4V electric herms build

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Nev, OP posted about it

fishy said:
Planned on getting a sign shop to do a nice vinyl adhesive printout of it but they were going to charge me $90 (its only A3) so I just got it printed out and laminated at officeworks for the grand total of $4/copy! Got a few copies made, one to drill through etc, one spare etc. Turned out better than I thought!
 
Overlay was designed in Photoshop (but whatever design software you want), just started with an actual size A3 blank canvas and just started adding elements and graphics to it. Drew the arrows and all coloured lines etc and found the keg outlines on Google images. Then for the button and PID outputs I'd add a white shape to the exact size I'd need to cut out, eg 45mm square for the PIDs, 22mm circles for the indicator lights.

I then planned to get it printed at a sign shop but for one A3 vinyl adhesive print out they were going to charge me $90! It would have looked pretty slick but that's crazy.

So I took to PDF to officeworks and got 3 copies printed and laminated, used one taped down as the cutting template, and then cut it all out. Recut the white space out of the second copy, used some spray adhesive to stick it to the panel and then put all the components on top of it.

So really, once you have a design drawn out, it's up to you to what medium you print it on etc. For a larger printout, a sign shop or something might actually be a little more affordable than just printing an A3 sized piece of vinyl. I'll chuck one of the lower res PDFs of the panel here if you want to have a look.

View attachment Control Panel Rough 2 COLOURS final.pdf
 
Got to agree about the wiring but great job in all other regards!
You might want to pencil in a little cable tie/spiral plastic wrap time, if only so the rest of us can sleep at night! :excl:

I also regretted cutting the tops off 3 kegs, should definitely have left the top on at least one for a ready made bottom-draining mash tun.
But then if we were all gifted with hindsight in advance, no one would ever make 3/4v brewing rigs :D , at least not themselves/for fun/with a notion of sticking to a tight budget etc.

Happy brewing!
 

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