Hello all,
The Letters C are dry transfers.
I brought them in the local paper store (where you buy the items for the office, school, etc.).
I don't know where are they available on-line, but I saw them in
the RS catalogue (
www.rs-components.com) stock no. 436-083 transfers for electronics, but I don't know if they have letters.
The price per one sheet in Croatia is around 2 Euro, also I noticed that in past several years some fonts are more and more unavailable.
The Letters C comes in several colors -
black,white,red,blue,silver,gold,yellow... - but the best is black, as it will stick more easily than any other color - if you stick it partially or missaligin then you will have to carefully scrub it down with the razor and it would not be as good as without repairing, so be very carefull and patient.
Applying Letters C is very time consuming (for perfect result) and this is mostly because you must perfectly aligin every letter.
First try to apply it to something else, before you do it on the your project - with letters that you will not use on the project.
For applying Letters C you could use soft pencill but it is also available special teflon pencil for that job.
There is no much difference between regular and teflon pencil, so if you will use regular pencil the only thing you should check is that the pencil is not sharp at the top.
After that, when you applied all letters you will need to protect it against scrubbing with a coat of transparent matt warnish (do not use gloss type, matt type looks much better).
The best type of warnish is on "oil" basis and no on "nitro" - when buying ask for loong drying type (12-24 h) and everything should be ok.
First apply one not too tick coat and leave it to dry several days at room temperature.
Be very patient and carefull at this stage because if you do something wrong the whole project can be lost and you will need to start it again from 0.
After that you can apply several more (not too tick) layers and final result will be unbeliveable (of course-if you done everything right).
For chasis, I brought Technics SU-C1000 preamplifier and then removed all electronics.
After that I removed all buttons, central Ni-Cd batteries, LED's, pots, power switch ...only source LED's (I replaced old ones with high intensity blue LED's), volume and selector pots are left. The remaining holes was filled with epoxy filler, than I painted whole chasis with silver eloxal paint and applied Letters C for labeling the source LED's, selectors, and back-plate with connectors.
Then all together was sprayed with several layers of matte transparent varnish and enclosure was finished. The final look is superb and there is no way to tell that is hand-made or modified.
Also, in the Passdiy gallery, and on my website there are some more photos of the preamplifier and minidisc that are labeled with
Letters C.
Best regards,
Kristijan Kljucaric
http://web.vip.hr/pcb-design.vip
I didn't, but I'm doing Letraset lettering on my panels all the time and it's not frustrating at all. I don't use any laquer, because I prefer original look of aluminum. This panel was done 20 years ago (no anodising) and it's still looking good. It is cheap, fast and long lasting method for lettering.
