Home made Arcade Machine???

andrew241983 wrote: »

Wouldn't feel comfortable using a sheet of glass knowing my friends and they way they react to a bad beat...

The glass bezel is there to protect the monitor and insides of the cabinet. It's suposed to take the impact of stuff like that instead of the screen behind it, that's exactly what it's for. Toughened glass is better, but using plexi is not going to afford your screen any protection whatsoever, especially if your mates are whacking it as hard as you say. Plexi is really weak and brittle, doesn't take any weight, and will just crack and f*ck up anything that's behind it if it gets a hit, meaning you'll be out of pocket for a new screen AND have to get a new bezel cover as well.

A piece of glass is much better. If you're worried about it breaking, just put some foam padding behind it at the edges to cushion any impacts (adhesive sticky pads or foam strips are good for that). You can put a clear or very slightly dark smoky car window tint over it to hold it all together in case of any cracking/shattering, but even that's probably overkill. Go for the thickest sheet your cab will take that you can afford in order to to minimize the chance of breakage. A piece of 6mm glass is pretty solid. If your friends are hitting your machine hard enough to be breaking it, you probably should be thinking about not inviting them round anymore.

andrew241983 wrote: »

how much are ye talking for a piece of this about 27"x30" roughly??? and how would i go about fixing it to the cab.. was gonna use lats attached to the cab and then screw the plexi to it

Firstly, DON'T screw through plexi, it will just crack and chip off, especially if you're screwing through near the edges. It's very brittle and allows for little or no expansion, it just breaks if you drive into it. If you're looking to put a screw through it, use a panhead screw and heat a philips screwdriver up and melt a hole through it instead, then put the screw in and let the head hold the plexi in place. I learned that trick the hard way :-(

Re the glass, the last piece of glass i bought set me back 20 or 30 quid in a local glaziers i think, for a smallish upright cab, converted from a poker machine, but shop around because prices vary. It was plain glass, and i had it cut to size and rounded and polished at the edges to avoid cuts to my fingers when handling it (don't skimp on this, an injury from a piece of sheet glass or a glass splinter in your hand is extremely painful and makes using a joystick very difficult to do).

I fitted it onto the cab by screwing three 2x1 inch batons into the inside of the cabinet to the left, right, and top of the screen giving me a 1 inch support all around for the glass sheet to lie on. The height was set to about 3mm clearance off the CRT screen. I made a lip at the bottom edge for the glass to sit against so it wouldn't slide downwards towards my feet, by making sure the batons for the glass were about 4 or 5mm lower than the batons that the left and right of the control panel sit on. Then all i did was attach a piece of 45 degree cross section dowelling about 10mm thick to the underneath of the marquee/speaker panel at the top of the glass to hold it into place at the top so that the only way you could have moved it out of there was to lift it forwards at the bottom.

The last step was to lock the glass into position by fitting the control panel on so it sat over the lip at the bottom giving the glass nowhere to move to. With the panel on, the glass couldn't be lifted forward, and had nowhere to move to in any other direction.

From the front, the only restraint for the glass you could see was the thin 45 degree piece of wood at the top, which was painted to match the cab and looked perfect. Sorry i haven't got pictures, that cab is long gone, but if the description isn't clear let me know and I'll see if i can do a better job of explaining it.