Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
homemade cab.
Options
-
17-03-2015 6:42pm#1
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
dinky earnshaw wrote: »Hi , I'm in the process of building a cab for the kids playroom. I'm having trouble mounting the monitor definitely a two man job trying to find the right angle and depth etc.
I'm thinking of a marvel theme but was quoted £260 for the side art. Anybody here design there own ? Is there much involved ? If anyone can point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
Hi, Hope the build isnt giving you too many headaches! I'll offer up my 2 cents:
Monitor mounting/positioning.
If you already know required height and angle of the monitor then the easiest approach is to cut a section of MDF/Ply etc. approx 200mm by the internal width of cabinet. This is what the monitor is going to be attached to. Find the centre of both the width and height and from there mark out your holes for the VESA mounting screws, the centres are probably going to be 100mm apart from each other.
Attach the monitor to the board. fix some corner blocks to each end of the board at the rear side, have the 2 screws in each block going into the board leaving the one screw hole facing out into the cabinet side.
Now this makes life a lot easier: Lay the cabinet down on its side. you can now position the monitor in place without fear of dropping it, support it with 1 hand and fire in your 4 screws with the other.
The nice thing about this method is that you can fine tune your monitor positioning when you have it upright again. as long as you leave 1 screw in each side it will act like a pivot /swing. If you have to try a few different positions its not the end of the world as the unused holes wont be seen anyway.
Just be sure that the screws are long enough to go through the block and nicely into the cabinet, but not too long so it bursts through the other side.
Once you are happy with the positioning you can always reinforce it with more cornerblocks/batons down the sides.
I actually have a build on at the moment and should be at the monitor fitting stage next week, I can take some pictures if required.
Artwork / Printing
Unfortunately you can't really convert a Jpeg to a Vector easily, a vector is more of a mathematical method of drawing lines and filling in colour. Its actually great if you are doing a graphic that needs to be re sized frequently and thats why a lot of company logos are done this way. They can be resized from a business card up to a van or billboard with without pixelating of tearing (jagged edges)
When I'm designing artwork for clients arcade machines I will work in photoshop and work in the actual document size, file sizes can get quite large (over 1gb) but I find there are no nasty surprises when re sizing. My print guy prefers the photoshop format as well.
If you want to do vector based art from scratch then Illustrator is the better software in my opinion, I still use it for designing cabinets as well. Its actually a great way to work out where to cut as you can draw all you panels and then arrange/flip/ rotate them on a virtual 8X4 sheet.
If its going into a kids playroom then you might want to think about protecting that art from little fingers that just love to pick at stuff. I am also building one for a clients family/kids room at the moment and will be fitting clear polycarbonate sheets on to protect the artwork. I've gone a couple of mm thinner with the cabinet material so the T molding will still be perfect on the edge... here they are with the protective film still on. Its a new one for me but I'm actually going to do all future cabinets this way as it just looked great when I test filtted with the t molding. I'm steering away from printed vinyl and and doing it on photo quality inkjet media, it really does give the side a nice finish and theres no need to worry about artwork peeling away.
Hope that helps
Damien0 -
Damien King wrote: »Hi, Hope the build isnt giving you too many headaches! I'll offer up my 2 cents:
Monitor mounting/positioning.
If you already know required height and angle of the monitor then the easiest approach is to cut a section of MDF/Ply etc. approx 200mm by the internal width of cabinet. This is what the monitor is going to be attached to. Find the centre of both the width and height and from there mark out your holes for the VESA mounting screws, the centres are probably going to be 100mm apart from each other.
Attach the monitor to the board. fix some corner blocks to each end of the board at the rear side, have the 2 screws in each block going into the board leaving the one screw hole facing out into the cabinet side.
Now this makes life a lot easier: Lay the cabinet down on its side. you can now position the monitor in place without fear of dropping it, support it with 1 hand and fire in your 4 screws with the other.
The nice thing about this method is that you can fine tune your monitor positioning when you have it upright again. as long as you leave 1 screw in each side it will act like a pivot /swing. If you have to try a few different positions its not the end of the world as the unused holes wont be seen anyway.
Just be sure that the screws are long enough to go through the block and nicely into the cabinet, but not too long so it bursts through the other side.
Once you are happy with the positioning you can always reinforce it with more cornerblocks/batons down the sides.
I actually have a build on at the moment and should be at the monitor fitting stage next week, I can take some pictures if required.
Artwork / Printing
Unfortunately you can't really convert a Jpeg to a Vector easily, a vector is more of a mathematical method of drawing lines and filling in colour. Its actually great if you are doing a graphic that needs to be re sized frequently and thats why a lot of company logos are done this way. They can be resized from a business card up to a van or billboard with without pixelating of tearing (jagged edges)
When I'm designing artwork for clients arcade machines I will work in photoshop and work in the actual document size, file sizes can get quite large (over 1gb) but I find there are no nasty surprises when re sizing. My print guy prefers the photoshop format as well.
If you want to do vector based art from scratch then Illustrator is the better software in my opinion, I still use it for designing cabinets as well. Its actually a great way to work out where to cut as you can draw all you panels and then arrange/flip/ rotate them on a virtual 8X4 sheet.
If its going into a kids playroom then you might want to think about protecting that art from little fingers that just love to pick at stuff. I am also building one for a clients family/kids room at the moment and will be fitting clear polycarbonate sheets on to protect the artwork. I've gone a couple of mm thinner with the cabinet material so the T molding will still be perfect on the edge... here they are with the protective film still on. Its a new one for me but I'm actually going to do all future cabinets this way as it just looked great when I test filtted with the t molding. I'm steering away from printed vinyl and and doing it on photo quality inkjet media, it really does give the side a nice finish and theres no need to worry about artwork peeling away.
Hope that helps
Damien
Thanks for info. Not too many headaches yet . I built the cab in the playroom to save me carrying it up the stairs. Ill have to clear the room to lie it on its side which ill need to do for the tmoulding anyway.
Your cab design is very similar to mine. My sides are 12mm mdf I planned on getting 1/2 inch tmoulding which is 15mm I believe. Would there be enough room for artwork and the polycarbonate ?
I'm planning on trying to do my own artwork but finger painting while in kindergarten as a 3 year-old. Would you be available for a nixer if it doesn't work out?0 -
-
-
![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
Advertisement