There has been some time since my last post in this thread. I have been very busy, mainly working full time from home. Spending some of my free time with family and using whatever has been left to design/redesign/build this cabinet.
Since I have posted my renders I had to make some changes to the design. Most obvious one is different type of plywood used. In lockdown I was unable to source desired type of plywood from anywhere local and if purchased online I would have to wait 2-4 weeks for delivery (not to mention additional cost). So in the end I have settled for hardwood faced plywood which I thought will be too dark and too red for my liking but it is slowly growing on me (my wife likes it better to light finish so it's a bonus).
Second design change comes from underestimating how difficult thermal forming acrylic is. Even after making multiple tests creating jigs and building DIY oven to heat acrylic it proved to be almost impossible to do it well enough. So I had to ditch nice curved CP idea
...Would it just be smoked plexi with a black backer on it to mask the parts that dont let light through...
Idea was to have black acrylic as backing and then clear edge lit acrylic with lines engraved in front. This means that lines are visible when not lit. It would have been nicer if it was how you are describing it but I think you would need another piece of black tinted acrylic as top layer.
are you going to bolt it to a wall? How is it not going to tip over?
sorry for late reply. this is third slim cab i have built and from my experience it's not necessary as long as the cab is fairly rigid and can be properly levelled. Of course it would not hurt to also secure it to the wall.
Some photos
CP pre assembly
CP underside
Sides ready
CP light tests. It looks much better in real life than in those photos, you have to take my word for it
From test above I found out that there is a lot of light bleed from CP acrylic to buttons and vice-versa so I tried to counteract that by wrapping buttons in aluminium foil (which wasn't enough) and then painting underside of each button black
Cabinet enters the house. Most elements are now ready or almost ready.
Assembled CP underside
Customized trackball. I wanted to have one but couldn't justify the price of Ultimarc or similar so got cheap version (
link) removed top completely to allow ball to protrude enough above CP surface and upgraded LEDs. Changing LEDs was not enough to give glow effect I was after so I have installed piece of opaque acrylic to diffuse the light
Coin slot. It has "hidden" button to add coins by pressing "Please insert token"
Nearly there...
Installed CP. I had to ditch idea of having two sandwiched pieces of acrylic (black and clear). Because sheet acrylic is perfectly flat applying pressure to two layers creates vacuum which appears as ugly spots when seen through clear layer. To avoid this I have stuck carbon fibre vinyl on top of black acrylic. This also helps to disguise dust particles and fingerprints which otherwise are quite apparent.
I'm now waiting for more acrylic to be delievered to cover speakers and space between monitors as I have wasted some when attempting to bend it.
I'm also working on code for Arduino to controll LEDs and make use of PIR sensor so still lots to do...