[sdiy] Front Panel blues

[Matthew Smith]

Either I missed it, or I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned it: screen 
printing.

You could either screen print a dark colour onto natural aluminium, or a 
light colour onto anodised aluminium.

And there's always brass, of course, if you're going for a retro-look. 
Then you can photo-etch the material directly (use something like 
Electrolube spray-on photoresist, if you don't want to be laminating the 
stuff on) and apply paint, which is then removed from all but the etched 
markings.

I've investigated all sorts of techniques, as I'm also making up some 
special clock faces, and will probably go the screen printing route, 
only using photo-etching for texturing parts of the metal.


-- 
Matthew Smith

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