Originally posted 10/8/2007I bought one of those mini-photon progressive meters from April at Lemans, and now that I got my machine back up and running, I figured it was time to put it in.
The one I bought did not have the mounting brackets. In addition, I didn't really want to cut out the sticker that appears to be baked into the glass for my Coral Reef game.
My game came with a player tracking bar that had a lot of openings in it -- here's the "before" picture of the tracking bar:
I got the idea from some other posts on this forum -- I decided to mount the meter in the tracking bar. I also like the idea of having it there as I don't need to mess with it when I change game kits.
Weeks ago I went to Lowes and had them cut some Plexiglas for me. I still needed a way to attach the meter to the Plexi, and I wanted to get some foam to put around the meter to block out excess light. The local surplus store (full of random crap -- I can spend all day in there!) had just the random foam I needed -- I bought three squares of black foam for $0.10 each. I traced the outline of the meter on to the foam, and then cut slightly inside that line so that the foam would be a nice tight fit around the meter (applying just a little bit of pressure to the meter when the meter is put inside it.
Here you can see two pieces of foam -- one that I cut, and then another standing on its edge to give you an idea of its thickness.
I tested the fit of the display in the foam -- it's great!
Here's the strip of Plexiglas. I used a Sharpie to trace most of the opening of the center hole on my player tracking bar. I did that so it would be fairly easy to center the display. (The Sharpie turned out to be a bad idea, as you'll see later, but nothing that couldn't be fixed, too, with a little creativity.) Anyhoo, you can also see I cut a piece of masking tape to the exact dimensions of the display, and taped that to the Plexiglas where I wanted to have the display show through.
The next step was to paint the Plexiglas. I used black spray paint on the side of the Plexiglas where I had put that strip of masking tape, spraying the entire surface. Once it dried, I picked it up and you can see the masking tape clearly on the other side, but unfortunately, you can also see the Sharpie marks, on the Plexiglas and buried under the layer of paint I just applied. Ugh.
I had an idea, and decided I'd deal with that problem a little later on.
I removed the masking tape which left me with a perfect clear opening in the paint for the exact size of the meter display.
Next, I got some red (I think it may have been pink) cellophane, and taped down about three layers of that to give enough of a red look. I taped that down over the clear display to help bring out the red of the meter.
I trimmed down the size of the foam that I previously cut out, and used glue to adhere it to the painted side of the Plexiglas.
All I had left to do was insert the display back into the foam, and then glue my piece of Plexiglas to the front of the player tracking bar. I did wind up using some of my extra foam to 'block out' the windows in the back of the tracking bar, as some of the light was still making it through the one coat of paint I had applied to my Plexiglas.
Once it was all glued in place, I put the machine back together. But I still had that darn Sharpie mark all ugly and sticking out. What to do, what to do...
I designed a "sticker" of sorts to cover that up and surround the display. Here it is:
I then had to cut out where the rectangle is inside the sticker (the opening for the display), and it covered up my Sharpie marks quite nicely.
...and, the final product:
I've attached my "sticker" in a .zip file as part of this post -- it has a bitmap (.bmp) version, as well as the Adobe Photoshop version if someone wants to use it for themselves, or wants to tinker with it and then use it. Enjoy.
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