Behind the Front Panel

Things are about to get interesting. Since the front of the, um... front panel is more or less complete, I can now turn my attention to mounting everything to it from behind. This will require a bit of routing on the back of the panel to allow everything to sit flush with the Plexiglas. I have to route out material around each of the monitor, marquee and speaker openings.

The first thing I did was build a jig to hold the panel in place and also give me more surface area to rest the base of the router on. I need to have a steady hand for this part because the cuts must be precise.

Once everything was set up I laid out the areas where I would be removing material. I want to be accurate but it is more important that the final depth of my router bit is set at exactly the thickness of the MDF (1/2"). I wanted to remove all of the material on top of the plexiglass but I do not want to chip it. The first area I decided to finish was the marquee opening. I busted out my trusty circle jig and carefully removed 1/8" of material around the top edge. The only thing I didn't get to is the area around the volume knob - I'll do that later.

If you look close you can see the exposed Plexiglas area. I had to use a razor blade to scrape away a thin layer of MDF on top of the Plexiglas which took quite some time.

This is just the first of many steps to get this panel ready to be attached to the jukebox shell... stay tuned.