From batzman@dove.mtx.net.au Tue Nov 5 08:15:33 1996 5 Nov 96 11:14:33 +0500 5 Nov 96 06:42:55 +0500 Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 22:02:36 +1030 From: "The Dark force of dance" Subject: Re: Square Holes (round pegs) Cc: analogue@hyperreal.com Y-ellow. Square holes hey. Nibbling tools a great for thin aluminium. About 2mm thick max. However, if you've got a real lot of holes to do, you'll get real sick of squeezin' that handle. Especially if the material is thick. In steal, anything thicker than a soup tin will be trouble. The alternative is a power nibbler. These things are wicked. With a propensity to get away from you and start cutting through everything in their path. These things cut Aluminium like butter on hot day. They cut steal but it's more like slicing cheese. They're king of like an angle grinder with nibbling head on the end where the disk should be. Cheap ones have a single fixed head. However the better ones have interchangeable heads. Often going down to a fine head that can cut 2mm slots. Ideal for sliders. But these things are not cheap. An alternative is to mark out your square hole and drill some pilot holes inside the mark. Drill a couple of these holes out so that you can fit a corse round file through it and go to town. I mean get filing. You could also use an abrafile. File almost out to the edges of your markings and then finish off with a fine flat bastard. Bastard file that is. You can finish off with a really fine file for bevelling the edges etc. What's really handy to have in the way of files is a set of needle files. These aren't cheap but really useful. They aren't quite as small as needles but they are very small. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. From tiny flat files to square, trapezoidal and conical. Even elliptical. Model makers use them a lot but you can use them for getting access to small spaces, and for making cool rounded corners etc. If your hole is relatively large, Get a hacksaw handle grip. This is kind of like a knife handle but it's got a slot and a tightening arrangement at one end. The idea is that you snap a hacksaw blade in half and poke the appropriate end into the handle. You tighten it up and use it sort of like a knife. They take a little getting use to and you'll probably have a tendency to bend the blade at first but they are definitely quicker than using either a file or a nibbler. Once again you finish off the hole with an appropriate file or two. Where you've got lots of small holes, say for an array of square press buttons, it is probably best to think about re-designing your front panel. Cut a large hole that all of the buttons can poke through. This can be a rough job because no-one will actually see it. Then attach a fairly thing sheet (almost foil) over the top as your front panel. I use 0.5mm flashing. You can actually cut the holes with a sharp craft knife. The stuff is so thin that you can glue it to the main front panel using double sided adhesive tape. If you have a look at some commercial designs you'll notice that it's exactly what they've done in the factory. You can start to get real creative with this approach. Have a look at the panel of some 'Focusrite' gear some time. http://www.focusrite.com/focusrite/ These guys sit their panels out on pedestals kind of like the buttons in 'windows'. What it looks like though is that they've milled out grooves around each section. It's extremely 3 dimensional and looks way cool. But the best one I'd ever seen was on a piece of airforce gear from an old submarine tracking system. It was pedestaled just like the focusrite gear except the pedestal was made of white plastic about 5mm thick. It was painted in grey paint to match the front panel but the dial markings were open so that you could see the plastic behind. Giving an over all white on grey effect but any background colour, say black could be used. There were a couple of globes mounted in the plastic such that the light would propagate and make the white plastic glow. Of course everywhere there was some dial markings or lettering, it would light up. There was a rotary switch mounted in the panel and the plastic was open under the knob. The knob was made the same way so tht even the pointer on the knob glowed with the light on. In the dark this sucker looked like something straight out of aliens. I can only imagine what it would have been like flying at night in a P3 orien, in total darkness except for a wall of these panels staring back at you, searching for submarines. Anyway the point is that although this panel was made of aluminium, it used plastic for the funky bits. And of course Plastic is damn easy to work with. Hope this helps. _ __ _ | "_ \ | | batzman@dove.mtx.net.au | |_)/ __ _| |_ ____ Batz Goodfortune | _ \ / _` | __|___ | All Electric Kitchen | |_) | (_| | |_ / / _-_|\ |_,__/ \__,_|\__|/ / ----------- / \ ----> http://www2.gist.net.au/~aek/ / ,__ \_.-*_/ for all your kitchen needs |_____| Not of this Earth but living in You humans are all the same South Australia.