Repro Dials.

[Robert Darwent]

To me I dont think there is "an easy way to make repro dials".

I must agree Gary, when the dial is glass with a large proportion of transparent areas and the dial detail is white or other light shade, then it is extremely difficult to produce an acceptable result. Almost always, the reproduction will turn out too dark or washed-out compared to the original, as Joe found out with his DAC90A dial recently. By comparison, back-lit dials are much easier to achieve.

All take time and often a drawing package rather than just a clean up of a scan. Also, its much better to have your own colour printer as it normally takes several goes and some tweaking, if doing transfers, films or photo paper.

I must agree again, more often than not a scan of an original dial is just not good enough by itself to use to make acceptable reprductions from. Add to that, that the original dial will most likely have areas faded or missing completely. In such circumstances the only viable option is to recreate the dial with a graphics package, often in its entirety.

Then as you have highlighted, producing the artwork is only the begining of the process. Getting the colour matching right and printing the dial can take many hours of work by themselves.

Whites and metalics can be done but it needs a specialist product from the US where white, silver or gold dust is sprinkeled on to the wet ink jet ink and adheres. Not tried it but I did see pics of results and it looked good.

I have yet to attempt this method either. The only problem with it I can forsee, is that the decals produced are 'raised'. That is fine if you intend to apply them individually or in small groups to the surface of something such as a control knob, which is how I have seen the method demonstrated elsewhere.

But if the intention is to replicate a glass dial where the detail is invariably attached to the back of the glass, then these 'raised' decals are going to prevent the decal as a whole attaching correctly. As will be appreciated, a decal (waterslide transfer) or similar needs to be completely flat to be mounted to glass or acrylic.

Mirror-imaging the detail and mounting so that the raised areas are away from the back of the glass will, I believe, not produce acceptable results either. The underside of the 'raised' details will look very different to the top-side you are intended to view.

It may prove possible to place the raised graphics on the surface of the glass dial and then cover over with a plain piece of glass for protection, mounted a millimetre or so above. In effect, making a sandwich similar to a double glazed window.

Regards