Fixing bezel artwork.

[fuzzy-felt]

I’m going through the planning stage of building my first arcade cabinet, a bartop, and I’m having a little difficulty in working out the monitor bezel, and how to incorporate artwork, and would be glad to receive any advice anyone might have.

I have taken the plastic casing off a Dell 19” 4:3 LCD monitor so that I can hopefully build a bezel that fits very snuggly around the very edges of the screen (I didn’t want to have to deal with the plastic angled monitor bezel which stuck out 5mm from the face of the screen and has protruding logo and control buttons on it). I’m now left with a 10mm (3/8”) wide metal surround that is almost flush with the screen.

When I mount the screen I will have a 75mm (3”) gap all the way round the monitor, which I need to cover. I want the bezel to have artwork, but I’m unsure about what to do here exactly. I’m not sure I would want to stick the artwork to the back of a plexiglass panel (not even sure you can do that – the adhesive would be on the front on the artwork which doesn’t sound right). Would it be normal to sandwich the artwork between two same-sized pieces of plexiglass. I’m not sure if this ‘double sheet’ would obscure the screen picture any way. If this is the way to do it, what thicknesses of plexi would be used (approx. 530 x 510mm (21 x 20”)) so that it doesn’t bend under its own weight (saying that, it will be set 20 degrees from the vertical and it will be virtually touching the monitor screen). If this double sheet is not the right thing to do, then what would be? If I were to use a sandwich material only behind the bezel artwork then I would need to support it somehow, and also think carefully about the edge where it meets the screen, as this might be visible and not look very neat.

Any help would be appreciated. Please excuse me if I've posted this in the wrong place.

Thanks,

Mark.

[Afterburner]

Not sure if you got an answer elsewhere, but I'll take a stab at it....

I have a very large bezel...my cab width is very large compared to the display.  It's roughly 29" wide and I just upgraded to a 20" 4:3 LCD.

I printed up the artwork on a laser printer on several sheets of paper and *very* carefully assembled them into one sheet with the center cut out for the screen.

I thought about sandwiching the paper between sheets of plexi as this was how I did my marquee artwork so that I could light it from behind.  But I'm cheap and didn't want to pay for another large piece of plexi for the bezel.  Instead I got a piece of 1/8" masonite and cut out the center so that the inside edges of the arwork hung over by about 1/2".  I sandwiched the artwork between the plexi and masonite.  It looks perfect.