11/14/2007
Today was panel cutting day! This was such a COOL thing to watch! The panel had been designed in AutoCAD, and that file was emailed to a local tool & dye shop that had cut Rob's panel. The water jet cutting machine is freakin' unbelievable! Here's a picture of this $300,000 machine.
Brandon (the guy at the shop) laid the panel on the slats in the machine, and lined it up with the corner. This pic was taken just before it was actually lined up and clamped down.
Here is the computer that Brandon is using to plan the cut route.
We did a dry run to make sure the route was properly planned, and to make sure the cutouts would not take out the screw holes for the panel ribs. All was satisfactory by me, and the cutting began.
Just about done...
After a total of about three minutes, I had a fully cut (including screw holes) panel!
My dad came with me to see how this thing worked, and here he is (well, his legs, and hand anyway) holding the finished product.
Fast forward a couple of hours, and I have the panel cleco'd to the structure. The red arrow is pointing to the left panel rib that will get cut out.
And here is the panel after the rib was modified. The rib remains in the same location, but with the center removed.
The MGL Enigma will fit in that cutout with ease.
After that was done, I decided it was time to fit some goodies to the panel!
Everything but the Hobbs meter fit PERFECTLY on the first try! I had to do some *SLIGHT* filing to get it to slide in, but it was a non-issue. Pretty cool! I didn't fit the Icom A210 because I'll have to modify the sub panel for it to fit properly.
Here are a couple of shots from behind the panel.
This was all really cool, but now I find myself at somewhat of a loss of what to do first. Should I go ahead and put a finish on the panel? Should I fit everything before doing that? What should I put in first? This is going to take some real thinking to figure out...
2.5 hours