Anyone ever use PC boards for control panels

[PeterPan]

At least one of my projects calls for 8 very tightly spaced holes for tiny buttons to protrude through, and even tinier (1MM) holes for fiber optic segments near each button hole, and some other assorted holes for LEDs and controls, all on a small 2" x 2" panel. Well I don't know about you folks, but I've found drilling sequences of perfectly aligned and perfectly spaced holes in a plastic enclosure to be a difficult error prone task. One little slip and that enclosure is going to look unprofessional and sloppy. I've gotten better at it, but its still a time consuming process to get right.

Well i assume by now a lot of you know that PC boards, especially small ones, have finally become very inexpensive to prototype, thanks to direct from China fab houses like PCBWay.com. So a crazy thought came to me. What if I used my PCB software to lay out a board exactly the size of the control panel I need, placing all the holes exactly where I need them In the exact sizes I need them, and specifying no traces or through plating. Just order a minimum 1 sided board with all the holes where I need them, and a full copper pour on the side with copper. I could do it reversed so that side with the copper could face down and add shielding to my project. I could even tell the board house not to bother with the solder mask or conformal coating. Meanwhile, I'd be assured that all the holes would be absolutely correctly drilled. I could even specify silkscreen to get all the control labels and product logos, as long as it was all one color.

So what do you think? has anyone done such a thing? If the costs were low, can you think of any reason why it wouldn't work? I know there are companies that do control panels for you, but I doubt anything would be a cheap as some of these China PCB houses.

[anotherjim]

Yes.
And I've seen ones where the panel legend is etched and tinned.

[Mac Walker]

Blue lantern modular synth modules comes to mind....

[alanp]

There's also lasercutting, with plastic panels. I get Rullywowr to laser all my synth panels, these days. He does top notch work!

[tubegeek]

Check this out - ham radio project with some interesting info for us audio circuit builders.

https://aa7ee.wordpress.com/tag/manhattan-construction/

[PeterPan]

Now that I'm considering this, it would be nice if my silk screen layer could have a little more options then my PC cad has, maybe to get a product logo and a few more font options into it. Maybe I could just create the basic silk screen layer along with my gerbers, to get the basic board outline and such, and then edit it separately. Is that possible? I wonder if a board house would accept some other file format just for a top silkscreen.

[PeterPan]

OK!!! here's my first cut at using my PC board panel! How cool is this!!!!