they came bearing gifts of new control panels...

On my way out the door to work this morning, I was met by my wife's uncle, Jeff, who has been working on a new metal control panel for me. He had stopped by to give me the first prototype. One thing that I noticed right away, it that this new aluminum panel weighs half as much as the steel original. After a quick test-fit, it looks like one of the bends needs to be bent in a bit more and the top and bottom rows of buttons need to be placed closer together. Other than that, it looks good. I will find out more tonight when I try to fit some controls in the panel.

I snapped a few quick photos of it this morning (bear with the quality as all I had time to use was my cell phone camera):

prototype #1

old and new, together for the first time

Hopefully after a few tweaks, I will have a shiny new panel to install!!