Cutting & engraving EFIS panels - A Boeing 737-800 Homecockpit #30

hello and welcome back to my keys fly Tech today I will show you how you can cut and engrave your own EFA's panel [Music] for the first engravings I've ordered some test pieces of Plexiglas it's a wide three millimeter thick acrylic glass where 30% of the light comes through I've seen some builds that have a clear three millimeter acrylic glass behind this one so I will end up with a thickness of six millimeters by the way the real bowing panels have a thickness of five point four millimeters but before we start to paint this we will have to get rid of these stickers here [Music] you can make any good engravings on a sacrificial layer that is used like this here but instead of making a new layer which will also be used in some time I will remove this year and put on a sheet of MDF on it here and I will let the machine cut a pocket inside only 1.5 millimeters deep but then I will have a perfectly flat surface and this surface will also be aligned to the axis of the CNC [Music] the surface is finished and I can start the first engraving test now by the way this is one of the plates I've painted it came out really nice here but I will need a little bit more training in painting these things because the smallest air bubble on the surface will destroy the whole smoothness of the thing and there are some air bubbles in it we will see if I can get this out in the future but back to the engraving when you want to engrave your panel you have cut and drilled holes in it before and after this you want the engraving to be on the exact position it has to be and to ensure this the CNC machine has to know the orientation of this plate and where the surfaces and to ensure this I've made such an etch finding tool here I think you can see it better here it's in just two angles to rectangular angles an outside angle and an inside angle here and when I lay this down on the surface of this panel I can touch some points with the router bit and so the machine can calculate where some positions are for example it will touch the surface of this plate here and because the machine knows the thickness of this plate it can calculate where exactly the surface of the panelists then it will attach these three points here and with these points it can calculate the orientation of the panel to all the axes [Music] the backlighting came out really well from the first try and instead of making a long try and error video I decided to make some more testing ravings which we go through now in detail the big rectangle has a distance of 10 millimeters to all the outsides this ensured that the orientation of the panel was done correctly these syn lines come out very clear but they aren't visible when the backlighting is off I've tested two different letter sizes of 2.5 and 3 millimeters and different line sizes of 1.4 0.8 and point six millimeters and now don't lose any more time and let's start designing the EFA's palette when you are looking for panel measurements of the bowing I would recommend you to look first in the Bible of home cup building from Marcus Pilate here you can find all the measurements you need and it is always a good place to start although Thingiverse is where the look here you can see what I found when I searched for bowing EFA's and there are two EFA's panels you can import into your 3d program and this can act as a base for your further development also grep Kratt can be a good site for this here you can see a full designed Eva's panels even with all the needed buttons I was lucky enough that viewer of my channel shared his panel drawings with me he made in called row and I could use them as a base for my development and adapted them in some parts to my needs when you have made a drawing in core draw or illustrator Inkscape or any other vector based program then you should export your file as Andy and file for the upcoming engraving and I can show you this for called draw for example you just go to file say safe s and here you can choose a DXF autocad format then save it I left all the settings at they were and I have made an digs F file from this panel I don't want to import my Deeks a file into fusion 360 because I will work most of the time and this program just cause I'm more familiar with it as called raw or illustrator I can go to upload and drag the DXF file here after the upload is finished you will find the file here on the left and can double click to open it and we see all the lines that there were as in Quran but there are some things we have to change before we import it here and I want to show you these you can see that the rectangles that were there in the file are now just lines and we can say ask em that it should engrave this line with with off for example point five millimeters so we need to make these two rectangles and also in the Rings around these holes here are now just lines we'll have to change this autumn and in Quadrant this is really easy you just have to select the items you want to convert and then play object and convert outlines to object after we imported this file again you now can see the rectangles and also the rings around the holes here I don't want to bore you in with showing every change I've made to this file but I want to summarize some of these I changed the width of these rectangles here to 11 millimeters and also and change the distance from this outer ring to this hole to 1 millimeter all the sickness of these lines will be point 7 millimeters except of the two rings here which will be 0.5 millimeters you might have seen that there are no texts on this file here and this is no problem because I want to set the text in a sleek M because I have some more options and to engrave this there so when you are done with your changes to this file you stop the sketch and then you can right click on your sketch file here and say save as DXF in s Lechem i will open my file say that the lengths unit will be millimeter and select my two millimeters single flute bit for cutting acrylic we have to cut out some parts and first of all there is this panel of course it is a part and I will mark this and because I will cut it from three millimeter acrylic I will set four millimeters as my cutting death also R will place and some holding tabs - holders in the acrylic before I can remove it and these steps will have a length of 1.5 millimeters and the same height and we place in these steps here and on the other side there are some holes to drill and so I will select the drill tool and Mark the helical drill with this option I can drill any size of hole I want with only one drill bit as long as the drill bit is small enough to fit into this hole I have a 2 millimeter and bit and I have to draw some formula meter holes here so I can mark these holes then Mark them again and set the two paths that for all the four holes together of 4 millimeters now there are the remaining cards I watch with