**UPDATE 3/19/09 4:00pm - The 3/28 production queue is now full. I will concentrate on getting all current orders out first before determining the next production date. Feel free to email me with your interests and other inquiries. If you would like to order at this time, just email me and I’ll add you to my next production list =). Thanks again everyone! **
Hello fellow SRKers and HRAP enthusiasts. Here’s the story. Like many of you guys I wanted to give my HRAPs a facelift. There were a few options to do so
but I personally didn’t want to go the adhesive route. I prefer the idea of keeping the HRAP in its original form and swapping the artwork easily depending on the mood. There were a few talks and inquiries about a plexi-glass cover for it, but I couldn’t find much more detail. The search function wasn’t very conclusive. Or maybe I was just bad at using it.
So then I decided to get a qoute for a custom from the pro Plastic people, like TapPlastics. I figured, if it costs $15 - $20 I’ll probably bite. Well, apparently it would cost me $75 for them to make a plexi replica of the HRAP3 panel. And they couldn’t give me the exact hole size. Their hole drill bit was a tiny bit larger than 30mm. So $75 for an imperfect plexiglass panel? Uhhhh… ok, I understand their hourly rate is $90, but it didn’t make any financial sense to me. Especially when I have 4 HRAPs to customize.
So I was on a mission. I already have acrylic experience to an extent (making rectangular display cases) and an arts and crafts background. It was just the matter of getting the right tools to efficiently do the job (Dremel and Jigsaw just didn’t work so well). After quite a bit of research, helpful SRKers, and several days of missing out on SF4, it is done!
Who can resist the popular Chun Li artwork…
When I’m not playing, it’s a piece of art to be displayed. =)
The plexiglass does protrude upward a bit, but it doesn’t hinder my gameplay. I’ve also flame polished the bottom edge so it’s smooth and in the events I rub my palm down I won’t feel any scratches from the plexiglass cut.
I’ve made quite a few of them, which went to my friends. But Now that I’ve got the process down, I want to provide a service for fellow SRKers. For those interested, I can make em for you. Just so you know, I’m not doing this for profit but more of a hobby and helping out. I have a day job so I’d have to find weekends to do this. With the time invested, costs for materials, propane, compressed air, and a lot of packaging material to make sure it safely gets to you, I think my offer is reasonable. I’m going to offer it to you guys at the price I would buy it for, @ $16 per cover + shipping. Shipping is USPS priority and I’m not going to rip you off on shipping. I just need to know your zipcode to give you shipping rates, which should be $5 - $9 depending how far east of me you are. I’d be happy to just make enough to cover all the extra tools I had to acquire… especially the router. Damn great tool.
Anyway, more pictures and details of the cover here: http://tek-innovations.com/arthobbies/products.html - also gives you an idea of how different thickness plexiglass would look and react to your snapins. I use 3 different thickness 1/16", 3/32", 1/8".
More showcase of my HRAPs here: http://tek-innovations.com/arthobbies/showcase.html
If you want to learn more about me and the process of ordering, feel free to browse through the whole site. Oh, and please bear with me on the site. I know it looks like crap. I put it all up, quickly, in one day. I will be making it better in due time.
As for production, I have no idea how much demand there will be for this so it’s not a good idea for me to make lot just to store around. So at this time, I’m taking requests for my next production date, which should be the weekend of 3/27. There’s info on the orders page on how to send an order to me. If it doesn’t make a lot of sense, just email me and I’ll run through the details with you.
If there’s very little to no interest, that’s fine too. Just want to provide an alternative to your custom art needs =). And thanks for looking!
Oh, and I apologize if this stuff belongs in the trading thread. But I haven’t been a member long enough to post there =(.
Special shoutouts to:
Dreamcazman - for pointing me in a good direction on cutting tools
chaos123x - for contributing art templates which motivated this whole thing
And just for fun, I used some pretty thick acrylic, with a thick acrylic joystick mount to make the see through top panel. The thought was to pimp it up with neon lights like those in the pimped out Computer cases. But more tests need to be run to make sure the screws in the acrylic mount can withstand a good deal of stress. If it works out, I’ll remake it with a better mount design and figure out how to add lighting 
More details at the bottom of http://tek-innovations.com/arthobbies/showcase.html