OK, I'm calling on help from the experts - this means you! I wanted to do a little more work on the arcade cabinet when I got home from work yesterday but I am still trying to work out how the control panel and monitor bezel are going to interact with each other as well as how the bottom of the control panel is going to transition to the bottom portion of the cabinet (the top of the coin door panel). I ended up staring at the cabinet for a solid 45 minutes without doing a single thing because I want to make sure I do this right.
This is a picture of the problem area.
Hopefully the pencil lines are viewable - they show where the control panel will go. Right now the control panel top/bezel is at a 90 degree angle to the control banel bottom. I should note that the small support piece in the middle of the cabinet (as shown in the picture) is not glued in place so it is moveable.
Here are the issues:
Issue #1. Should the control panel and bezel be made out of one sheet of MDF? I want them on the same plane because I think it will look slick except I run into problems when I start thinking about adding the smoked glass overlay (3/16" thick) and potentially a thin posterboard bezel to frame the monitor closely.
The monitor is going to be a 17" Dell LCD computer monitor. I plan to cut a hole in the MDF bezel panel the exact size of the outer circumference of the monitor case so I can have the LCD screen flush with the MDF bezel panel. The monitor will be supported from behind. I will probably need to add a thin piece of black posterboard on top to cover the edges of the monitor and make it look nice.
The control panel will be covered with Happs black vinyl so it will be able to withstand a little abuse from my daughter when she plays it.
Issue #2. How should the angled front of the control panel meet the middle support piece? The only reason this middle piece is there at all is to frame the hinged coin door panel on the top. I wanted a small lip on the top of the coin door panel so it didn't just butt up against the front of the control panel. This lip will also hide the fact that the coin door panel opens.
I think the second pic I attached is a nice solution but it also means I will have to get someone to manufacture the CP out of metal for me - I'm not sure how expensive that will be and I would really like to make the entire CP out of MDF but I do not know how - at the very least it would require cutting the pieces of MDF at some pretty odd angles to make everything flush.
Any thoughts no matter how crazy are more than welcome!!! THANK YOU!!