tekadept

Update: 2 Versions of this box are now available for the F18.. The Replica Right Panel https://www.tekcreations.space/product/f18-hornet-replica-right-control-panel/ And a compact Multi Control Panel https://www.tekcreations.space/product/f18-hornet-control-panel/ Something I have had on the back burner for quite a while now is a Generic Toggle Switch Box that is as modular as possible. As part of my effort making panels I took the opportunity to get this off the ground as it shares a few features. A friend and I have talked about this for a while, as Imaginative as we it is called "The Toggle Switch Box" Something I wanted to be able to offer is a Generic Toggle Switch Box for those who don’t want full specific panels, but still be modular in a way. I did a bit of thinking and thought I would do the initial concepts below. Able to swap and change positions of switches where practical Able to have a customisable top plate that can be swapped out showing various control names Able to be Back lit. What I have come up with utilising the design of what I am going to be using my own F18 panels. A box that is confirming to DZUS standards. It will accept a panel 146.05 wide, and be the Standard DZUS 9.525 hole spacing. A quick mockup is below, the Box is MDF that when close to finalising I am deciding if I will vinyl wrap (carbon fibre perhaps) or enamel paint for a nice finish. The “rails” are 3mm acrylic that I will tap for an M4 bolt to secure the plates on. The plates I am thinking to be as convertible as possible will only be 3 DZUS holes high (28.575mm) and will hold 4 toggles / rotaries etc. This will be made up of a 3mm bottom plate to secure the toggles etc to, then a 3mm middle plate to space capture nut, then a 1.6mm Engraved ABS top to give a nice white surface. One of the biggest problems, being generic is I had to come up with what I would engrave the top plates with by default, below are some of what I came up with that are relatively standard across most aircraft. The plates with multiple will line up like below Obviously being modular means there is a thin gap between each plate which I’m not sure I can eliminate, but if clients required and knew there exact layout I could do larger or a single plate to avoid that look. The Benefit of this box being DZUS spaced is that my standard fighter plates can also be dropped in as well, and this is what I will be using to build my own personal simpit as I don’t have the space for a full cockpit build. Some thoughts are to work out, how high do I do as a standard (currently 15 dzus holes high ~ 150mm) I think that’s a good starting point, but obviously can customise as much as required. This box was a rough Mockup, I have a new one cut and waiting for the glue to Dry, once that’s done I’ll work out how I mount the LED strips for backlighting, and also work out how I will handle the cable wiring etc.

The next part of panel construction I am working on is how I tackle the Hazard striping for the F18 Hornet Panels. A perfect example of this is the F18 Hornet ECM Panel. This Panel has Yellow white striping around the ECM JETT button. The white is obvious , I will laser engrave that, and the yellow is obviously going to be paint of some kind. but how do I do it? First up I get a bit of scrap and laser engrave the white sections with a raster engrave (Ignore the horizontal black lines I was tweaking the power for another purpose.) This gives us the white lines with the black diagonal strips to separate out the pattern. Next we apply some low tack tape (Painters tape) over the design.and do a vector cut at VERY Low power (just enough to cut the tape) on every second diagonal box This is where we are going to paint. After this we strip of the bits we just cut to show outlines to paint I have a few things I’m going to test and the first is good ole rustoleum rattle can yellow spray paint. Lets give that a hit of 2 light coats. Once the paint is dry we peel of our Masking Tape and voila we are left with the below. Not bad, but not great, but definitely a good start. I did Initially try spray painting over the black, but it looked so bad it doesn’t deserve to have a photo. I think the next step is I need to widen the black strips inbetween the colours, and do 2 lighter coats to avoid the paint pooling. I might also look into some Tamiya Enamel model paint and trial painting that in by hand (still keep the masking) and see how that looks.

After some cutting and mucking around with the F18 Panels, I think I have decided on the approach I am going to go with the different thicknesses. Below is a screenshot of the Bottom 3mm plate with the switches screwed in tight. Then we get the middle 2 mm plate and place it on top and it looks like the below. This is the plate with the larger holes to accommodate the nuts.The nut sits nice and flush with it the plate. Once we have done that, its a matter of sticking on the Laser Engraved top plate (Ignore the off centre circles.. The dog decided to bump my laser mid job which moved the stock.. Grrr time to lock the door! I give the baseplate a quick mask off and hit with spray to show the below When we have a close look at the profile of the 3 plates it looks like below. Overall I’m quite happy with it. The top will be masked of and a quick spray on the edges, or I might use a paint pen to do it, I haven’t decided yet. I can quite easily change the dimensions here, swap the 2mm and 3mm around, or use both 3mm as I see fit. What to trial out next?.. Hazard striping!

Thats Looking pretty good. One thing I've wondered about those using VR.. how do you "see" where the switches etc are if you have the headset on? is it just best guess, as you say its more important to get "in the right position"?

If your interested I can possibly help you out with plates. You can see the style I'm using in my PLOG https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=245746 I'm currently working on F18 plates for myself atm I already have made a F16 ICP prototype and a UFC and MFD is on my hit list next, (awaiting all my parts) PM me if your interested in plates.