the whole tool and then Mark just the holes here then mark them all together and set the death also of four millimeters and now the panel is ready to be cut out but because we need two of them I will add a second one to my CNC program and you can do this with the entire tool so I'm mark all the passes go to tile and you can set how many copies you want to add I will just need one copy in the y-direction there is one option here machine individually and you can select this option if you have to fear and that there could be a connection error to your controller card and when you select this option the machine will first finish the first panel here before it went on to cut out the next panel if the option is unchecked then on both panels here first of all all cutouts will be made and after this the panel will be fully cut out for me I will choose the machine individually option just to be safe now after all the settings are done I can go to file and say save CNC program to cut off the needed piece of the acrylic I marked the cutting line and used the jigsaw with a fine blade as you have seen in the applicant file before I have arranged the captains and first officers EFA's panel above each other and I've cut in the piece with a little bit more extra space for clamping and I will plate this here in the middle of the sacrificial layer clamp it and then start the cutting process [Music] you can see me wiping off the acrylic chips for the brush from time to time to prevent them from being melted to the router bit [Music] the panel came out really well everything has been cut out as it's supposed to be I have to mention one thing because I had problems with my router bit when I start the second panel a bulk of melted acrylic formed around it and this ball got really hot when it cooled down and damaged the panel surface so I had to change the router bit now I'm driving my CNC spindle at 5,000 rpms and so should you watch out that your router bit doesn't get too hot maybe because of too high rpms or too fast moving through the acrylic there aren't any buttons include in this file and so I have to make my own and first of all I will make the buttons for these rectangular cutouts here they have a width of 11 millimeters and so I think nine point five millimeters should fit a really well so I create a new rectangle here which will be nine point five and nine point five millimeters now I will add a fillet to all the four corners of one point seven five millimeters and here we have the finished button but we also need a button for these round openings here they have width of nine millimeters and I think eight millimeters should fit in there so I make new circle of eight millimeters and it's so easy at this this is a but I will stop the sketch and export the new DXF file in a second I open the editor DXF file and concentrate on the new buttons here I will cut out them with a two millimeter router and select the part tool I also want to cut these out from a three millimeter acrylic so again four millimeter should be fine and for not let the buttons fly around when they are cut out I will again placing some holding tabs on all four corners I will need 14 buttons for the two efis and let's create two more if any mistakes will happen again we can do this with type tool we will make two copies in the x-direction and seven copies no eight in the y-direction now there are missing the last round buttons here and I will select the part tool the outline of the button again formula min the tool death and I will place two holding tabs at the sides now I have to move this because it can't be cut out at this place and as you can do with a move tool drag it up here and then make four other copies for the last buttons and this should be the fire we can use with our CNC machine just go to file and save a cnc program [Music] the buttons I will use a made of three layers first of all the white acrylic layer you have seen the color right now enemies a clear layer which had the same dimensions as this white layer and the bottom will be a bigger clear layer that will prevent the button from sliding through its hole and will help to fit it on a stick which will then fit onto a tactile switch and I will create this bigger bottom layer now again with a rectangle and I will use a width of 12 millimeters I will ensure that the rectangle around this button on all the sides with same distance and I will use a little help here I will create a construction line on the left and the right side also on the top and bottom side and then add a constraint which will say that the lines above each other will have the same length and so the button will slide into the middle the bottom layer has also a little cutout in the middle for mounting it on a stick and this we will create with a another rectangle of three millimeters and here we also will use this trick to align it to the center the bigger bottom layer will also be neat form this round button here and so we will create another circle with 10 millimeters that's it and we can use this modified file nest cam [Music] to prepare a better surface for the upcoming paint I washed and send out the panels [Music] so let's come to the fun part of the project now the engraving but before we start I will add a little help for the engraving on the buttons and I will add a center rectangle in the construction mode here in the middle of this button my text will have a line height of three point five millimeters and let's say the rectangle will be seven points seven millimeters wide so now we get rid of these diagonal lines because these would also be visible in s Lacombe later and now we have a rectangle which will be visible in s to come later and with this left button point here we can align our text later good on the button you also could add these rectangles here on the different places on the panel to show where later the text has to be but I found it easier to just put on the text and align it by hand in aslam I've opened my new exported DXF file and have choosen the 30 degree engraving tool now I will start with this button here and to place some text I will go to the text tool and mark my beginning point which will be the left button point here and now I will choose the font I will use for my panel I used the 4 to respond and especially the Futura MDC MBT which is a condensed version of this font which you can use when you only have very little space here to play some text the font here should be familiar from those of you who have seen some website programming for example or adding different font size in any forums for example the text start with different letters here you can see the starting Tec with an F for font and here with a backslash a closing tag between these tags there will be the text placed for example from the weather button and you can see here it appears but it is too small now so my font height will be 3 but I can edit this three point five