On my day off today I decided to continue work on my panel. I added the 1/4 inch MDF faces and aimed to mount both meters in the tower.

I decided to start with the square meter which will display the ships total power. It was the easier of the to mount in the tower.

To start I simply used the largest hole saw I have and made a hole right in the middle of the square I had to remove.

I then used a jigsaw to carefully remove the rest of the wood. I used spiral cuts to each corner and just kept working at it. This takes a bit of time but usually ends in nice clean cuts. Remember to not make too sharp of turns when using a jigsaw or you risk binding and breaking the blade or even damaging your material.

I was a little on the careful side when making these cuts so I had to do a lot of slow sanding to widen the opening to fit the meter. I used a mix of tapered sanding sponge, Regular sandpaper, and a bar file. Basically just working with what I had on hand.

Eventually it fit and looks fairly good!

The second meter was a bit more complex to mount. First I started by marking the meter’s total footprint and the point to make another hole via a holesaw.

I cut out the hole and then when I went to test fit the meter I realized that the meter wouldn’t sit flush on the panel. This meter had a small protrusion that I didn’t notice so I had to use my dremel to sand and enlarge the hole by quite a bit.

This worked and allowed the meter to sit flat. This picture shows the meters from the back and in it you can really see how differently they mount. Luckily my messy work on the 2nd meter is hidden.

And Just like that both are sitting nicely on the tower! Hope you found the process interesting! I did end up ordering those 8 torpedo tube select buttons I mentioned in my previous post. They will be going on the foot of this tower… in fact this tower will end up being fairly similar to the dev’s MK2 tower.



Anyway, thanks for visiting!

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