Corel works well - but $$$
I use a CAD program, DELTACAD. http://www.dcad.com/
They have a free trial, but the entire product was less than $50. Works
great for laying out chassis components, labels, drawing schematics, etc.
Here's a sample of some meterfaces for a recent project:
http://home.stny.rr.com/n2bc/Metersample.jpg
To preserve the paper, I spray with Top Flite LusterKote Crystal Clear.
Their paints are for model planes, very durable (resists nitro fuels), yet
very easy to work with. The clear coat seems to protect the ink well, I have
some meters and panel labels at least 5 years old & holding up well.
I fasten the new meter face to the backside of the original face with
wallpaper seam repair acrylic glue. Holds well but you can soak a boo-boo in
hot water for a while and get it off. The big advantage over spray glue is
the working time to get the label positioned properly.
Good Luck! 73, Bill
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bill Coleman N2BC
http://home.stny.rr.com/n2bc
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dr. David Kirkby" <davek@medphys.ucl.ac.uk>
To: <amps@contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 7:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Amps] Meter Faces
> Kim Elmore wrote:
> >
> > Do any of you have a favorite way of printing new, multi-scale meter
> > faces? And, when you do this, what do you print it on (equivalently,
how
> > do you attach it to the old face)? I'd like to change the scales on a
> > perfectly fine meter, but so far have no good way to do it. I found a
> > DOS-based program for this purpose, but it is tuned for an odd-ball
printer
> > that I don't have.
> I used CorelDraw, measured the dimensions with a ruler, and drew lines
> in the right place. With CorelDraw you can rotate a line by x degrees,
> so if like me your meters had an arc of 100 degrees, you could easily
> put the tick marks in the right place. It was a bit of an effort. I made
> non-linear scales (for power) and coloured areas red, green and orange
> for danger, okay and close to limits. I printed to standard photocopy
> paper and used spray glue to attach to the meter.
>
> The problem I found was that after a few years some of the colours
> bleed, so the things were not as sharp as before. Perhaps printing on
> the proper paper for an inkjet, rather than standard photocopy paper
> would help, but I've not tried it.
> --
> PLEASE NOTE:
>
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>
> Dr. David Kirkby,
> Senior Research Fellow,
> Department of Medical Physics,
> University College London,
> 11-20 Capper St, London, WC1E 6JA.
> Tel: 020 7679 6408 Fax: 020 7679 6269
> Internal telephone: ext 46408
> e-mail davek@medphys.ucl.ac.uk
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