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Cutting through control panel overlay?
johnnysmitch:
I see what you're saying, it's just that cutting with an exacto along a straight edge and within [the inside of] a circle are very different. It's not like running a ballpoint pen or anything along the circle - since the blade is flat and not round, you must spin the knife as you make the cut, which has always proven quite difficult for me to get good results. Granted, a 3" circle is fairly large, so you mihgt be able to get decent results if you took your time with it. There's basically two things you'll want to look out for when doing it this way tho - 1st being that you are applying enough pressure to cut all the way through in one pass [usually frowned upon when doing precise exacto cutting, but it will be extremely difficult to make multiple passes with any accuracy within a circle] and 2nd being that, while applying this pressure, you take your time to be sure you don't accidently cut into your mounting plate or yourself. I've done both of these things before when cutting with an exacto, and can't say that I recommend either... :P
sofakng:
Ok, gotcha.
Would you suggest I go ahead and do this free-hand (as we just talked about), or do it another method?
If you really suggest I don't do it freehand, please tell me otherwise or else I'll go ahead and just hope for the best :)
FractalWalk:
What I figured I'd do is take my trackball mounting plate and flip it upside down (so the legs on the mounting plate are facing up). Then I'd place the mounting plate and lay it flat on my overlay. Finally, I'd use my exacto knife and try to follow the circle the best I possibly could while cutting the overlay.
If possible, I would suggest mounting your overlay first that way you can add all of your buttons and joys and then your TB plate will line up exactly with the hole you want to cut.
I just finished cutting my CPO a few days ago using this method. I applied a vinyl overlay from classicarcadegraphix on top of plexi, which was secured to 1/2" ply.
After it was positioned properly and firmly affixed, I used an exacto to cut all of the holes (button, joy, TB, spinner axle). Using the drilled plexi underneath as the guide, I had no problem cutting exactly the outline of my holes. The TB hole was the easiest as it has the least amount of arc.
I think what made it easy for me was that my blade was riding along a plexi edge and not wood (The knife tends to "catch" or "dig" into wood easier then plexi). However, I would think using the metal mounting plate as a guide would work just as well.
sofakng:
Did you use the pie-method for cutting out the other buttons? (look up in the thread if you don't know what I'm talking about)
I'm also wondering if you do use the pie method, what do you do with the pie slices? I'm guessing you fold them down into the hold and then stick them to the inside of the button hole?
FractalWalk:
I did not use the pie method rather I cut out the entire circle. Form the top of the CPO, I placed my exacto in the center of the hole, punched through and cut to the mounting plate edge. I repeated the process to make a single small pie wedge and folded it out of the way. This gave me room to turn the blade sideways and place it flat against the edge of the mounting plate hole.
I then just slowly traced around the mounting plate cutting as I went. I let the plate guide my blade. When I was done I cut out the small pie wedge in the same manner and then retraced the whole thing again just to clean it up a bit.
When cutting keep the knife blade perpendicular (vertical) to the plate and sink the knife in deep enough so that about half of the blade is below the CPO and half above. Go slow and don't force anything.
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