Well I have this in my wishlist for santa LOL :) I can imagine its a bit of overkill for what you want, but damn it looks cool :) https://www.cockpitrockers.de/en/product/messerschmitt-bf-109/

Cheers Rightstuff, they look pretty Decent, Ordered some :) do you know if its possible to "stop" and convert them to say a 4 position? After previous attempts, I have now refined what I am doing from a design standpoint I have done the F18 Hornet Sensor Panel below The Whites are nice and bright unlit, and the black that nice even finish.. Just wondering with the Rotaries whether I really need the white circle… that will all depend on if I can come up with some illuminated knobs, probably best to include it now as it is only an extra 20 seconds of engraving time. Now what I have done as mentioned before, I am sticking with a 3mm Base plate, this time using the new Opal 445 Acrylic. Putting this and and doing some back lighting the difference is quite remarkable. Below is a shot illuminated with 5050 SMD LED strip through a layer of 2 x 3mm layers Opal and with a ambient light on in the room. And Below is a shot with the light turned off and only light from the monitor. There is nice even light transmission and no hotspots. Now there is brighter spots, but that is because I am literally just placing 2 strips of LED’s underneath with no thought to placement like I will will the final panels. With proper placement I am confident everything will be evenly illuminated. I also have a 3528 strip to trial later on. Next its time to go through and do cuts and determine what panel layout I will use between the 3mm and the 2mm.. Doing some Math, the base and middle as 3mm with the 1.6mm top makes it 7.6mm overall (which I think is getting a bit on the high side (although close to the real overall height of a set of panels according to my research). If I go the 2mm that makes it 6.6 which I think is a nicer overall height. Will post some pics once I finish off and put some switches in to see how they sit.

Mr_Burns, Thanks for that, not something that had crossed my mind, I picked up a 12 position Rotary from Jaycar, that you can set to 8 position thinking you beauty. But yes looking at it now the Indicator angle is definitely a problem. I Will be looking into a few different options to see what I can source, thanks HanSolo I'll look along those lines. Update on Panels. This time I did the Ext Tank F18 Panel. Time to have a look at this with some Back lighting. Definitely very lackluster barely anything coming through So Now I flip the plate over and engrave some notches out where the text is. Now that has definitely made a difference, you can see the WING is backlit now, but still not stellar results, and I don't want to go etching the back of every plate as that will be painful. Without a Plate in the middle, my screw for toggle switches is going to be on the top. which looks bad. So I mocked up an idea out of MDF to save acrylic, I would "rebate" the bottom plate to allow the nut to sink into that before the top plate, IE below. Now it does work, but again extra work required on each plate. So the only alternative to this is going to the 3 plate design after all! Also as a note, my back lighting I am currently using is LED green strips. a Mix of 5050 and 3528. I have been using the White acrylic as the backing, but its still not letting as much light as I would like.

I have a 50w co2 laser I use for engraving.

Hi All, **For those that are interested, I am offering these panels up for sale, at what I think is a reasonable price. Link below. ** https://www.tekcreations.space/product-category/flightsimaccessories/f-a-18-c-hornet-panels/ I thought I would go through my process of manufacturing some plates / Panels for various Fighters, and hopefully somebody can get something from my experiences, and provide some feedback. First thing I am working on is panels for F/A-18C for DCS. Firstly I have sourced some Tiff Images, and tweaking my sizes from that 146mm standard width, DZUS 9.375mm Spacing for holes. One thing I am not a fan of the F16 or MS 33558 Font. I am going to be use a Gorton Heavy font which looks far better to me with less work required for letter spacing etc and I’m happy with. Firstly everyone seems to use acrylic, so I have gone through and done some various testing and picked up some Clear and White acrylic. I did my first test on clear acrylic, got some rattle can Rustoleum 2X paint, and gave it 2 coats. This is the Result Now this doesn’t look to bad at first glance, the text is a bit fuzzy, the white frosted look from the engraving is visible but not vibrant. The Spray can on inspection is a gloss which doesn’t look that great either. So now I throw some lights behind this bad boy to see how it backlights. Oh yeah serious problem right here, Despite 2 coats light leaks like crazy and would require 3 or 4 coats.. Lets scrap that idea. Now I move on to a White Acrylic, this time the ExtPower Panel. Instead of using the Rattle can paint, I use some acrylic Primer, and crank out the spray gun and use a Flat black Water Based enamel 2 coats. Now this looks better already, the text engraves crisper, the white shows through and looks a bit better, and I also like that flat black vs the cans gloss. Lets see how this backlights? I think this looks much better, still a bit of light leakage but nowhere near as bad, and I think that’s because I did not have a even spray. With a better even spray job I feel the 2 coats would suffice. Definitely getting some hotspots through with the LEDS so that is not the best. Lets try a Different panel see if the results get better.. This time the Snsr Panel, I took more time with spraying, still only 2 coats, but making sure I got better coverage. The light leaks are no longer there, but still getting the hotspots, and looking at the non-lit version below the surface does look ok, but it is VERY easily scratched and they show up quote noticeable.

Hi all, Been lurking around for a while, If this post is not OK please let me know. A while ago I got sick of the boring old TGL1 and RTY1 on my X55 stick. Once I realised I was easily able to remove the side plate with an allen key I promptly decided to jazz them up with a custom plate for what I wanted my controls to be depending on my aircraft. Sadly I couldn't do this for the bottom plate, but I made a design that could fit over the top. I am selling these for those that are interested in these products, I have already done a few up for my controls for the below Craft F16 F/A-18C A10-C Elite Dangerous Star Citizen. I Also am able to do a custom plate for anybody that is interested if you let me know your preferred control layout. Some Example images of them Installed If anybody is interested please check out the links here https://www.tekcreations.space/product-category/flightsimaccessories/