I’m replacing the art on my SE stick, and i’m not satisfied with the way just laminating a piece of paper is turning out. I can’t get the quality I want out of just laminate and cutting the holes myself. I’m finding very few alternative solutions too. I need a way to get the art on there that will be durable and attractive. One of those Plexiglass plates would be ideal but I don’t think anyone does those for SE sticks. Any suggestions?
What about the laminate is not working out for you?
Print out artwork on matte paper and use lamilabel - you can do normal lamination and then just glue it on as well, but the finish will be a bit different.
From what I’ve found it’s quite durable. The other option is getting art from Mame Marquees - which will print it on indestructible material that you will have to cut yourself.
That, or get some nice paint and spray the metal plate. There are no easy roads to awesomeness. 
Lol…
I feel your pain. The art on my label is rubbing off. Unfortunately I believe we’re all out of options.
I’d suggest getting lami-label on cardstock (iirc I got it printed on 80lbs cardstock). This is how my stick ended up turning out:
The cutting was difficult but overall I’m pleased. However, as you can see I DID screw up on the bottom right, which again goes to show that you have to be VERY careful when doing this. Also a warning, if you do go the lami-label route, make sure you have someone competent do it, otherwise you will end up with something fuckawful like this:
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1076/img1329.png
Dem bubbles.
I can’t do lami-label because no one in the central Arkansas area stocks the stuff. I can get a nice enough laminated picture, the problem is cutting out the area around the home button in a way that looks good and doesn’t end up peeling at the edges.
There has to be a better option than this.
The reason it peels at the edges is because you have to cut out all the holes BEFORE you laminate it. Get the picture printed, cut out everything CAREFULLY with an exacto knife, and THEN laminate it. Then recut out all the holes.
You’ll only get clean holes if you cut out the laminate ONLY. Cutting into areas where there is paper + laminate will result in the laminate seal being broken and thus you get frayed edges/artwork coming apart.
Like I said before, Mame Marquees will remove all these problems, since that is high quality material and not just laminated paper. Regardless, you’re still going to need a steady hand and patience to get artwork cut out. If you can’t cut it neatly then you might be SOL. =/
Maybe it’s a problem with the place i’m getting it laminated, but I cut the holes before it was laminated and I still had problems.
Anyway, the entire point of this thread is that I DON’T want to use a laminated piece of paper.
MAME marquees doesn’t have anything on their site about doing SE arcade sticks, but yeah it does look like a viable option.
Mame Marquees will print out a custom template - you can just send them your art file and they will print it. =)
The edges around the home button haven’t been peeling for either of the SEs I did this on, which is probably either due to the cardstock or just luck. Still, besides laminating or mame marqees, there sadly is no other option. Plexiglass is out of the question as it is impossible at the moment to get it to consistently bend properly. You could always just go with no art, sand/primer/paint/gloss-finish the metal plate I guess.