New Instrument Panel Overlay - Part Deux
Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 1:26 am
Ok ... after a year of starts and stops, I think we finally have this one in the bag. I've been wanting to create a new instrument panel overlay for quite some time. The existing overlay in 62C is aluminum, but was created by a past owner or mechanic, many years ago, after - and before - flight instruments underwent many changes.
Over the past four years that we've owned 62C we incrementally took the panel from this:
to this:
... but up to this point I haven't successfully cracked the nut, so to speak, on how to create new new overlay and replace the old one. I've toyed several times - three to be exact - with carbon fiber, and the intent to create the plug for the mold, and the mold for the final product, and each and every time I've learned aplenty. I've been moderately successfully but abandoned the process at some point prior to success due to time or weather or a bunch of other cheap excuses.
That was, until my wife called me from work two weeks ago and mentioned that a co-worker had access to a thermal vacuform machine. And that, my friends, started the latest run at the thing.
Here is the step-by-step I used to produce a new instrument panel overlay.
(more to come...)
Over the past four years that we've owned 62C we incrementally took the panel from this:
to this:
... but up to this point I haven't successfully cracked the nut, so to speak, on how to create new new overlay and replace the old one. I've toyed several times - three to be exact - with carbon fiber, and the intent to create the plug for the mold, and the mold for the final product, and each and every time I've learned aplenty. I've been moderately successfully but abandoned the process at some point prior to success due to time or weather or a bunch of other cheap excuses.
That was, until my wife called me from work two weeks ago and mentioned that a co-worker had access to a thermal vacuform machine. And that, my friends, started the latest run at the thing.
Here is the step-by-step I used to produce a new instrument panel overlay.
(more to come...)