Main > Main Forum

Using smoked plexiglas - Hey RandyT!

Pages: << < (18/20) > >>

whammoed:

The midway cocktails had clear tempered glass tops with smoked plexi under that covering the monitor.  Are you sure this wouldn't look ok?

RandyT:


--- Quote from: whammoed on August 27, 2004, 03:55:45 pm ---The midway cocktails had clear tempered glass tops with smoked plexi under that covering the monitor.  Are you sure this wouldn't look ok?

--- End quote ---

Without knowing the properties of all the materials and whether any of them were treated with an AR (Anti-Reflective) it's hard to make a comparison.

Regular clear glass reflects about 2% from each surface (4% total).  Plexi also comes very close to this, so you have the possibility of ghosted images unless the two plates are very close together.

As a side note, most of those units were in places like bars (thus the name "cocktail table") where there was very subdued lighting.  IIRC, some of those units looked pretty ugly in the daylight.  I suspect that it was done this way as a cost saving measure, as it was probably cheaper or easier to get than the dark smoked glass tops and you couldn't tell the difference in a dark bar room anyway.

RandyT

patrickl:

Maybe putting the smoked layer under the clear layer is to make the bezel more visible. Only the monitor would then be covered by the smoked layer.

RandyT:


--- Quote from: patrickl on August 27, 2004, 05:33:04 pm ---Maybe putting the smoked layer under the clear layer is to make the bezel more visible. Only the monitor would then be covered by the smoked layer.

--- End quote ---

Maybe, but I have my doubts on that.  The bezels are engineered to mate pretty close to the face of the CRT.  I'm having a hard time envisioning how a bezel would mate with a piece of plexi between it and the CRT.

The bezels are used by necessity to cleanly interface the CRT to surrounding fixtures.  We tend to be  the weird ones that find beauty in them.  I can't imagine an arcade company making a design decision only to accentuate their visibility. ie. if you don't have to see them, all the better.

But that's just conjecture on my part.

RandyT

darktemp:

Thanks RandyT, looks like i'm going to start looking around for plexi instead.  Just to recap, I will be asking for 1/4" grey smoked plexi with a light transmission rating of around 18%.  And if 1/4" is expensive I could go with 1/8" and it would look about the same.  Hope that sounds right.

Pages: << < (18/20) > >>

Go to full version