millimeters and here can be in some arrows because the text always has to be between the text so between this new s text for size so and here you can see the weeks are in the right size I will also send out the text and now it is surrounded by this send a text here and I have to change the text with to our 7.7 millimeters and now it is placed in the center of the banner now we have to choose a style how we remove the material you can move material outside around this letters or inside these letters and this is what we want to do we choose the pocket inside we can have a preview here and this is how the text should look like when you now click OK every time you re select this text you can edit it for example the size of the font or the text itself but when you move this text in this state for example to here and then you edit it back it goes back to the same place so when you want to change the position or any other things on this text you have to explode it here as an text object and say okay and now when you mark this you will see the known property window and you can't edit the text anymore so this should be clear when you are working with text I have done a single file for every text object of the button I have to make and I then loaded these fires and exported as a CNC program for every button I had to make but now let's come to the panel I choose my font tool and place a text somewhere here choose my font and a text height which will be again three point five millimeters again I'm placing some text width and the text I will start with a view our one adapt the text width and choose again pocket inside I will copy this code to my clipboard so I can use it for the next text object mark the explode text object and click OK and now I can move this view our object to the place where I want to have it for example like here and this is what you do with the other text for example I've made another text object here for the numbers you have to choose again de pocket inside and say ok and then I move this number here somewhere where I thought it should be you can take reference image of an eephus panel and then compare your letters with the letters on your prefer panel there are also some lines on this panel and these lines can be done just by selecting the whole tool and you can select all the lines you need I will do this with these four for example mark them and say again a death of 0.1 7 millimeters and my pocketing strategy will be a linear and say it should route this out as a pocket and now they are filled and will be fully routed out the holes here above or at the sides are a little bit more tricky you will need to select the whole tool for the inner and outer circle and choose island and then the program will route out this circle again select the tube death of 0.7 millimeters when everything is done it could look like this here saved as a CNC program and sent to your CNC router the paint is ready the panel has dried for a day now and now we can start the engraving and as I said before when you want to wit and come out with a good engraving the orientation of the panel to a CNC is very critical I will place it here on the surface and fix it with some double-sided tape and then check the orientation of the panel with my homemade edge finder I used a little bit too much tape to secure it which made it difficult to remove it later [Music] in a sleek um I used the automatic touch off to start the alignment process [Music] now the three part of the buttons are glued together they are ready for engraving and before that they must be painted black and to ensure that the light still can come to the engraving the back side must be clear and to ensure this I will put them on some double-sided tape here and I also fix them while I paint them [Music] and that wasn't the best idea I had I will try to explain it to you when you stick such a small button onto the tape and you spray your paint layer by layer onto it then a film of paint will build on the tape and this film will make it very difficult to remove this button later maybe some paint will go off or something like this all the button won't come off anyway so when you paint those buttons then push them on a stick or a screw or something like this and then paint them standing free in the air so I removed all the buttons and washed the paint away and then I saw at four of the buttons paint has come into the sandwiches of this button and I think you can't see this here but there are three layers and there are gaps between these layer maybe and when you don't use enough glue to glue these layers together then there can be a gap and paint can come between these buttons and this paint what hold the light from and going to the surface here so when you glue these layers together make sure that you use enough glue so that all the gaps are closed I wrecked the lower plate of the buttons into some tape to ensure that whether paint nor hot glue will stick to it [Music] as you have learned the orientation of the button to the axis of the CNC is critical for a good engraving pad of course I can use my edge finding and jig here to align this small button to all the axes this won't work and so I search for another method and I've made a cutout into a rest piece of acrylic here which has the exact dimensions of the lower plate of this button and I will place this acrylic holder here on my surface align it with my edge finding jig and then I know exactly the position and the orientation of this button when I will clamp it in here and so I can engrave it [Music] because of differences in the button heights I had to zero the z-axis for every button [Music] after another coat of clear varnish the panel and the buttons are finally finished and what can I say this came out fantastic maybe better than I expected especially when you keep in mind that all this engraving is done on a homemade wouldn't see and seen so beside all this happiness I have to mention that this isn't the technique you would choose when you have to earn your money with engraving Palace there is a lot of handwork in it and many of the processes are very slow but for us who are making this engraving as part of the hobbies this is absolutely okay so I will look forward to the next steps in the carpet don't forget to join my livestream on the next weekend and if you haven't done it already then subscribe to my channel to stay informed about any upcoming new video from me so I hope we will see you soon back on the flight deck [Music]

Channel: Michael Schulz

Views: 39,178

Keywords: mickey's flightdeck, mickeys flightdeck, 737-800, b737, boeing, flight simulator, home cockpit, homecockpit, homemade cockpit, michael schulz, boeing 737 cockpit, boeing 737-800, home cockpit 737, cnc cutting, cnc machine, efis panel, engraving efis, cutting efis, engraving panel, cutting panel

Id: Nv1c_u2vaQ4

Length: 38min 11sec (2291 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 13 2019