General > General Technical Chat
Front face sticker panel material used in commercial equipment?
sv3ora:
Hi, I want to design a panel for a product and I have seen these panels that many commercial equipment use.
The attached photo (taken in an angle to see the matte glare) shows what I am talking about.
It seems that this is a kind of a sticker, printed on the back side (the side that sticks onto the panel) of a transparent film. And that film has a kind of roughness onto it (matte like).
Do you know what is this material, or what is this procedure called?
Are there any machines of lower cost that can be purchased for this result?
Or any other info you have on it.
WattsThat:
The HP front panels are a 3M product.
I’m not familiar with the current product numbers and names but the generic film product tradename back in the eighties was Scotchcal. It starts out as a clear sheet, textured on one side, smooth on the other. The smooth back side is subjected to a multi-pass screen printing process, building up the colors, one pass per color. After all the text and legends are complete, the back is roll coated with the background color. When the imaging is complete, it is laminated with a double sided acrylic adhesive sheet. Depending upon size and layout, all the holes and the general outline are then cut with a steel rule die.
It was prohibitively expensive for small runs back in the day. You needed thousands of pieces to justify the cost, the most expensive part is the steel rule die. Perhaps today it is able to be done in small runs with ink jet printing and laser cutting, I have no idea if it is possible but I’m sure 3M knows. They have many value add partners that do low and high volume runs. You still see the stuff everywhere on appliances, some with keypads of various types and it’s still around on some Keysight equipment.
ajb:
They're commonly referred to as "lexan" or just polycarbonate overlays. As WattsThat says they are reverse printed. Digital printing is common these days, as is laser cutting for small runs. There's still a substantial price curve because of the setup involved but not as bad as with screen printing and die cutting.
The equipment to do this sort of thing the commercial way isn't going to be cheap or readily accessible. You can do screen printing yourself, but it takes some skill/experience to get good results and will be time consuming, and I expect the inks will need heat or uv curing. The adhesive can probably be applied in sheet form, and I guess a fiber laser would cut it (CO2 doesn't work well on polycarbonate), or you could use an xacto knife if you have the patience.
So I guess if you have the time and some equipment on hand you could do it yourself, but it's kind of like making a PCB in that having a specialist do it is going to be way easier/faster and get you a much better result.
KE5FX:
The key phrase to Google for is lexan labels. This will bring up countless shops that can print them for you, likely including some local ones (which are good for handholding on your first job.) Prices actually aren't that scary, even for small quantities.
There will be several different material quality levels to choose from, but for control panel labels you will generally want the best stuff you can get. Plastics that are rated for outdoor sun exposure will hold up well over many years indoors.
langwadt:
laser print on paper, laminate, attach with spray adhesive, and cut with scalpel?
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