metalnwood

Sorry Jase, you won't get what you are looking for as far as scenery. Those 8 DVDs don't even contain one landmark in the sim but you will have very nice roads as I believe the uk has a pretty good open street map coverage which xplane uses. If you think Fsx is woeful for the uk then you will not be impressed, you will need to get some additional scenery as by default even the airports do not have any buildings. Those are the cons but reading your post it seems wise to point them out as you were hoping for more than Fsx on the scenery front.

Probably about time someone filled in the gap since I stopped making my extensions, I know there were a few more that wanted to know if I started up again so hopefully they will see this thread.

Yeah Evil, you've got to be ever vigilant about not leaving that stuff around when taking photos for posting on the net.

Re the subject of gravoply. I have used it because it was cheaper than rowmax in New Zealand. I have since found that the gravoply is really made for rotary engraving and does not work well with a laser where the rowmax performs excellently for both.

Well I guess you can now use the handy towels for both cleanups then ;) (Obligatory handy towel in picture post)

Yeah, tell me about it. A real PITA to startup and fly to the combat zone to find you dont have any weapons onboard :(

Heh, how did you manage that when you first got the laser? I had lots of things to cut and a bit of trial and error. My patience wouldnt have let me go away for a while for the air to clear :) I know it can be a pita getting things like this done correctly, it's all a bit of an additional expense and doesnt add the the quality of the work but worth it in the end. Between doing dust extraction right and doing fume extraction correctly it's hard to think about all the money that goes in to that when it could have gone in to materials or another machine. You are rewarded with warm fuzzies when you realise it's all OK and your health is safe - until you chop off a finger on the tablesaw or similar :)

looking really good. I am hoping to get the backlight plate before christmas and spend some time working on panels as well. If it is still of any use to you I use a blower that is a bit over 500cfm for my laser which has a fairly large enclosure around its 60"x47" table. It works well but like Gadroc has said I wouldnt go for less. You really want to get rid of any smoke and vapor caused by the cutting/engraving process.

Just the small things, price, no worry about wires going in to the panel/being constrained by what wires/where they are on the EL you get. The Acrylic can be part of the standard panel, I.e. one on the existing layers rather than another part you need to fit in so I see it could be a bit easier to do it this way if it illuminates well.

I just got a quote for both the edgelit and the truled products I can get over here. $175USD for a sheet which is 2000x1500mm of the truled variety, i.e. they require backlight and the panel is 3mm thick. Also $282USD for the edge lit product, 4mm thick in a sheet that is 2000x1500mm They dont do samples but it looks like I will be able to get a piece around 150x150 to cut out and try to do something with.

I havent yet, I cant get the acrylite over here but I could possibly get the plexi product if they sell it by the square meter. Going by the GB site it would be around $120/sqm which isnt that bad if it gives EL panel performance without the hassle.

The costs of these kinds of products are worth looking in to as well. The idea is that they have some kind of special structure that the LED lighting will evenly illminate the panel rather than just go through it and hotspot it. Potentially you could go from 30 leds to just a few. http://www.acrylite-shop.com/US/us/category.htm?$category=crfo8s7j0ro http://www.plexiglas-shop.com/GB/en/category.htm?$category=hrikze7jsb4

I dont know what material you are engraving with. If it is a material specifically for rotary engraving then it will tell you how deep the top layer is. You dont have to go much farther than that, depending on oh flat the table is on your CNC is to get even coverage.

I got this one from good display. It is almost the same size as the a10 cdu. Same width and I think around 5mm short on height of the a10 display. GD40M05-GTM040HS It worked well and I used the same generic vga-> composite box that duckling has.

Good stuff Gadroc, looking nice :) Like you, I broke a bit the other day by stupidly zeroing with some bad maths way under the top of the work. Thankfully the vacuum bed of the router was 36mm (1.4") under the surface and the bit broke nearly one inch under the surface. It was a smaller 1/4" bit, if I had a 1/2" bit it probably would have kept going until it damaged the table, phew!

The successful marriage or long term relationship is based on a healthy amount of lies. You will both win that way :)

These may be a bit pricier than some of the others but worth a look http://www.flythissim.com/default.aspx

I would guess that is an EL panel backlighting.

if you are taking them to get lasercut/engraved then for most guys a pdf will suffice.

I talked to them about getting it in to DCS and offered to do some of the interfacing from the DCS side. One thing that concerns them, as well it should and its an ongoing issue is the lack of any proper api in DCS. You have to modify the exports to get the data. Not only that you have to play nicely with the other things that do it, helios, sioc, tars....? There is no consistent state or set of rules how different apps use that file. I guess what we have is acceptable when we dont have an alternative and we are willing to hack about and hand code a change if it breaks. I completely understand the support issues that this would cause a company selling the product.

I think Gadroc has one like that. If you check back in his thread I am sure he talked about it a little bit and some things he needed to do. I believe he might have changed the electronics in it so that he could use software that wasnt useless. It would be a huge step up from one of those to an epilog or universal. Both in cost and quality. If you were to ever contemplate that kind of $$ for a hobby then I would suggest a much better chinese machine that will get you quality but without the pricetag. Not all chinese lasers are bad, far from it and a lot are excellent but you are looking at the bottom of the chinese ones and they are as bad as the bottom of any brand. To give you an idea, I got this one http://www.wklaser.com/product/11_200.html with a 1500x1200mm bed (59x47") great quality, good software and big. Also there is this one which is around $1800usd. A lot more than the ebay version, a lot less than the epilog. Also a lot better quality and larger than the ebay one. http://www.wklaser.com/product/11_186.html Just to show that there is something between these ones and the epilogs.

Answering for him... I think it was acrylic with paint on top and then laser engraved. I know my laser does a much nicer (and quicker) job than may cnc router can do.

Good thought, I have a lot of that led strip which I was going to use as flood lighting in my pit. The scratching is a reason why I didnt want to paint panels and in stead use a product called lasermax which has a factory applied finish that wont scratch off. You set the laser to just go through that layer leaving the white below it.

So what did that panel cost out of curiosity?

I intend(ed?) to but things come and go, time devoted to other things etc. Part of the problem for me has been getting the time to do the electronics. I have been using arm cortex chips, doing the development for that in C, then there is the work that needs to be done on the pc to interface everything, then the sim integration. It's not hard but time consuming to do the whole lot. I will probably have a think about how I do it and maybe not design my own boards but use COTS breakout boards instead. That will save in one area. I wasnt too keen on making them with SIOC boards and the only other electronics project that I saw potential in was with the EOS that Gadroc was doing with helios. I would be happy to make electronics based on the EOS protocol and have helios be the glue. Gadroc seems swamped as we all get at times so that has not moved on. Making the panels is fairly straight forward. Supplying them with knobs, buttons but no interface is easy but I would rather have a complete solution.