Replica Parts Made in Milwaukee

[ohohyodafarted]

On the first job he did, (the CTC4 back) he charged $75/hr set-up and the charge for one back was $50. I thought that was fair for the back itself, and duplicates will only be $50 each. But when you are doing a one-off piece the cost of setting up the program adds a lot to the price of only one piece. And depending on how complex the program is, you may have an even higher program price. I will post an update with actual costs on the printed parts when I recieve the invoice for this work.

As for drawing myself, I do not have a proper drawing program anymore. I used to have a program called ProfileLab that I could do this in, and it would generate HPGL instruction file to drive plotters and routers. (HPGL=Hewlett Pakard Graphics Language) That is no longer available to me. If it was I could do the drawings myself and eliminate that part of the expense. I wish I still had ProfileLab, It was a nice program to do this sort of stuff. Does anyone have a suggestion for an inexpensive program that could be used to do the drawings? and possibly generate the HPGL plotter code?

The art file for the Wards Airline dial glass was generated from a flatbed scan of a reasonably good part, and imported into PhotoShop (I used a trial version of Photoshop Elements). I find PhotoShop to be a difficult and complex program to use, but it has many features that enable you to do stuff like make seperations by color etc. So I made 4 layers for various colors (based on the imported scan) and overlayed them. Then I took the art files to this company and he used the art files to generate the necessary code to print the parts with the UV flatbed printer. I don't know what kind of file the printer works with. For all I know it just takes a standard .JPG and prints like a normal computer printer does.

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by ohohyodafarted

The art file for the Wards Airline dial glass was generated from a flatbed scan of a reasonably good part, and imported into PhotoShop (I used a trial version of Photoshop Elements). I find PhotoShop to be a difficult and complex program to use, but it has many features that enable you to do stuff like make seperations by color etc.

Bob,

I've been using Gimp for about 10 years and find it much simpler than photoshop and it can do almost everything that photoshop can.

I've got Gimp 1.4 on a DOS based computer running Win ME and 2.1 on Win XP. The current version is 2.7.

Gimp is a free software. I've found Gimp to be a heck lot more user friendly and more idiot-proof than Photoshop, two computer features that I badly need.

http://www.gimp.org/

I'm thinking about replicating a Bendex Aviation phantom radio dial using this program. It would have to be a two layer transparency with the outside layer in color and the rear one in B&W. I'm not that much into radios, but this baby has been in our family for 64 years. I last repaired it in 1956.

Where is your Ward's dial project described?

James.

[ohohyodafarted]

James,

I have not made a specific post about the Wards dial project. Basically I got the original art file from John Folsom who got if from someone else. It was in a file format that must be something that Photoshop generates, because I had to open it with Photoshop.

I used Photoshop to make seperations by color and then I cleaned up the seperations so the edges of all the images were nice and clean. Then I handed over the Photoshop files to the fellow who actually made the dialglass. It was reverse printed on the back side of an acrylic blank, using a special flatbed printer that utilizes UV cure ink. The printing is very hard and durable.

I am not sure why a person would print on both sides of a dial glass, but I think you may be better off going to silk screening for a job like that.

thanks for the link to GIMP. Looks like I will start using this.

[compucat]

Originally Posted by ohohyodafarted

James,

I have not made a specific post about the Wards dial project. Basically I got the original art file from John Folsom who got if from someone else. It was in a file format that must be something that Photoshop generates, because I had to open it with Photoshop.

I used Photoshop to make seperations by color and then I cleaned up the seperations so the edges of all the images were nice and clean. Then I handed over the Photoshop files to the fellow who actually made the dialglass. It was reverse printed on the back side of an acrylic blank, using a special flatbed printer that utilizes UV cure ink. The printing is very hard and durable.

I am not sure why a person would print on both sides of a dial glass, but I think you may be better off going to silk screening for a job like that.

thanks for the link to GIMP. Looks like I will start using this.

The GE model 202 radio has the dial numbers on both sides of the glass, black on the outside, white on the inside. It gives the numbers a 3D effect.

I just downloaded Gimp on my MacBook Pro but have not used it yet. It sounds good though.