Today I only had an hour spare and I entirely built (not painted) the "above marquee" panel, from an odd shape piece of 9mm MDF that I had left over. This had sat underneath the panels I had painted, so is a bit messy on one side as you'll see in the pictures.
With only 1 face that was cut at the factory, I ran the piece through the table saw 3 times to get 4 square sides, then trimmed to 2' (60cm) width. Using the router, I rounded over the outer face, front edge (as per the under marquee panel) offered it up to the cab, marked it for length, and cut to length.
At this point, time to install the last of the electronics (bar the PC) the marquee light. I have an old 20" (~50cm) strip light in my spares box in the garage, so I've decided the best way to install this is on the reverse side of this above marquee panel (this has the most available space and close enough to the top panel.) I've used some 1/4" (~6mm) thick hard rubber strip to separate the housing of the strip light from the wood (I'm thinking heat insulation but I could be mad) PVA'ed into place, and screwed the strip light, through the rubber into the MDF. The rubber layer adds some additional thickness so that the 1/2" (12mm) screws don't burst through the other side of the 9mm MDF. At this stage, I've also wired the light with a standard plug on the other end. I meant to put a switch part way through the length of the cable, but I forgot. I can always revisit this if I decide I want to have the option of lights on or off.
The following photograph shows the underside of the finished (bar painting) above marquee panel.
and with it installed
Lights!
OK - I suspected this might be a problem, as I'd read similar marquee issues on other cab building sites.
The light is bleeding through the black sections of my artwork terribly - washing them out in a hazy grey colour. Not good. Solutions I have read about include printing the artwork twice then cutting out the non-black parts to leave a black template to stick under the finished logo, in essence making the black sections twice as thick. I don't really have that option without begging my brother for another print run (and my favour account is in the red) so at some later point, I'll whip out the marquee, and paint black on the non-visible side to control the light bleed. As there's no back yet constructed, you can see the light pouring out the back - I'll have to think about some form of reflector pushing all the light forward if too much bleeds out of the cracks. That's an unknown until we're nearly complete.
My enthusiasm is re-stoked, but I'm now out of MDF. I'll need a trip to my timber yard again before I can carry on. Hopefully the weekend if not before.
Here's the cabinet as at now!
Next panel in the plan - the angled vent panel!
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