Acrylic 716 panel

acrylic 716 panel

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5 comments

  1. 5th July 2016Olek says:

    Hi there,

    where do you order those front panels? They look really nice as they don’t have the oh so common lab style…

    Thanks (especially for your great blog). Regards.
    Olek

  2. 5th July 2016ua726 says:

    Olek, thanks for your kind words!

    I had a few System 700-style panels laser cut in acrylic by Razorlab in the UK, our local version of Ponoko. They only do gloss finish plastic, so I went for white to avoid having to look at my reflection every time I patch. This half-size one is about a centimetre taller than a standard Eurorack panel. The text and lines are also laser engraved and filled in using black acrylic paint.

    I’m fretting about the panels flexing, particularly the full-size ones (which are 28cm tall…). I’m hoping that some reinforcement behind the scenes will help.

    Ideally I’d do Moog-ish folded metal style panels, like on the original, but the main guy in the UK for this doesn’t seem to be taking on any more work at the moment.

  3. 22nd July 2016Olek says:

    Thanks for all those information!

    May I ask how you get the engravings filled with paint? Do you just grease the panel with the acrylic paint and clean the excess with alcohol? Can you maybe give some suggestions about how thin the engraved legends and lines should be? I really like your panels and will definitely try your method.

  4. 23rd July 2016ua726 says:

    All I do is just paint over the etched areas, which have been roughened up by the laser, and then a few seconds later wipe away the excess with a paper towel as much as I can. I’ve been trying to avoid using the isopropyl alcohol as far as I can (cos it gets even messier), but I might use it if I’m struggling. I generally do two coats, but I’m not convinced the second one is absolutely necessary.

    The typeface is generally Helvetica Condensed Medium, as close to the System 700 as I can get from just looking at photos of the original. The typeface size varies from 8pt for the switch titles and pot numbers, to 15pt for the module title.

    The lines are engraved as per the Razorlab standard, which I set in the file at 0.01mm, but I don’t know if they change it afterwards.

    If it helps at all, this is (probably) the EPS file I sent to Razorlab.

    cheers, good luck with trying it yourself!

  5. 23rd July 2016Olek says:

    Thanks again! Especially for the eps. Didn’t dare to ask for it 😉 This will answer all possible further questions.

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