrument design and building 
since the early 80s.

Over to my experience of making good looking panels. When I built my Formant 
(yes, I(Um a happy owner of a large version of this beauty) I printed the panels 
at common printerpaper and laminated them in one of those lamination machines I 
found at my job. Black with white lettering, high glossy. 
I(Uve also tried laminating at home with a hot flat-iron and have got some pretty
good result. Then I cut the holes with a 1/4" hole punch and use 3M double sided
tape to make a frame around the panel, and woosh there I got a very nice 
frontpanel. The tape together with pots and jacks holds the laminate inplace and
6 years later it(Us still in place.

Ok, not everybody has a laminating machine at home and the sheets are sort of 
expensive so at my later projects I have used Ricks method with mirror printed 
OH transparencies. But I still use the same 3M double sided tape and it looks 
fine.

Ronnie Johannesson
ronnie.johannesson at mta.uas.se


______________________________Svarsavskiljare __________________________________
Ärende: Re: Laser-printed panels and other topics
Författare:  rick at sara.nl på Internet-NetC
Datum:    1996-10-22 12:00




I made front panels for the Formant by designing them on a Macintosh, 
printing them with a laserprinter on overhead sheet transparencies, 
with the image "flipped" (mirrored). Then I glue the result with clear 
epoxy onto aluminium (lightly sanded, do this with water, alu dust is 
not good for your health (wet the alu, not yourself (with water))). 
Print the image mirrored, so the toner will be on the epoxy-glue/alu 
side.

The glue will wet the toner, and result in a beautiful deep dark 
black.

There are drawbacks of course:

1.
xerox overhead transparencies cannot be glued very well, corners are 
susceptible to cracking loose from the glue once dry. So you have to be 
careful with the panel when not mounted. You can reduce this risk by 
cutting the edges with a sharp knife under an angle of 45 degs.

2.
It's a pain to get all the little airbubbles out of the glue with the 
transparency on it. It'll cost you a lot of careful rubbing to get the 
bubbles out. I use transparent lettering on a black background, so only 
bubbles under the lettering are really visible.

3.
Be sure to make the holes in the transparency before glueing, and be 
careful mounting pots and switches etc.

Rick Jansen
__
rick at sara.nl   http://www.sara.nl/Rick.Jansen 
_____________________________________________ 
S&H's a module and s&h's looking good