Building my Arcade Cabinet - Part 6

At this point of the project I need
to start adding in more of the panel supports. I know where the monitor bezel will sit, so I can start there.

I also needed to really think about how to mount the 19" LCD, becasue I need it to be in exactly the right position in order to butt-up against the back of the bezel and leave as little space as possible between the two.

I was thinking about mounting a 2x3 across the inside of the cabinet and making a VESA mount for the back of the monitor. Then I could attach the homemade mount to the 2x3 and if everything worked out right, I would have a perfectly mounted monitor. I could have gone math crazy here and measured everything over and over and position everything with lasers - but I didn't. I went with the old fashion method of holding things together and marking with a pencil - old school.

Also, I wasn't 100% sure that just this type of monitor mounting would be sturdy enough to hold the monitor and not wiggle and move around slighly. So I came up with a method of adding additional supports around the edge of the monitor to help hold it in place. I really just stumbled upon this method as I was looking at all the parts and moving things around. In the end I couldn't have planned it much better than it turned out. The monitor is secured to the back of the bezel with 1x2's that are screwed in from the front of the bezel. I plan to cover bezel later to hide the screw heads.

I used some scrap grey foam to help add gentle presure to the back of the monitor to hold it in place snuggly. I was then able to fit the bezel in place - with monitor attached, and figure out the exact position of the 2x3 support that the VESA mount will attach to.

In the end, the monitor is probably the most secure piece of the entire cabinet. As you can see, once I cut in the speaker holes in the bottom of the marquee box and added some primer paint, it looks great so far!