Many thanks for that pointer, Sebastian.
Their prices are fine but how long is the learning curve on their software?
A laser engraving shop might also suit your purpose. If you can get pre-anodised sheet or strips (or send them out for anodising yourself), then the laser engraving shop can burn the labels on for you. If you give a lighter touch with the laser, the anodising turns white, if you go heavier it exposes the aluminium below. The picture is a front plate from some amplifiers I made along time ago.
Laser engravers are just ‘printers’ so you can print from any type of file – CAD document, word file, picture, etc.
There is also another technique where you paint on a fluid (which is a white/green colour), burn it with the laser and it leaves black text. Presumably there are other colours, but I haven’t investigated. We used this for production part numbering.
Peter wrote:
I can do the metal strips myself but can’t do engraving, and doing painting to a high standard (on such a small batch) is also not easy, given the hassle of buying the stuff and cleaning out the spraygun etc
I’ve been looking for engraving, funnily enough – to get new placards made!
Looking around locally, it seems that key cutting services will often do this kind of thing and you can probably get it done locally. Unless this kind of thing is going to require an EASA form 1 of course. (The LAA don’t care where I get my placards from).
@Sebastian_G have you used that Schaeffer company? I have emailed them several times, with no response. I will try google translate next 
Hi Peter
I emailed them a couple of days ago (in English) to see if they could make a CAD drawing from my physical bit of plastic that overlays my panel. They responded with the price to scan it in. I will be adding a couple of Garmin G5’s in the near future so I will get them to modify the base Piper panel
Try again – perhaps they are busy!
No luck so far, 5 emails later. Also somebody who can make placards saw this thread and emailed me but didn’t respond to my reply either
I will dig around for a company in the UK. When I started in business in 1978 we were making industrial control panels and used some local guy who could engrave anything. He used some multi-layer laminate on which the top-1 layer was white and the engraving just cut through the top layer. In this case I need something stiff however.
In fact I wonder whether engraving is worth doing. One can print really nice labels from one of the Brother (etc) labelling printers. I have this one
Then you can change the labels as required. And I can make the metal strips at home, machining the holes precisely on a milling machine. Much more flexible and futureproof.
Fly Visuals in the UK maybe able to help. They have made nice placards for me before. Very reasonable and professional.
Thanks William. They do nice stuff, but seem to use a thick “plastic” material.
I think I will do them myself, because with the LPV update coming up one day I will be changing the CB names around anyway…
I hope someone can help me understand which documents list mandatory placards. By mandatory I mean the ones which need to be in place for an EASA airplane to be airworthy.
Someone stated that an ELA1 SEP aircraft is not airworthy without a certain placard. The placard was not factory installed. I checked the EASA type certificate data sheet as well as operating and maintenance documents listed in the TCDS: Flight Manual, Maintenance Manual and Airplane major inspection schedule. The placard is not even mentioned there. I did a query on Airworthiness Directives, still no luck finding one which would require the placard.
Where else should I look?
STCs can also list mandatory placards.
