On Sunday, January 31, 2021 at 4:10:36 PM UTC-6, 2G wrote:
On Sunday, January 31, 2021 at 9:55:27 AM UTC-8, wrote:
On Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 11:22:48 PM UTC-6, 2G wrote:
On Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 5:31:52 PM UTC-8, jfitch wrote:
Waterjet will work fine, but will create blisters of delam local to the pierce location. What this means is you pierce in the middle of your 57mm hole and then spiral out to the contour. The problem is piercing the holes for the screws won't work (or risks damage) as the blisters will often be bigger than the hole. You can hand drill them later but they will be all over the place because they are hand drilled.

I cut mine on my CNC mill, took about 10 minutes (after all the design and setup). If you strike out elsewhere, I might be talked into it under the right conditions. The issue on a CNC mill is you have to figure out how to hold it, and where the CL is - at least on the panels I've seen they are not very symmetric (and won't match the drawing) so it's hard to guess.

What I did to fixture it is make a plywood plug the would sit up in the flange of the panel and hold it off the table. Then drilled holes in the middle of all the cutouts and screwed it to the plywood through those holes. Then ran the program to cut all the shapes and holes. Part way through you have a bunch of additional holes to screw down through.

This is the advantage of waterjet or laser - they are essentially no-force machining so fixturing is easy. On a CNC mill or router, you need to nail that sucker down.
On Saturday, January 30, 2021 at 4:14:36 PM UTC-8, Anonymous wrote:
Dave Nadler wrote:
On 1/30/2021 5:39 PM, Anonymous wrote:
In the past I’ve used ponoko to laser cut an aluminum template from my cad
model. It’s really a SVG file they need for closed path tracing. They’re
reasonably priced since you do all the hard work ahead of time.. They just
cut material and ship to you.

Once received just a matter of mounting to your panel and then cutting with
your favorite fine cutter.

Britton

Interesting. If you're going to go the template route, why wouldn't you
use a thicker material (acrylic?) to make using a router easier?

I believe I used what they offered at the time. They possibly have more
options now. But agreed in the thought. My panel came out nice so I’m
happy.

Aside: interesting that I show up as ‘anonymous’ while replying through
this NewsTap iPhone app. Will look into it. Other than that I like the
newsreader app.

Back to the real conversation now, whatever gets the job done and end user
is satisfied.

Britton
If you are an EAA member you can download a free version of Solidworks (if not, it is worth joining because SW is about $5k). You can create a 3D version of your panel. If you want to check interferences you can either create 3D models of the avionics or download these models from sites such as:
https://grabcad.com/library?software... tags=avionics
You can create an assembly using these models (you will create the model of your panel).
From this you can create output files that all CNC shops recognize.

Solidworks does have a steep learning curve, but it is worth it. There are numerous online training videos that help a lot. Once proficient at it you can create virtually any kind of part you can think of, either machined out of solid material or made by 3D rendering machines.

Tom
Another CAD package you can use that is FREE is ONSHAPE (onshape.com/en). It also has a bit of a learning curve (all capable CAD programs do) but for jobs of limited complexity, such as a console, you can use onshape free..

Rich L.
Rich,

I have never heard of Onshape, so I checked it out. Here is a comparison between it and SW:
https://www.scan2cad.com/cad/onshape...rks_vs_Onshape
The most important thing about Onshape is that the free version requires that all of your parts and designs be public (everything is stored in the cloud, not on your computer). If this is a problem for you you will have to subscribe at a rate of $1,500 per year for the basic version (similar to SW). The have an Enterprise version that they don't list pricing for (you have to request a quote). I can get SW for free with my EAA subscription ($40 per year) and everything is stored on my computer unless I share it:
https://www.eaa.org/eaa/eaa-membersh...Ahn PEALw_wcB
I did upload a number of Matt's parts successfully to Onshape, but haven't figured out how to upload an assembly yet.

In any case, mechanical design CAD software is a real game changer. Once you master the software you can have parts made cheaply with absolutely to machining experience or equipment.

Tom

Onshape and SolidWorks are very different in concept. I've used both and both can do very sophisticated work, and both have a significant learning curve. I agree with all your points, but if someone doesn't have access to Solidworks (and the EAA is a very good option) then Onshape is free to try. One plus for Onshape, they have very good tutorials to help getting started.

Rich L.