Saturday, March 02, 2013

INSTRUMENTATION PROJECT PART FIVE: Panel Mounting

Now that I had my chosen enclosure in hand it was time to start working on mounting the meters inside the Polycarbonate NEMA 4X Box .  In addition to the box I also bought the optional PNX-91425 Aluminum Internal Panel which is where I will mount the meters.  First I made and outline of the  panel on a piece of graph paper and then positioned the meters where I wanted to mount them:

I then traced their outlines to the paper and cut them out with an  X-ACTO knife . I transferred the outlines for the meters to the panel and cut them out with a nibbler tool:


After fitting checking the fit of the meters:


I removed them and took the panel outside and spray painted it with some Rust-Oleum flat black enamel spray paint to eliminate any glare from the polished aluminum plate once it was installed in the cockpit. Once that was done and I mounted the meters to the plate all I had to do was install it into the box. Since the panel was made to fit the Bud NEMA 4X Box with screw holes already drilled to match up to the ones in the box all I needed was some spacer hardware.  Happily, I was able to recycle these from the old Kings 8001 Loran hardware that I saved.

 With the meters mounted into the panel I could now start on the wiring of the instrumentation project.



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