New acrylic panel overlay

How to keep the Cessna 170 flying and airworthy.

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Aeroplane
Posts: 67
Joined: Sun Dec 22, 2013 8:52 pm

New acrylic panel overlay

Post by Aeroplane »

The overlay was made with a Camaster Stinger CNC router, the program used is Vectric Aspire. The back is painted first. I wanted a two tone red for my panel so I went with a color that hopefully ends up being a half shade darker than the sheet metal overlays. The text and grid are then reversed and engraved on the back side which is then painted. I used a gold metallic because it contrasts with the red nicely. The overlay is then placed in a 15* holding fixture made just to cut the bevel. (the first bevel cut was made on the table saw but that ended up not being quite accurate enough and took way too long to polish out) After the bevel is cut it is then polished starting with 320 grit sandpaper, getting progressively finer until you end up with 1500 grit. The acrylic is then buffed using a buffing wheel and diamond cut compound. I played with this every day for probably ten days, made six other overlays and many smaller test pieces before coming up with something worthy of the 170. *** The overlay can be highly personalized, I deleted the parking brake on mine and moved the cabin heat over one station to the left. I never intended it to look original although they could with a bit more effort. The text can be whatever you like and placed anywhere on the overlay. Obviously the colors can be anything you want. ***

Moderator's note: This can be made as an Owner Produced Part. This post was edited to comply with forum rules, and mirrored from The TradeMart.
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Last edited by Aeroplane on Wed Nov 01, 2017 12:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Louie Hanna ‘49 A model
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