Dotcomformat

No need to take it offline, maybe others will benefit...

Front Panel Express is a great little company that does aluminum panel
manafacturing - it's not cheap, but it's very easy to use, and readily
available unlike lots of other solutions. They provide everything, you
just supply the design and the money. 

First thing you want to do is go the the Front Panel Express website,
at http://www.frontpanelexpress.com/ - and download their front panel
designer program. It's small and free. Not terrifically user friendly,
but useable - it doesn't actually do that much, so once you get used
to the limitations and the interface, it's pretty handy. This all
presumes you have a pc to run it on - I have to use a windows xp setup
in vmware on my mac, but I used to run it in virtual pc which worked
fine. 

Instead of starting from scratch, you can get .fpd files (the format
front panel designer uses) on several yahoo groups like this one, so
go ahead and subscribe to the ModularSynthPanels group, and the MFOS
(Music From Outer Space) group, where you'll be able to download lots
of fpd files to try out and experiment with. Once you have a design
loaded into the designer, you can generate the current price of the
panel by clicking the little $ icon on the top row, it'll give you a
detailed breakdown of the price, handy for finding out what's costing
what so you can trim the price if needed. For instance, the motm WSG
panel I designed, which you'll find in either of those groups, cost
something like 88$, including shipping, but you could trim the price
down a lot by not using color, and using a cheaper font. 

Because they only work with flat aluminum blanks, you can't get a
really accurate dotcom style panel, although with some clever way of
getting the white edges, you could make something that'd fit in pretty
well. And there's a plethora of motm style fpd files, and they'll all
fit in a dotcom modular, if you're not particular about looks. 

Hope this helps!

Steve


--- In dotcomformat@yahoogroups.com, turtlerod <turtlerod@...> wrote:
>
> Yes I was asking you, and thankyou for your response. Did you have
them make the front panel from thier material or did you supply the
blank panel? Would you be willing to share the files so I can jump
start my own design? How much did one panel cost?
>    
>    
>    
>   If you like we can take this off line at turtlerod@... 
>    
>    
>   Thanks again,
>    
>   Rod
> 
> sduck409 <sduck409@...> wrote:
>           Are you asking me? The WSG in dotcom format didn't have
labels....
> I had a front panel made by Front Panel Express. Designed it in the
> designer program you can download from their website. It's kind of
> pricey, and not well suited for dotcom format stuff I believe. The
> panel was the most expensive component in my build. 
> 
> Steve
> 
> --- In dotcomformat@yahoogroups.com, turtlerod <turtlerod@> wrote:
> >
> > What did you use to make the labels for the panel?
> > 
> > 
> > Rod
> > 
> > sduck409 <sduck409@> wrote:
> > --- In dotcomformat@yahoogroups.com, "Erik Karl Sorgatz"
> > <auzorkmid@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Ok subject line says it mostly..and I added the 3 pics of my
system as
> > > a 2, 3 and 4 Tier synth.
> > > 
> > > Cheers!
> > > -Erik
> > >
> > 
> > Very nice! I'm glad to see that I'm not the only wierdo putting the
> > WSG behind a modular ppanel - mine's in motm format, pics here - 
> > Front - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sduck409/2040801704/
> > Back - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sduck409/2040008323/
> > 
> > Cheers!
> >
>