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Ok so I have had my PPI 2350DM (1992) for over a year now and I recently acquired an A1200 (1996) to go with it. Both amps were recently gone thru electronically and received minor repairs from envision electronics, who did an incredible job at a very reasonable price. Now that the amps are in 100% working order and have been returned to their sonic greatness I felt that they should look as great as they sound. Now I know there are people here that have redone the graphics on their PPI amps using vinyl stickers and such. I considered going this route and even contacted several places to try to get this done. What I realized though is that I do not really like the "Miami Vice" colors in the graphics, in fact many years ago when I owned my first 2350DM I sent it back to PPI to have it re-shrouded in black. But let's be honest the PPI art graphics have become something of an enigma, they represent the excess and greatest of the 90s era of car audio. So that being said I decided to attempt to update the amps with a more monochromatic look thinking it might be cheaper to have done also. In any case I still couldnt really find anyone to redo the graphics the way I wanted them at any price really.
Then I realized that we have a laser engraver at work. We use it to make plaques at work for retirements and achievements things like that. We buy brass with a black finish powdercoated over it, we use the laser to cut thru the powdercoat exposing the brass underneath. So needless to say I made some arrangements with the guy who runs it to let me use it. So I spent most of my day off on MLK day scanning and stitching together the image of the art of the 2350DM and A1200. The 2350DM came out great, the A1200 did not. Because the A1200 has the contoured heatsink I could not get the center art section to sit flat on the scanner bed and the distance caused some blurriness in the graphic and text. So for now I will show you the 2350DM and I will post the A1200 once I get a clearer image. Here is the final color image I produced.
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I then put the image into gray scale to give me a monochromatic view of what it would look like and I love it. Here is the gray scale image with some cleaning up of the graphics, there were some scratches and nicks in the original image.
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So my intent is to have both amps powdercoated in black and then cut down to the bare steel and aluminum underneath giving a black amp with silver graphics. Here is what it should look like.
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So being happy with what I was hoping to see I had to try it. So today I loaded up a sheet of 24" x 12" coated brass today and put the laser to work. Here is the results, the detail came out very well.
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The only problem that I had is that even though the background looked pure white in the image the laser revealed the presence of some pixels in the negative space which basically made the laser leave a trail in some of the white areas of the image. I have since had some friends in the photo dept. actually cut out the art from the background. I will do one more test run before a real shroud but I am close enough that I know this is going to work and wanted to share it with all of you.
Then I realized that we have a laser engraver at work. We use it to make plaques at work for retirements and achievements things like that. We buy brass with a black finish powdercoated over it, we use the laser to cut thru the powdercoat exposing the brass underneath. So needless to say I made some arrangements with the guy who runs it to let me use it. So I spent most of my day off on MLK day scanning and stitching together the image of the art of the 2350DM and A1200. The 2350DM came out great, the A1200 did not. Because the A1200 has the contoured heatsink I could not get the center art section to sit flat on the scanner bed and the distance caused some blurriness in the graphic and text. So for now I will show you the 2350DM and I will post the A1200 once I get a clearer image. Here is the final color image I produced.
I then put the image into gray scale to give me a monochromatic view of what it would look like and I love it. Here is the gray scale image with some cleaning up of the graphics, there were some scratches and nicks in the original image.
So my intent is to have both amps powdercoated in black and then cut down to the bare steel and aluminum underneath giving a black amp with silver graphics. Here is what it should look like.
So being happy with what I was hoping to see I had to try it. So today I loaded up a sheet of 24" x 12" coated brass today and put the laser to work. Here is the results, the detail came out very well.
The only problem that I had is that even though the background looked pure white in the image the laser revealed the presence of some pixels in the negative space which basically made the laser leave a trail in some of the white areas of the image. I have since had some friends in the photo dept. actually cut out the art from the background. I will do one more test run before a real shroud but I am close enough that I know this is going to work and wanted to share it with all of you.
