Panel Build Up

I?m interested in doing most of my panel but was wondering what folks have tried as far getting professional cutting, powder coating, and silk screening, bracket mounting, etc. Any thoughts or insights would be appreciated.

Panel Building

Building the panel is not hard, just takes some time.

I had my panel cut and silkscreened from Lancair but there are many that will do it now. Stein does a great job and he will be around where many come and go. I'm sure there are others that do a good work too.

If you really want to tackle everything there are guys like Tim Olson who cut and silkscreened their own panel and did all the installation and wiring.

I am really happy that I did my own wiring. You know how everything works. I have had one issue with a com radio not working one day and it was a problem that was caused by Lancair's prewiring of my 430,330,SL-40 and audio panel. They didn't remove enough of the sheath and the pin didn't lock into the d-sub connector.

Bob Knuckles has the bible on aircraft wiring and you will probably want that. You can download it off his website.

Good luck.

As Scott said, it's not difficult

But it is time consuming, I did my own, because of misplaced ego gratification. I'm VERY leery about all things electric, but I had the time, and the education and experience were extremely rewarding. As Scott points out, having put it all together, gives you an intimate appreciation for how things work/don't work. Silk screening is really pretty easy and inexpensive to do yourself. Tim's got a good write up on his site, and others have documented their efforts. I cut out my own panel inserts, but also had some of them re-done by Gary Wirrell @ aerotronics (Great Guy!).
Here's a couple of links to my experience/s

http://deemsrv10.com/panellogindex.html
http://deemsrv10.com/album/Panel/index.html

I opted for a 'non-standard' instrument panel, which added significantly to the time involved, If you keep to the Van's 'slab' it would be MUCH simpler/easier

I also did my own including cut, paint and silkscreen which was extremely gratifiying! There are a lot of companies that will cut the panel for you if provided with a CAD file. I started out hoping to go that route but lost confidence when the full size print didn't match the curvature of the stock panel!

Bob
RV-10 N442PM

I'm going down that path too

I decided during Oshkosh to do much of my own panel. I think there are a number of steps you can take or not take that will effect the task significantly.

I'm going with one of Stein's panel blanks. They are non-standard but cut specifically for the '10. They give you an inch or so of extra real estate, they are designed as 3 separate removable instrument panels, they fit, they involve some $$$, etc. I have the canted center stack variant.

I'm going with the FastStack product which should simplify the wiring a bit.

Planning to cut all the holes and have already built some of the center stack brackets. We'll see how it goes.

Haven't figured out where I'll go with painting and screening.

I'm enjoying the decision so far.

Bill Watson

I also did my own panel.

You can check it out in the panel sticky thread, from on the bench to alive!! Post 40 shows it lit up.

It isnt really hard, just tedious. I cut the larger openings such as GRT screens with a cut off disk, used a panel punch for the 3 1/8 gauges, and a collection of other tools like unibit, coping saw, flies and nibblers-----hand, not air-----the air nibbler is too hard to control for fine work.

I made a lot of cardboard templates for the various cutouts, and am very glad I did.

Final layout was on a piece of poster board, and then transferred to the aluminum panel. I laid out a center line for the gauges, indicator lights etc. Lines for the bottom of GRT screens and such square stuff.

Anytime you put a row of same size holes in, use a reference line of some kind.

Get it all right before you start making metal chips.

It is kinda gratifying to be able to answer "I did" when somebody says "wow, nice panel, who did it for you"???

Good luck

Hi Bart,

A little bit of insight from RV panel land. To be quite blunt, if you truly want to pay someone to do everything you mentioned, you just as well have them build the entire panel (at least from a financial standpoint). A large majority of the labor for building a panel in professional avionics shops comes from just the sections you mentioned. If you do it yourself you are paying basically what your own salary is worth. If you pay any of us, you're paying our rates. For some people it makes sense to exchange money for time, or have it all done professionally. For others, it makes much more sense to do it on your own.

Overall though, to have a panel cut, painted, labeled as well as mount everything up will be a LONG way towards having the shop do all the rest of the work. Wiring a standard panel is usually not the majority of the labor in a panel...especially with all of the modern interconnects.

All I'd say is look carefully at what you want as an end result and what you want to spend. None of us professional shops are going to do that job in the hundreds of $$'s, it's going to be in the thousands...and like I said, once you get there you won't be far away from getting the entire panel done. Many of my customers (as well as Gary's) are guys who started out on their own and then bring us something to finish - usuallly we start from scratch. If you do it yourself, take the time to do it right. Using Van's standard panel will go a long way to helping you with that as others have mentioned, but there are aftermarket panels that will drop in the same holes as well.

Also, take the words of those who are completely done with a little bit more weight than those who are in the middle of it, or thinking of doing it. Many times the end results aren't quite exactly what the builder envisioned. However, there are a LOT of darned nice panels out there done by builders. Deems has a remarkable airplane overall, so does Bob and Mike so they are proof positive that it can be done, and it can be done well. It's not hard to do, just time consuming. Now, when you get to the physical wiring, that's a whole 'nother issue!

Anyway, I'm sure I didn't add much usefull info in particular, just want to give you my 2 cents as usual.

Cheers,
Stein

One thing that's not been mentioned here is the ease with which a panel can be cut if you have access to a milling machine. Our local EAA chapter has a small mill and I planned to use it for my panel replacement job. Turned out to be a good decision.

I layed everything out the old-fashioned way, with masking tape over the aluminum slab, then measured everything and marked it very accurately. This technique is old-fashioned, low tech, but it sure works. Once I had the slab on the mill table it took me a solid day of very painstaking cutting to get everything done. This included cutouts for Dynon EFIS-D100, Airgizmo dock for a Lowrance 2000c GPS, a radio stack, 5 x 2 1/4" instruments, 5 x 3 1/8" instruments, plus a square fuel quantity indicator, switches, circuit breakers and indicators.

Panel paint used was textured Plasti-Kote in a rattle can. I thought this would be a disaster - wrong! At first it was soft and would scratch (my test coupon scratched), but after letting it harden a full 48 hours at room temp it has proven to be amazingly durable. Labelling has been done with Brother Tz tape - clear with white lettering. Looks professional and after two years has stood up to the rigors of real-world use.

If you want to use a mill to cut your panel I would suggest using a good holesaw for the round holes. The mill allows you to turn the holesaw very slowly, making near-perfect holes (a little Jet-A as a cutting lube also helps with getting a nice finish on the cut edges). Four-flute end mills cut wonderfully straight lines for the mounting of square boxes like radios and EFIS... ;-)

Nice article on doing panel graphics

The latest issue of Kitplanes has a great Stein article on doing text and graphics on your panel.

Thanks Stein! That helps a lot here.

Bill Watson