Tanya & Bryan Duke's RV-6 Panel Rebuild
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25 Jul 05: Today I drove to Lancaster, CA to visit the guys at American Data Plate. They do silkscreening & photo etching for all kinds of things, including aircraft panels. After looking at tons of samples of photo etching & silkscreening, I decided to give the photo etching a try.

The way it was described to me, photo etching is a darkroom process by which your artwork (anything you can get into the computer) is chemically etched onto very thin aluminum. I showed up at the shop with my lettering mostly done - at least I thought. About 2 hours of work later, we had everything ready for printing. What the photo etching looks like is easier to describe with pictures, so I'll do that later. It's very cheap (about $30 for all my lettering) and nearly indestructable (so they say). If it looks good, we'll use the photo etched labels. If not, we'll send the panel off for silkscreening.



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