DIY control labeling?

[cminor9]

here's a pic of the front panels on a nearly finished amp.

Man, that's a lot of knobs! And a lot of labels. They look really nice!

[black_labb]

Man, that's a lot of knobs! And a lot of labels. They look really nice!

thanks, i was pleasantly surprised how well it worked out, especially at $2.80. i may redo it at some stage and put a clear coat over it. without the clear coat the toner can scratch off from the tools used to install the components.

[RudeBoy]

It's probably overkill, but I know a guy who runs a CO2 laser cutter/engraver. I designed my artwork in a CAD package and got him to engrave it backwards on clear plexiglass, which I then mounted in front of a matt black faceplate and edge-lit with LEDs. It looks wicked if I do say so myself.

Very nice. I'm researching a Standel 25L15-ish build and the original Standels had something like this. How deep is the etching on the back of the plexi? How many LEDs? I might have to try something out to see how this looks.

-- bradley

[Steve Conner]

I managed to dig up some pics of this. The plexi is about 4mm thick and the etching maybe goes less than 1mm into it. It's just the laser guy's standard setting for engraving.

I used four high-brightness yellow LEDs on one of these panels, and six high-brightness orange-red ones on the other. I guess I'll use green on the next one for a Jamaican flag backline.

Disclaimer: No 5E3 was harmed in the making of these pictures, it was a scratch build inside one of Mojo's reproduction cabinets.

[J M Fahey]

I've learned silkscreening.
Once you catch it, it's very easy.
I can go from Corel printout on tracing paper to ready to print screen in one hour.
Printing takes minutes, and the only messy part is putting the extra ink back in the jam bottle where it lives and *perfectly* cleaning the screen afterwards.
It's important because any minuscule amount of ink clogs the screen.
Printing itself takes 30 seconds per panel, I usually print a few extra "just in case", if I think they may be used in the future, but it pays even for a single one.
Much messier than using a PC printer, but, hey, it's the real deal.
I can print on painted surfaces, glass, stainles steel, brushed aluminum, whatever.
The main difference is that being homemade, *my* own setup fee runs around $10 to $20 at most.
If properly cleaned, screens can be reused in the future or easily erased and new designs put on them.
As a side utility, I print my own boards and can (never tried it yet) print T-Shirts to give away to my good customers. Great free publicity.

[cminor9]

Funny you should mention that. I just learned how to screen print too. I am going to get the materials to do it. Like you said, it's the real deal. It's surprisingly simple. And, well, let's just say I have spent more money trying other methods that it would have cost me to just do screen printing from the get go. Live and learn!

[ObEPToH]

Experiences with Lazertrans, screen printing & laser printing

If you are doing the graphics on the computer I recommend using a layout programme and not a word processor. You need to have it come out of the printer exactly as it is laid out on the screen. If you don't have a layout programme then the Lazertran (printable water slide decal sheets) could be the way to go. I have good results with that at home but the colour copy shop could not get the toner to fuse to it. As I understand it, Lazertran does not work with all laser printers, but I they do an Inkjet version too. I have not tried that.

Screen printing yourself sounds good to me because it is more "home baked". But when I learnt screen printing ages ago there was one stage which involved coating the screen with a photographic emulsion, then exposing that, drying it for some time and then gently power washing it off. That was time consuming and very, very messy, is there a simpler way that I am missing?

For my first simple build I went to the paper store two blocks down where the old lady there has "aluminium paper". It is 300 grammes and she said she sells loads and that it would go through a laser printer. Sure enough, it worked, I sealed the toner and then laminated it to a carrier and laquered it with nitro. It is fine for a small panel but the next build will need a longer panel so the home screen printing looks like a good way to go for me. Here is a view of the laser printed panel, as you can see I could base the style on some old existing gear. Next time I would put the texts above the controls.

[tubeswell]

Which product do you bake and how does this work with the super hot fuser in the laser printer?

Hi Bruce.

I understand its the ordinary old lazertran itself (which I understand you need a certain type of laser printer for). Process described here.

Lazertran used on ceramics , metal and glass

Haven't tried the bake-on method yet myself.

[J M Fahey]

Hi Overtone (if I understood it well)
I'm *very* interested in your "Aluminum paper that can go through a Laser"
Is it a sandwich paper/aluminum similar to what is used in cigarette packages?
About silk-screening.
It's still as you describe it, but it's not *that* messy , specially if other methods need baking, laminating, spraying with transparent overcoats, etc.
It ends up being competitive.
I can mix and apply the stuff , dry it with a fan, expose, wash, and final dry with a fan in little over an hour.
I actually found I get sharper screens this way, because the small residual humidity makes for a very quick and clean development, letters appear before my eyes in a minute. Before, I let it dry for 2 or 3 hours and it took me at least 15 minutes to wash the thinnest lines.
And of course, you are *not* limited to Letter/A4/Legal width front panels.
For urgent prototypes, I print on coated adhesive paper (I get the printing-house sheets. 65x105 cm, around 2 by 3.5 feet) with old Stylus Color Epson printers, that accept up to 44" paper lengths (over 1 M). I call them "the poor man's commercial plotter"
Those, yes, have to be sprayed with some transparent but strong lacquer to survive typical stage dangers such as beer spills.
And, of course, you can have your designs commercially plotted on self adhesive foil, it can be laminated or lacquered for extra protection, but they have a minimum order, no less than 90 cm by 50 cm, which are from 6 to 9 front panels; or sometimes no less than 90cm by 100 cm.
PS: I forgot to congratulate you on your "Tubed ZT Lunchbox Lookalike", great finish.
Is it aluminum lacquered MDF?

