bezel/plexi questions

[severdhed]

well, i decided to redesign my cabinet, part of which required moving my monitor forward in the cabinet.  When i bought the cabinet, it had glass over the monitor with a combo of somekind of black adhesive masking, and some spray paint.  Before, the monitor just sat on a shelf, the glass just kinda leaned against it, and then i bolted the control panel in to hold it in place.  well, when i moved the monitor forward, i made a custom mounting bracket (it is an LCD) out of the mounting bracket that came with the original arcade monitor...anyway because of the height adjustment on the monitor, as well as a slightly decreased angle, the glass is too large...plus the top masking covers the top of the screen.

so i bought a piece of lexan to cover the screen, but now i have no idea how to fasten it.  plus i dont know what to do as far as a bezel/masking.

I thought about getting some black posterboard, spraypainting it black to make it darker, cutting out around the screen and just placing it behind the plexi, but i dont know how that will look.  The other option i came up with was to mask the back of the plexi with tape where the screen is, and then spray paint the back of the plexi.  Will regular spray paint work..or do i need some of that krylon fusion?  Or is there a better way to do this?

 I took extra time to elimante unneeded visible screws.(bottom mounted joystick instead of bolting them through the panel, attached panel with cabinet latches instead of screws...etc)  so i dont really want to just screw the plexi to the cabinet.  I have some extra metal corner braces i purchased when building my control panel, i thought about mounting them to the insides of the cabinet and then glueing some magnets to the back fo the plexi...that way it would just pop on and off easily.  It is an LCD monitor..so i dont think the weak maginets will affect the picture.

is there a better way to do this that i am just not thinking of?

[Lutus]

Well, my suggestion would be to buy the smoked or tinted plexi and then create the monitor bezel out of black posterboard.

The black posterboard behind the plexi setup is what numerous original cabinets did.

[severdhed]

i am having problems locating smoked plexi.  The only place i found that has any plexi is Lowes, and they dont have any smoked plexi.  I'm on a tight budget here...If i can buy stuff locally, i can pay cash, in which case my wife wont notice as quickly.


if i make a bezel out of poster board, how do i hold that in place without it folding/falling?

[Lutus]

A very light "do it yourself limo tint" may work.  You might be able to find more information from searching on this forum.

As for holding it up, you will want to double sided tape the bezel to the very edge of the monitor and then you will need a small strips of wood or something like that on the walls of the cabinet.

These strips will serve two purposes, they will allow you to double sided tape the cardboard bezel to the wood (in effect holding it tight in the middle with the monitor and on the edges with the wood strips)

Also the plexi can then rest against the wood strips to keep it from touching the actual monitor.

Does that make sense?  I could prolly get a picture to show you better in a couple hours if you wanted.

[AtomSmasher]

Perhaps velcro would work good for attaching the plexi.

As for masking the screen, I just painted the plexi itself.  Heres a thread where I explained how I did it  http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=56321.0

Now, the way I painted the plexi was I secured the plexi to the cab with the tv already installed and marked on the plexi with tape the outline of the tv screen on all sides, you may want to mark it slightly larger (1/8'' to 1/4'') so that it won't block the vision when viewing it from one side or the other.  After the plexi is marked, I took it out and then using newspaper and masking tape I covered the area on the inside of the plexi that I had outlined on the other side.  Once it was covered I just used black spray paint and put a few coats of paint on it.  Viola, you have a nice looking bezel.