MIP qestion

[spiro]

hello to all
i need some advice i am going to make my MIP witch will cover my 3 nonitos out of wood
it is an airbus i have cut a thik pice of paper with all holes for my instruments it will be 3 pices
my qestions are
1,what thikness?
2,do i need a back board for it?
3,what wood shall i use(exept for mdf cant find thin mtf here only 16mm)

if any one can send some photos of there mip covers so i can
get the idea
kind regards spiro

[No Longer Active]

Hi Spiro,

How are you drawing your templates, because I am struggling to find something you can print onto multiple pieces of paper as my CAD program will not print to scale nor print at all.

Looking closely at A320 panels, I would say that 5mm or 6mm is the perfect thickness for panels, remembering to sand the cut outs of the panels smoothly and round them off because the A320 panels are very smooth and rounded. I would spray them with a primer then spray them with the colour after this process, I wouldn't paint as you may see brush stroke marks, unless you prime with paint then sand then spray.

MDF is the best for sanding in terms of ease as harsh sandpaper can often produce nice rounded and smooth edges, other than that I guess that ply wood would be the next best thing but would take some effort to sand, but both should give you good results, avoid chipboard if you can. In my opinion aluminium or acrylic would not be suitable as this would not give you the rounded edges of your cut-outs unless you were to mould your acrylic over a former or fabricate aluminium over a former which would take forever, so wood is definitely best choice, again in my opinion I would go for 5-6mm mdf, my Cessna mip is made from this and is perfect.....

Let me know if you have any ideas for printing the MIP as a template, I'm running out of Idea's, unless I cutup my mates poster (and he wont be happy lol)....

Kind Regards Spiro.

Alex

[No Longer Active]

Here is what I have drawn up from scratch to scale, printing is just the problem......hmmmm

[Steve A]

I think my first mip panel was about 6mm and it warped badly in the summer heat. Just something to think about Spiro.

[No Longer Active]

Very valid point Steve, totally forgot about your much warmer climate!

Ps...managed to get my A320 image 'printable' my image was scaled at 15 meters wide instead of 150cm wide.....oops lol

[capetonian]

Alex, have you tried Poster Razor, it lets you print stuff on multiple sheets. http://sourceforge.net/projects/posterazor/

[No Longer Active]

Hi, indeed I have, there is also another product for poster printing called 'Posteriza' which is the same!

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/posteriza.html

[Westozy]

I suggest you use 6mm PVC sheet, I use this making MIPs for customers. It's easy and clean to machine, no MDF dust and it is easy to paint. Quite a lot stronger than MDF too!

Regards, Gwyn

[smendlik]

...Let me know if you have any ideas for printing the MIP as a template, I'm running out of Idea's, unless I cutup my mates poster (and he wont be happy lol)....

Alex - I might be able to help you out here. I have a full version of Sketchup so I can import .dxf's then import them to Layout which can export in full scale to Acrobat. From there I can print the full size tiled across many sheets which you can then tape together. I can get you a .pdf of those tiled pages and send it to you and you can print it out. I haven't actually done this yet but I'm more than happy to give it a go so you can!

Steve

[Buddym]

Hi guys,

Are you using panels of the same or close to the dimensions of the panels in the A320 paneles.zip file? If so I am making a batch of glare panels that I would be happy to share with you. The only thing is that the current panels I am cutting are cut to use the rectangular LED pushbuttons from Mountain Switch that OpenCockpits uses on the ones they sell. I am going to be making the glare wings and the rest of the pedestal panels soon, and sooner or later the overhead. I realize that mine wont be exactly like the real ones, but those switches are easy to get and inexpensive. These photos are not very good, thecamera is junk, but the panels look great in person.

Attachment 3559Attachment 3560Attachment 3561


Buddy