[ObEPToH]

Lunchbox

The "aluminium paper" is almost card thickness and has a grain like structure which goes all the way through, it is not printed. I have jsut been down to the shop again to try and get the name of it, but the old lady is away now until Wednesday. She has the cigarette packet aluminium paper like you mentioned too, that is much brighter but very thin. If she will let me know what these papers are marketed as, I will post it for you.

Wow, I have just googled ZT Lunchbox, and that looks really very tasty. It looks much slicker than mine, I was going for a CCCP feel. I like the roughness of the old Russian technology. Yes, you got Overtone right and the enclosure for the Lunchbox amp is actually a late 1950s aluminium instrument case from East Germany. It was some kind of valve multimeter that had been dismantled. The build is from an Ampmaker kit, which sounds exceptionally good. The chassis from Ampmaker just slid right into the old East German housing which saved me chopping off my fingers in the wood shed...

[flythair1]

Hello MEF Community,

I have also been trying to come up with a convenient way to get a good label, I have been applying rub-on transfers directly on the chassis's and now I have gone to the bake-on decal as well. I get the paper from a company named Papilio. $1.60 per sheet buying ten at a time.

I got a free electric range to bake in off Craigs. They say you should not use the one you cook in for the decals. I found an HP B/W laser printer locally on eBay for $6. It needed a $18 toner cartridge and now works perfectly.

The process of putting on and baking the decals has to be experimented with to get good results. I'm still kind of learning. Distilled water, no re-handling, everything clean etc. Fortunately the decals can be removed after baking if need be, and new can be applied. I used some test pieces at first to see how it worked.

I made a master sheet of labels in a Works document. I made extras of everything to have enough to experiment with. Once you know what you need for a particular amp, one sheet of decals should be plenty.

I'd like to have access to a laser but doing one-offs, the set-up charge is too expensive. The amp in the pic has transfers, this next one (18w Marshall) will have decals. I'll try to get a pic of the raw chassis up soon.

Scott

[GregS]

What is generally involved in silk screening? More specifically what materials and equipment do you need to do it? I'm interested in trying this out as my other method of labelling is unsatisfactory.

I've been printing onto clear adhesive sheets with an inkjet printer and then cutting out the labels and sticking them on. It's impossible to get them properly aligned this way and it doesn't look great.

Thanks,
Greg

[cminor9]

You have to make screens, which look almost like smaller versions of an artist's canvas. Make sure it's good and tight.

Then you design your faceplate on your computer, and using a good laser printer, print to a transparency sheet (like the kinds for those old overhead projectors). Make sure it's a good crisp printing, because this will determine the overall quality of the screen. Someone recommended to me to run it through the printer a few times to make sure it's a super dark print.

Take the screen that you built, and rub silkscreen emulsifier all over it and let it dry in a dark place until its dry to the touch. Then put the screen over a foam block (included with a kit?), letting the frame hang free around it. Place the transparency on the screen, and then put a piece of glass over it. Then gently clamp it down a bit (gently, it is glass) and shine a bright light on it. The light will cause the emulsifier to cure. Let it go for a while. The glass presses the transparency to the screen really tightly for a good crisp line. The crisper your silkscreen, the nicer your faceplaces will turn out.

After a few hours, take the screen and using pressurized water and maybe a toothbrush (like the sprayer on your sink or a hose with a nozzle), clean out the stuff that didn't cure (which is whatever was hidden from the light by the print out). You now have a silkscreen.

Place the screen on your material to be screened, and then apply the ink to the back side of the screen, and use the squeege to apply the ink to the faceplate (it'll go through the screen in the places that didn't cure).

Test it on a piece of scrap material to make sure it's a good crisp screen. It might take some practice to get a good crisp image because you've gotta figure out the right amount of ink and how much pressure to apply and how fast to go.

THe trick is getting the right kind of ink for whatever top coat you're going to use. IOW, make sure the lacquer you spray over it won't ruin the silkscreen.

I found a kit online for about $60. Cheaper than sending a corel file to a faceplate maker and having one made, and you get the pride of proper DIY.

Clean your screen *really* well after you're done and it'll be reusable. And if you plan properly, you can make your screen generic enough to be reused for a variety of different designs. One time setup = many many professional faceplates.

Hope that helps.

[GregS]

Thanks cminor. That's very helpful information.

Greg

[supaflytnt]

steve that plexi glass idea looks awesome, I cant really tell from the pics but did you drill into the plexi to and insert the leds in there or are they just on the outside perimiter?

and anyone who is interested my dad owns a vinyl sticker sign business so if you guys want labels, custom faceplate stickers or logos made let me know.

gregg