Control panels are very beneficial especially in making operations easier when controlling switch boards. The type of control panels that you choose however determines the layout of your power switch and how effective it will be. Fascia panels create the best layout compared to coloured tapes or painted Masonite panels. Masonite panels are usually not very sophisticated besides such panels are mostly printed on normal paper. Lamination however makes them stiffer and provides extra protection something that can also be achieved with fascia panels.

Setting up the Panels

Fascia panels are trimmed and laminated with one-eighth of a transparent laminate material. To prevent the plastic from peeling from the paper, you can choose panels that are solidly laminated along the edges. To join the graphics, the panels are glued to the fascia using Foam Tack glue and behind the panel, different types of sceneries can be used. The most common is however Woodland Scenic. The glue is usually spread thinly on the graphics and then carefully positioned on to the fascia. Using wallpaper roller, the panel is made to stick all round. To make sure that that it is flat, the edges of the control panel are taped.

Installing the Panels

To fix the fascia panels to the power switchboard, holes are drilled on the panels at certain space intervals. Nuts are then used to hold the panel in place. The nuts should hold the panels firmly and to make this effective, they should be drilled and cleaned properly with a round file. This procedure should however be undertaken when the glue has dried and stuck to the panel firmly. The holes should not be oversize and when filing them they should not be enlarged. Filing should always be done carefully to end up with a hole of the right size. Most importantly, the edges of the hole should be cleaned to get rid of sticking parts. After this the power switch buttons can then be launched on the fascia panels.

After the entire process of setting up the control panels to the power switch board, the next task now is to colour-code the buttons to make operations easy. You can assign different commands for red buttons, green buttons or black buttons. Though these are the main colours used in power switch control boards, you can choose other types of colours such as yellow or blue. To operate the switch board using the fascia panels, you will have a switch 8 and an NCE Mini Panel at your disposal. This makes switch control easier as opposed to using latching relays or diode matrix that is so complex.

Note that this is best way of making fascia control panels. This is because this simple method works perfectly on curved fascias and most importantly with most panels. Simply put, the panel below the switch board is similar to the one above it since they are wired in parallel. This makes switch control operations much easier to access.