{"id":70,"date":"2009-05-24T11:25:12","date_gmt":"2009-05-24T18:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/?p=70"},"modified":"2009-05-24T11:50:57","modified_gmt":"2009-05-24T18:50:57","slug":"birth-of-an-indicator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"Birth of an indicator"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new panel that I’m working on is for the IFF control panel in the F-15. Since I have a “real” edge-lit panel for this, I only need to make the metal mounting plate and the “REPLY” indicator that it needs.<\/p>\n

Here’s what the panel itself looks like:<\/p>\n

\"IFF

IFF Control Panel<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The image below shows what a “real” panel looks like:<\/p>\n

\"IFF

IFF panel from the McChord AFB Museum F-15A<\/p><\/div>\n

The 2 digit rotary numeric selector (the “M1 CODE” wheels) is a part I already have in stock. The only tricky part is the REPLY indicator.\u00a0 To find the “real” part would take considerable effort and would likely cost a lot more that it’s realistically worth.\u00a0 This means that I get to scratch build one.<\/p>\n

I start off by creating the lettering portion of the indicator and then test-engrave it on my laser using a 3×5 card as test stock:<\/p>\n

\"Test

Test indicator face<\/p><\/div>\n

The font doesn’t exactly match the indicator on the real panel, but since this is more experiment than anything else, it’s ok.\u00a0 This will be the first from-scratch indicator I’ve built since I got the laser.<\/p>\n

The next step is to cut the parts needed to hold the LEDs that I’ll be using to illuminate the indicator from behind:<\/p>\n

\"indicator2_sm\"<\/p>\n

The LED holder was cut from regular cardboard.\u00a0 It’s pretty close to the thickness of the acrylic I’ll be using and is tons cheaper to screw up. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The first version of the LED holder didn’t have the mouting hole in the center, but it was worth the waste to make sure that it was going to assembly correctly:<\/p>\n

\"indicator3_sm\"<\/p>\n

Now in order to make the face of the indicator, I needed to cut the indicator face out of 1\/16″ acrylic and then prepare it like so:<\/p>\n

\"Masked
\n

Masked indicator face ready for painting<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Freshly

Freshly painted indicator face.<\/p><\/div>\n

When finally engraved on the laser, it came out like this:<\/p>\n

\"indicator7_sm\"<\/p>\n

I then cut new back parts to include the threaded hole for a #6 mounting screw.\u00a0 The base layer was also cut from black acrylic instead of clear.<\/p>\n

\"All

All the indicator parts together.<\/p><\/div>\n

After getting this far, I went ahead and assembled the circuit board that would hold the two 5MM LEDs as well as the 470 Ohm resistor that would allow me to power them with 12VDC.\u00a0 Unfortunately I had forgotten that your typical LED only has a field of view of about 60 degrees.\u00a0 This resulted in nicely lighting up the “R” and the “Y” while leaving a lot of dark space in between.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks to Mike Powell, I now have some 180 degree LEDs on order.\u00a0 When they arrive, I’ll post pictures of the assembled indicator.<\/p>\n

The new indicator won’t use the indicator face as shown above.\u00a0 I’ve since found a local supplier of a special Rowmark plastic that has a very thin black acrylic layer and a thicker clear layer.\u00a0 This will allow me to create a better looking indicator.\u00a0 I’ll use the correct font for the new example as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new panel that I’m working on is for the IFF control panel in the F-15. Since I have a “real” edge-lit panel for this, I only need to make the metal mounting plate and the “REPLY” indicator that it needs. Here’s what the panel itself looks like:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-project-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.f15sim.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}