Panel Graphics

This blog covers the creation of the panel graphics to be printed and installed in the aircraft.

Overview
Over the years many methods have been tried from early Dynamo labels to Letraset all had their advantages and disadvantages. With the advent of high-resolution colour printers, a new world is here and all you need are some files, this leads to the question of how. 

HOW - a dirty three-letter word. This method works and is within my skill set and time but may not be for the person to building the next grand champion, in this builder case just building will suffice.

There are a number of products around from Corel Draw to Inkscape that can produce vector-based graphics but take time to master. I have mastered the use of Auto-Cad so it seems a natural place to design and layout all those panels for cutting and the labels.

Method
This will be outlined in a series of screen captures and notes below.

The two packages used here are:

Draft Sight - [ACAD clone]
PC Paint - [Shareware, make a donation]

STEP 1

Drawn in Autocad within a know border size of 200 x 125 mm
This is printed as a PNG file using a window to select the print area.
The highest possible resolution of 1600  x 1200 pixels was used
Font - Arial Black, gave the cleanest result

STEP 2

Using PC Paint crop to the known border of 200 x 125 mm, this is important to be 
able to set final graphic resolution and size

 STEP 3

After trimming to the 200 x 125 border the colours are inverted using PC Paint

The inverting changes the graphic into a black and white image ready for formating.

Graphic colours are installed using the paint bucket

STEP 4

The graphic now needs to be resized
A - Change the resolution to 300 pixels per cm sq or to suit printer specification
B - Resize width and height to original 20 x 12.5 cm
C - Save the file

Comment
For the sharped eyed there is an error in all but the last graphic and by the time it was installed it all changed but that's the advantage of being able to produce graphics on the fly.

If you have a custom colour create a separate layer then import a photo swatch onto that layer. Finally, use the colour picker in the program to capture the RGB and then colour the panel.

At this point, the builder is looking at having the graphic printed using supumulation printing onto 0.020'' white-faced aluminium plate and then backed by 0.030'' 2024-T3 aluminium for stiffness but laser printing onto white self-adhesive label paper should work also.

If this does work I will add additional notes to the blog and check Facebook - Gary Spencer Salt for any notes.