New Front Panel Supplier

[seppoman]

Beta Layout has started a new service for aluminium and acryl front panels:

http://www.panel-pool.com/

looks quite promising to me. Panel design is done in a special free software, similar to FPE/Schaeffer. The panels can be engraved or printed in full colour. I did an example price calculation for an imaginary panel and the pricing seems to be quite ok. The only major drawback is that their maximum panel dimensions are 460x300mm which is just 2 cm less than you'd need for a 19 inch panel...

Can't comment on the software or quality yet, but I've used Beta Layout a few times for PCBs and SMD laser stencils, and it was always top notch.

S

[nILS]

Max. width 460mm. They gotta be kidding. Especially seeing how they have all sorts of 19" "prerequisites" like mounting holes and so on...

I still thought I might as well play around with it a bit. For some reason the display is warped. All holes etc are displayed as ellipses, which is rather odd. Oh well, since they can't do 19" I guess I won't have to bother anyways :)

What seems really neat is the printing feature, which seems to be a fixed price of ~15EUR on sth fairly close to a 2U 19" panel. That's certainly a strong selling point :frantics:

[phunk]

They seem to be a bit pricey though. I quickly hacked my data in their webcalculator and got a higher price with thinner material compared to schaeffer...to be fair i should have installed their frontpanel designer. Might differ from webcalc...

[nILS]

The test panel I made (19", well kinda, limited to 460mm width), 2U with 19 knobs, 9 switches, 4 leds and an audio socket, all labelled with some neato graphics(!) on 3mm black anodized aluminium was supposed to run ~60EUR (same thing from Schaeffer with less graphics is 88EUR).

[nILS]

I just cloned the mb6582 front panel with the following results:

PANEL POOL: Exact same panel, but with custom printed graphics (you can go all out here with full color etc) -> 95eur

SCHAEFFER: Exact same panel, engraved hence no fancy graphics -> 115eur

[Wilba]

I volunteer to try them out for an MB-6582 panel :) the big unknown being how good the printing looks in real life, and if JB-Weld sticks to the back... it does stick well with FPE's black anodized but don't know about natural anodized.

[nILS]

Remind me in the chat and I'll send you the file. There's pics on the panel pool page and the printing looks really nice :)

[nILS]

I just had a nice little chat with them (very helpful people there) and the problem with 19" is the printing, not the milling. The printer has a max. width of 460mm and that's why all their other tools are set up to take max. 460mm. According to panel pool they're discussing changing this in the future (the way I understood it only the milling, not the printing).

[phunk]

Well i gotta install the FPD then tomorrow and try it.

Weired...shouldnt have trusted the webcalc.

They´re not offering 4mm panels, are they?

[Shuriken]

Has anybody taken the plunge yet? I am getting near finishing my MB-6582. So panel ordering will be next priority.

[polo]

So does this mean you can have 19" wide panels but only a max print size of 460mm? Or can a panel with print also have a max width of 460mm?

[Shuriken]

So does this mean you can have 19" wide panels but only a max print size of 460mm? Or can a panel with print also have a max width of 460mm?

Not sure but on their website you can select a panel size of 490mm. And in their app if you use the latest version it no longer complains about the size if you select a 19" panel.