poster frame instead of acrylic sheets?

[chucklepie]

Hello,
I've been pricing up acrylic sheets to cover the control panel, monitor bezel and marquee and it's quite expensive but more to the point adds a fair size to the thickness making jointing difficult, etc. (well, for me anyway). Not to mention the difficulties in cutting, drilling, etc.

I've got some poster frames in the house and I thought, why don't I use that. Not only is the plastic clear and thin (maybe 1mm) but it's got a stiff card mount that could double as the bezel and it's the right size to fit everything.

Is there an obvious flaw in my idea?

[mytymaus007]

Is it easy to scratch, test it out drill some 1-1/8 holes in it to see if it cracks. if you have something you might as well use it if it dont work get something else!. I use duraplex from Lowes its 1/8 thick not as much as Lexan and strong as hell. The onlky time i crack it is when i was drilling a hole using a regular drill bit. I would recommend a hole saw bit when drilling the holes perfection!!

[SavannahLion]

I believe duraplex is a brand name for acrylic, like plexiglass.

What you might have is LDPE. I have a bunch of it from IKEA that I used to frame some MTG cards. The frames ran me approximately $5 a piece or therabouts. It's kind of soft and "squidgy" but useable for it's purpose.

I'm not entirely sure how workable it is. When researching it, I found that it does tend to crack more than its big brother HDPE. But I found very little on how it compares to acrylic. Best starting point I've found is this: http://www.machinist-materials.com/comparison_table_for_plastics.htm

Notice that LDPE doesn't even show up for the match. Most information I've found so far dealt with archival reference. Which is useful, but only tells half the story.

I gave up after a fashion and decided to use acrylics for my current project. I just didn't like how "squidgy" it felt and don't want to contend with clips.

[MTPPC]

Call some local glass shops. Cut to size Glass is really pretty cheap.

[ChadTower]

Glass like that won't work for the CP.  Can't use nontempered glass on the CP and can't drill tempered glass.

[claremont]

Hint in drilling plexi... run the drill in reverse. Much slower but it works. I did not believe it until I tried it.

[chucklepie]

Cheers, I was just wondering as I'm planning on using proper glass for the screen and thinner layer on top of the control panel would make life easier with the material I was going to use to hide the joins (18mm right-angled aluminium rather than t-molding around the CP as it's recessed inside the cabinet.