Gremlin77

oh one tip if you have it in the garage. Don't know how cold your winters are, but I once had the problem that my cooling fluid (simple demineralized water) was frozen and destroyed the pressure instrument.....for my luck not the laser tube

Give away one of my front panels 'cause I need new dimensions. If anybody wants it for free (only shipping costs), please contact me. If not, I'll throw it away.

looks very good!

I also thought about buying one of these directly from asia. But then decided to order one here from Germany,'cause if there are any problems, I have a reseller here next to me. My reseller makes the import from china and does some safety modifications. (laser turns of when you open the box and so on). And if you need any spare parts, the way and delivery time is much shorter. But overall, my laser is also a "china burner" and works fine for three years now with the first laser tube. And asar is right, the fumes cutting plexi are very nasty. I just installed an additional ventilator to bring out the fumes (a boxed vent from a cooker hood). The original vent is much to weak, so the hole basement smelled like a 4-week-dead cat when I worked on my panels. So have fun with this fantastic tool!

no, you missunderstood me. the left and right console are already finished. The left and right front consoles I am making at the moment. Couldn't use my old ones cause the real cockpit has different dimensions compared to my "fantasy" cockpit. And thanks for the Autocad-tip. will try it out for the next panel!

wow, want these machines :smilewink: super job!!!

What should I say. You're right. BUT: I started think one year ago making all the panels for A-10. Finished up all left and right console panels, never in mind what font to use. So, should I now make all the nice blinking and working panels new 'cause of having another font than the US Airforce?? I think: someday perhaps. It's a handicap I can easily live with. I use the same configuration with the laser like you do. But my China-Laser-Driver has some difficulties in doing fonts out of dwg files. So, I have to do every panel two times. First, in Corel I laser the font, and then in CAD do the engravings. And have you ever imported a DWG in Corel and started to reposition every litte letter? Should be forbidden.. It nerves.... And have you seen how much works lies in front of me?....Want to reach a stadium with the cockpit with that I can fly again....These were lucky days....Flying an A-10...... :-o When I reach this state, I have to do most of the panel covers new anyway cause of backlighting. Now I use LED stripes to light up the whole panel row. But using LED inside the fornt plate is a much better possibility. The two coaxial pointers of the fuel instrument I will cover with a central round plate. So it should not point to your eye that it's not a perfect circle.

This is my fuel/hydraulic panel in pre-state: The pointers are driven on this panel with servos and not with stepper motors. And yes I know that there is two times EXT CTR and not EXT WING one time. But I can live with that, it's so much time and work to engrave the panels that I don't want to do it again......

good idea. but beware of ordering from china. we here in europe have to pay lot of taxes on imports from asia and shipping takes weeeeeeeeeeeeks. have an adafruit display connected via spi and works fine. Thought making the ADI of it, but it's quite too slow. the digits I want to use for height, not for baro. baro I think, I'll build somewhere else on the left panel. There I have huge amount of space to fill.

So, just tried out the fitting of the right panel. Glad to see it fits...... began to remove all the cables of the right console. So happy, that all the panels I already made in the past fit on the 150mm panel mount of the tornado. The pit is standing in our production facility until now. Hopefully next week I can move it to my home. On the pictures, nose, canopy and ejection seat are removed.

finished Altimeter

pre-state of altimeter

just screwed together the right front panel. Now fuel control panel for right front console will follow next. At altitude instrument, pointer and 7-segment still missing 'cause of wiring

Great Look!

better video quality

A short video of moving pointers. Just set up three instruments by now, but they work quite smooth. Implemented the i2c interface, so that always a group of three instruments can be accessed. Makes 4 i2c devices for the 12 instruments running on this panel. These steppers have a mechanical reference point, so at first all pointers move to "0" position". This makes sure, all instruments have their zero position reached at startup.

oh, thanks for the tip! I'll change it. Think, it was too late at night and with too much coffee in my brain when I did that panel.....

when everything runs smooth, I'll uplad all the circuits and software.....one far away day.....

Set up a prototype circuit to drive the stepper motors via the i2c bus. Using one atmel mega8 to drive 3 steppers. (More is not possible cause of available numer of atmel pins and latency getting to high). Works fine. Just have to add three more cards and the panel is ready for build-in

Great Start! Looks very professional, specially the seat!! Hope to see more

Machinery instruments now completed with pointers and fully lighted. In the upper right corner you see that green LEDs are not always the same color when you use different manufactures.......damn :smilewink: now on this panel only the rings on front are missing, then completet. And then soldering the 12 stepper motors and the interface cards and and and.....

UFC Panel fitted on original Tornado HUD. Normally there are the controls for the HUD. But think it's a good playce for the UFC.

small update CMSP panel and VVI instrument installed.

I place the whole thing in a big unused room with about 15 x 8 meters. Installed already two beamers, so having a front display of about 8 x 2.8 meters (getting a bit sick flying to many curves, but think I'll get used to it) without overlapping. In the future going to install a single curved screen with overlapping and warpalizer software. When the car crane (don't know the right english word) has lifted the cockpit in, I'll send fotos.

Now with light and pointer. on the right handside you can see the stepper motors I use. Nice smooth and fast moving Damn, I hate this photomachine.....