I Think I Figured Out How To Mount It

I decided that I would mount the laptop systemboard onto a piece of sturdy, but lightweight board and mount the LCD screen onto the opposide of that board .... then, mount the board into a picture frame.

In researching materials for the mounting board, I came across two products that I felt would serve the purpose well. One product is called Coroplast. It's a strong, but very lightweight corrugated plastic. It comes in sheets and in thicknesses of 4mm and up. I was having some trouble finding a single sheet of the right size and buying 10+ sheets would drive me over my overall project $ limit of $200.

My crafty wife Kay (the cute red-headed barmaid) suggested I look at Michels, a do-it-yourself crafts store. Sure enough, they had a 20"x30" sheet of Coroplast for $4.99. Just before I made the purchase decision, I noticed that they had 20"x30" sheets of foam board with placticized sides - also very sturdy and lightweight. The foamboard was about 3/16" thick and looked like it would work very well ...... and, it was $1.99 (just saved me $3.00)

The foamboard has proven to be very easy to work with and is easy to cut... etc with an X-Acto knife.

Below are come pictures to give you an idea what I'm talking about.

I cut the mounting board to 17" x 14" and squared an LCD screen sized rectangle in the middle - leaving a 2 3/4" border all around. The two slits at the bottom right are to allow the LCD cables to pass to the opposite side to connect to the system board

Here's the LCD Screen centered on the mounting board -- the cables will go through the slits to the opposite side to connect to the system board.

And here, the board has been flipped over, and the system board is roughly centered on it.

Placement of the systemboard onto the mounting board is not critical, as it will not be seen. Placement of the LCD screen is very critical as it must be perfectly square with the frame, otherwise, the image will be not be straight.

It is my intent to mount the LCD screen and the system board to the mounting board with velcro. I think velcro will work fine -- if not, then VHB (Very High Bond) tape will work. I prefer to use velcro as VHB tape is somewhat expensive, and isn't tolerent of mistakes.

So, the next step is to get these pieces actually mounted -- the cables connected and once again the power-on "does it play" test.