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Technology - How we do it At AircraftPanel.com, we like to share our industry knowledge with our customers. The better informed a customer is, the more they will understand the painstaking work that is required to create a quality Metal Panel or Overlay. Creating a new Metal Panel or Overlay design starts with an actual candidate aircraft. Using precision instruments and a reference datums, we measure the position and size of all of the instruments, switches, breakers and controls and make hand-written notes.This step usually requires several hours in the actual aircraft. The next step involves translating all of the notes and measurements into an actual Autocad drawing. In the case of overlays, there is absolutely no margin for error as the overlay must perfectly match the underlying switches, breakers and instruments. AircraftPanel.com uses a commercially-available library of instrument panel cut-outs that provide precision standard avionics shapes with a minimal amount of guesswork involved. Despite this, two day's worth of drafting is not unsual before we are ready to move onto the "first cut". The first cuts are made with an in-house computerized stencil cutting machine. This creates a "paper panel" prototype than is then fitted on the actual aircraft for proper fit. Any required changes are marked-up on paper and then input into Autocad. Another stencil prototype is cut and the process is repeated until a perfect fit is achieved. In the case of a remote customer, the exchange of the stencils will take place via FedEx or similar overnight courier. The perfected Autocad drawings are then sent to a precision laser-cutting CNC machine to be cut out of 0.090" or 0.050" aluminum as required. Some slight manual de-burring is required before the panels can be sent off for painting.Fine-textured Powder Coating gives the panels a scratch-resistant and glare-free finish that will last as long as the aircraft itself. The powder paint is electrostatically applied and cured in an oven for several hours. Several standard colors are available to match your aircraft. While we wait for the Powder Coating to be completed, we draw all of the text, labels and placards required for the panels with a PC drafting package. A positive film output of the artwork is made and manual stripping is done to align the labels with the panels. With the powder-coated panels back from the paint shop, it's on to the Silk Screening shop to have the text (white or black as required) painted and oven-cured. For tilted instrument panels like the Cessna 177 series, we have custom aluminum wedges for the control yokes and gyros manufactured at a local machine shop. We manufacture these in batches to keep out cost to you as low as possible. Finally we ship the kit out to you, ready to install (some fastners may be required). Sounds simple ? It takes us about three to four months of work to develop a new kit, which amounts to several hundred man-hours of work per airplane type. Perhaps you will now have a better understanding of the "value" that our kits represent.
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