[نواف]

Applying Lettering To A320 Project Panels

By P Cos

For those of you who are planning on going forward with A320 Project panels for your construction (or still pondering!) this tutorial details some of the things that you will need to think about when it comes time for lettering your panels. Speaking from personal experience, this part of the assembly is best left to those with very stable hands! While the lettering decal sheets are capable of being adjusted, once they are in place its not that easy to change without stretching them. Plan ahead is the game.. Oh.. and wash your hands!!

First thing to point out here is that this tutorial shows application of decals directly on the laminate panel parts. Two things to remember

1). Laminate should be bonded to the wood parts prior to lettering. The wood parts need to be painted around the edges as well as the whole gluing process.

2) We are showing the "Switch" lettering here and in the lettering kits these stickers are seperate in the file so they will not be as shown here. This was done so that entire panel sheets could be applied in one shot for those brave enough to try that.

Figure 1

Figure 1 shows the three basic elements that make up our panel kits. On the far right you have the CNC Cut Panel (This one is from the overhead). The second part is the identical piece in laminate cut with CNC. The third element is the lettering kits and in this case we trimmed the section from the master lettering roll (Which is three meters/nine feet long when done!)

Figure 2

In the image above we have pretrimmed this particular panel in three sections in order to make this alittle simpler.

Scary part one..! Carefully peel the sticker from the sheet being careful not to pull and stretch things as that will only lead to bublbling and misalignment. This is also where clean hands are a must as it is very easy to deposit dirt or oils on the underside of the sticker and have it appear on the panel.

Super carefully you position and slowly lay the sticker on the panel. (as I mentioned the switch part of the stickers will not be there so you line things up with the actual lettering or in this case the white horizintal lines.

This shot shows me smoothing the sticker over the surface of the panel. The laminate is not 100% smooth so you have to press down firmly to get the sticker to look correct.

Here you can see the panel finished. In our case will cut the switch positions out for later as well as glue the laminate to the wood panel. On to the next panel.

This picture shows about an hours work. Three primary components of the Overhead completed. Starting to really look like the real thing. All I have to do is pass the "Joe" test and mission accomplished!

Another half an hour and a few more panels are done. Take your time though as reprint are costly. We will try and help folks out on that should an accident occur.