All-Plexiglas CP for a cocktail. Possible?

[Crowquill]

I was working on another project and tried bending 1/4" Plexiglas for the first time with some good results.

I'm going to need to make control panels for the Midway-style cocktail I'm building and since I have a 2'x2' piece of 1/4" plexi sitting around I was thinking I might try to use it for the control panels instead of buying and bending sheet steel.

I think keeping everything square might be the biggest challenge. With the short sections in-between the bends, I'm thinking it'll be strong enough. I'm also thinking I can skip out on overlays this way and shave another few bucks off of the project. My other concern is how durable it'll be between the button-holes.

What do you guys think? I figure the worse-case scenario is that I waste some material that I already have.

[danny_galaga]

if its clear id be worried about how scratched up it will look after a while. but anything opaque, give it a shot!

oh, love the avatar! did you design it?

[Crowquill]

It'd be clear plexi. it'll definitely get scratched up a bit, but it won't see near the abuse that cabinets saw in arcades.

The other thing I'm wondering is if I can find a paint that would adhere to the backside without roughing up the plexi (and making it cloudy). I'm thinking it'd be similar to the way Apple made their laptops and G4 towers. Maybe like a spray-on auto primer or something. I'm thinking of trying to paint it black.

oh, love the avatar! did you design it?

Yes I did. I was playing around in Adobe Illustrator one day drawing Hello Kitty style characters and it evolved into a hammer-wielding cyborg bunny. I should probably update it since the upright's basically done and the cocktail is the one under construction.

[danny_galaga]

if you have scraps you may want to experiment with paint used for model rc cars. its used on the inside of clear polycarbonate. obviously its designed to 'key' onto that type of plastic but it is very flexible and obviously wont fog up...

[Mugzilla]

Been done

[TOK]

Spraying from the back with R/C car paint works great. I did that with both of my overlays. They are flat, but when looking through the plexi at them, they look fantastic.

[Crowquill]

Been done

I know I've seen several stand-alone control panels made of plexi but I can't find many details (mainly thickness). I'm guessing most are made with 1/4".

Thanks for the tip on the paint. I'll check that out tomorrow.

I'm going to try and bend one panel tomorrow. I'll post pics once I get done or declare defeat. I'm sure "defeat" pictures would be more entertaining. 

As a side-note, due to comments in this post my avatar's been updated w/ the cocktail. Here's a before-and-after pic.

[HaRuMaN]

That looks more like 1/2 inch to me.

[EwJ]

Have you seen MikeDeuce's Leon control panel? 
IIRC, he painted the underside with RC Car Paint.

http://ironvulva.com/jump.html

[Crowquill]

Have you seen MikeDeuce's Leon control panel? 
IIRC, he painted the underside with RC Car Paint.

http://ironvulva.com/jump.html

I guess he did. As many times as I've seen pics of that I thought it was either printed artwork or cut vinyl. That's pretty impressive that he basically stencilled it.

[danny_galaga]

Been done

and so it can never be done again?

oh, and the new avatar is even better (",)

[Crowquill]

I was just browsing the main board and finally clicked on Zeppo's post about the Tardis-MAME machine. The concept was just so bizarre that I've passed it over many times. As it turns out, the project used a white acryllic panel for the controls. He used 6mm acryllic (just under 1/4"). I think this might be the only MAME project from the UK that didn't refer to the acryllic as Perspex. Considering the size of his panel, my smaller bent panels should be much stronger.

Here's the thread: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=63931.0

and so it can never be done again?

oh, and the new avatar is even better (",)

Every time I look at that pic I feel sorry for Player 1. 

Glad to see my avatar is liked.

I'm going to try the panels later today and probably post pics tonight. Hopefully I can find my digital camera before then and not have to rely on my phone's crappy pix.

[Numbski]

Well, I hadn't seen the Leon panel until I saw this thread, which inspired me to do a little test of my own:

http://www.numbski.com/hacks/cab/panel-painting-test.html

I figure this might be of interest to you guys.  I really like the effect, and I spent a total of an hour on it.  Half-hour vectorizing the Tien, 15 minutes cutting the symbol out of self-stick vinyl, and another 15 minutes painting.  It's really easy to get an excellent effect that way.