[sdiy] Designing front panels for synths

[Jean-Pierre Desrochers]

For many years I struggled to get some 'professional looking' front panels
for my DOTCOM synth modules.

I started to print my finished layouts on self-adhesive vinyles that were
finally laminated.

That did the job quite well.

Now I found a better and stronger way to do my front panels..

I create GERBER files of my layouts that I send to my PCB maker.

These layouts are put on 5mils flexible PCB fiberglass with Black mat mask
background

and white silkscreen letters and drawings.

Just like standard PCB but without copper and any holes.

These thin fiberglasses are then spray glueded on my 1/16" thick DOTCOM
aluminum plates.

All I have to do is then punch all the needed holes draft in the layout.

Have a look at my last module front panel:

 



 

The layout software I used is FrontDesigner 3.0
<https://www.electronic-software-shop.com/lng/en/electronic-software/frontde
signer-30.html> 

 

It is cheap and very precise ! One of its most usefull tool is the
potentiometer layout indexing. The above Frequency (oct) has been done using
it.
It can be used in mm or inches.

 

The following is my last layout which is about to be made again from a thin
5mils PCB.

A Moog 960 sequencer clone layout:



 

 

On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 12:41 PM Gordonjcp <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> wrote:

No, no, not whether you should use Inkscape or Excel or some CAD package,
actually designing them so they look good.

There's got to be some overlap on this list with people skilled in the
visual arts.  How do you lay out the controls, connectors etc. on a panel so
they look good, and don't look like the nightmarish "designed by engineer"
crap that a lot of stuff seems to be?

I'm guessing there's some simple but non-obvious principles at work that
could be explained if you could get past all the forum discussion of whether
toner transfer is better than photoresist or Eagle is better than
Illustrator or whatever.

-- 
Gordonjcp
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