Replica Parts Made in Milwaukee

[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.

[miniman82]

GIMP is awesome, I downloaded it earlier last year.

[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.

[Geoff Bourquin]

I discovered GIMP several years ago. Someday I'll learn to use the 90% of it I have not tried yet. I read once that there is a GUI for GIMP that mimics Photoshop. I think it was called Gimpshop. I have not tried it, but it may be worth a look for people who know the feel of Photoshop but want to try GIMP.

[maxm]

If anybody is planning to recreate art for a dial glass from scratch on the computer, I would recommend using a vector based drawing program such as Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand, rather than a raster program like Photoshop or GIMP. Using a vector based program makes it much easier to manipulate lines and text, center and align objects, and edit things at a later date. A vector program can export to a raster format (JPEG, TIFF, Photoshop, etc.) but it is much harder to go the other way.

You can purchase older versions of Illustrator on ebay for very little and it is pretty simple to learn how to use for basic drawing and type work.

If you have access to a Pantone swatch book, you can use the chips to get a reasonable match to the existing colors on the original to input to the computer art. The appearance of the color from the printer is highly dependent on the calibration of the printer and the printing technology used. If you want accurate color matching, you will need to get samples from the printer to be used for the final production, preferably on the exact material to be printed on.

There are quite a few printing companies that now offer flat bed digital printing. You can print on almost any material (acrylic, wood, glass, etc.) as long as the machine can handle the thickness.
We typically send out an Illustrator file with outlined type and strokes and a PDF file for reference when getting things printed. I believe most current digital flat printers work similar to a printer connected to your computer at home, with the ability to print from pretty much any program on the computer.

[rld-tv01]

I've been thinking about getting an inexpensive 3D printer http://wiki.makerbot.com/cupcake for reproducing TV knobs. I also would use it for robotics parts which is a newer hobby of mine. I bought a copy of Rhinoceros 3D software on ebay a couple years. The cupcake 3D printer comes with opensource software.

Richard