Gauge faces - anyone make their own?

For curiosity sake, I went through and designed some gauges on their little on-line design tool. A 6-piece gauge set with custom faces was just under $300 (with some assembly required). That seems almost TOO cheap. Anyone using these?

 

Cheap crap, brought to you by the guys at Autoloc.

 

That's EXACTLY what I figured! I've always had the notion that you get what you pay for with gauges.

 

Homemade V-8 cop gauge...using a domed glass clock face and printing up a scanned cop gauge that I have laying around.. what is cool is the V-8 lights up..and also the numbers

on the freakster...32 ford woodie roadster pickup

 

No reason you can't play around with the designs there and have some made up using your own "guts"

Mark

 

mine is silk screened with epoxy ink on to white coated aluminum sheet.
The guy at work run of about 10 of them and this week end I found a suitable case for 5 bucks at the local antique place. I even made the Stewart Warner font talk about fake.

 

I have an ALPS printer that uses a wax based ribbon system to print.
What this means is that I can print WHITE, SILVER, GOLD, etc. ontp decal mediums clear plastic, etc. It can print on almost anything that is flat. Ibought it to make decals for my model railroading but it can make PROPER waterslide decals OR print the white numbers onto a flat black background for dial faces, etc.
Now if I was to get off my lazy butt.....

 

Marks914-Very nice! Great stuff, lots of good information and ideas here...anybody ever hear of "sublimation printing"? It uses special inks in a standard printer, on a heat transfer paper, and you can print on anything that is properly treated with a coating, like aluminum sheet, ceramic, etc. It's the method used for printing photos onto coffee mugs. If you can print it on a computer, you can transfer print it onto metal. Anyway, I was wondering if that's not a method used by some of the people doing this?

 

I'm using those Aurora gauges because I wanted to do them custom like an old Hallicrafters radio dial with a light green glow. The colors they printed and sent were nothing like the colors I saw on my computer screen so that was bit of a bummer for me. The biggest bummer was the cheap ass construction off the gauges themselves, they were the biggest let-down. Made entirely of plastic.

Anyhow, I have gotten over the fact that only 4 of my six gauges work and that the color is a bit off and now I just drive blind with no idea of how fast I'm going. It's worked so far and it isn't the first car I've had with bum gauges.
T

 

I made custom gauge "cans" for each of them so I am pretty much stuck with these gauges until I pony up for a new set and design new cans for all of them. Not going to happen any time soon.

 

I can't believe , with all these great ideas that no one mentioned getting a sign painter to do em with a brush ! Corngrower did a set for my buddies A tub and they look killer . Some of you guys are thinking too hard.

 

Here is a update picture of my fake police special in a home made dash

 

The police special looks great!
We got our start using rub-downs and printed bumper sticker vinyl for dials.cheap but effective. Now we do mostly screen printing and laser cut dials, and sometimes water- slide decals for contoured dials
Mark

 

I am working on a 1947 Plymouth using a method off the Miata web site. www.revlimiter.net Using Adboe Illustrator and ink jet priter on clear transparency material. Here is the heater control that replaces the Vinatage Air panel. Looks good at night since the light comes through the panel.