I have an arcade stick which has an acrylic top plate backed by 10mm+ MDF underneath the artwork. I am about to replace the acrylic plate with a new one, but I realized that the Blast City template is a little askew, so when I laser cut a new plate one it won’t fit exactly on top of the MDF anymore.
So my thought is to cut the new acrylic plate and then fix the button clearance by cutting out about a 5mm offset around all the right hand buttons so that the acrylic has nothing under it where the buttons are sitting. Is this a bad idea when considering durability? Is 3mm acrylic strong enough to hold without flexing or am I likely to get cracking between the buttons and so on?
Another option would be to cut out the clearance in the MDF and then use a 1mm steel/aluminium plate and a 2mm acrylic plate on top of that to make it stronger.
3mm acrylic should be ok without any flexing, as long as you’re not going to Hulk-smash your buttons. Should be fine especially since you have MDF supporting it from underneath everywhere except for immediately around the buttons.
The addition of the 1mm metal plate under 2mm acrylic would definitely be much stronger, though.
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Yeah I figure if should be fine with 3mm acrylic, the benefit of it being that I can cut it myself at the local makerspace. Granted I can probably make the holes in a 1mm aluminium sheet as well, its still a lot more work.
Either way I think even with the aluminium it wont hold if you go totally apeshit and just smash the buttons, but rage quitting isn’t something I aspire to do.
Basically I just want to figure out what’s the best bang for the buck, getting the aluminium and working it is easily twice the cost of just getting the 3mm acrylic.