Instrument Panel – Perfecting the Art!

Progress has really slowed on the build of my home-built flight deck.   Partly because work has been so busy and partly because I’m at the stage where I’m treading new ground and so doing a lot of thinking before I act. 

As you’ve seen in my earlier posts, I’m working on the overhead panel at the moment and my aim is to make all the switches and dial work as they should….or at least as closely as I can.  Because I’m trying to keep the cost of the whole project down to the minimum I’ve accepted that I’m not building an exact replica, but everything will be in its right position at least.

I’ve already written a couple of posts about the instrument panels, but as I’ve worked and tested so I’ve learnt!

First, cutting Perspex.  If you’ve tried working with Perspex before you know it can shatter very easily if you work with it too aggressively. The answer is, take it slow and take it gently.  By this I mean when cutting on something like a table saw the n ensure the blade is set nice and low – only marginally above the thickness of the plastic.  Likewise, if you’re drilling, set the speed to high and, if you’re cutting a large hole, start by drilling a small hole first and then work up to the large one. 

I've refined my process for making the various panels that go into making up the overhead so; secondly, I've used a table saw to accurately cut the Perspex to the right size and shape.  In this image you can see the instrument panel and the two matching pieces of Perspex (still with its protective paper on).

After that I then taped the two pieces of Perspex together so that they matched up exactly.  The reason for using two pieces is that the printed display will end up being placed between the two pieces.

Once the Perspex is taped together I glued a copy of the display the protective paper of the top copy.  This copy is purely used as the guide to cutting out all the holes for the switches and dials.

I then drilled pilot hole before using a Dremel Moto scroll saw to cut out the holes for the switches.  You may notice I'm not drilling the small corner holes - I've found that this wasn't necessary and this method is making the final result so much neater than my early attempts.

Finally, in this picture from left to right, you can see the three stages:

• drilling the pilot holes
• cutting the holes out with the scroll saw
• fitting the switches.

In case you're wondering, I made the displays using Microsoft Publisher