Laser/CNC front panel engraving in Australia?

It was discussed in a thread recently by many that what seems to hold up finishing projects is the racking part..... I know how true this is and have many projects waiting only for racking :sad:

I can't seem to find anyone in Australia that will do 1 and 2U faceplates mostly because they don't have machines physically big enough for the panels.... Does anyone know if there is anyone in Australia that can do 1 and 2U faceplates?

I had Profile Cutting do a large batch of panels for me a while back. Prices were pretty decent at the quantities I wanted too (around 50 or so - worked out to be about $3.50 per panel) and they supplied the raw material to cut from aswell. Dunno about one-offs though. I sent them a 1:1 scale AutoCAD drawing and they did the whole lot in less than a day. The laser cuts are a little rough around the edges, but nothing you can't clean up yourself. You still need to get the finished panels painted/anodised/powdercoated elsewhere. I got the above job powdercoated at a local factory for under $75, they just chucked them in with other jobs that were getting done in the same colour as the one I chose.

Any engraving shop that advertises "computer engraving services" should be able to help out with the printing of legends. The biggest problem is finding a suitable file format for them to use. You should be able to find something in the Yellow Pages - phone them up and ask what files they accept. I've had luck with Xanderware, who did some laser engraving for me direct from an AutoCAD drawing I'd done. On black powdercoating it came up a kinda copper/brass colour. There'll be others closer to you no doubt.

While the Aussie dollar was trading so well I had a panel made from Front Panel Express, but the prices won't be so good now.

Cheers, I'll be looking into this. Problem is now going to be coverting to .dwg

Doesn't have to be AutoCAD DWG files, that's just what I was using at the time. A lot of the engravers I spoke to when I was first looking into having panels done said they would accept 300dpi TIFF, BMP, JPG, GIF etc. They just load the image into their software and convert the rasters into vectors ready to send to the engraving machine.

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

What exactly do you mean by 300dpi?

DPI = dots-per-inch (=resolution)

[quote author="gyraf"]DPI = dots-per-inch (=resolution)[/quote]

I'm aware of what DPI is. Not why it has to be 300dpi.....

Just what the dudes behind the counter said they could use. YMMV...