Best Way To Fill Metal Control Panel Holes?

Brentradio

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I have a metal control panel that has had several extra holes drilled into it.

What's the best way to fill them in so it's strong enough to drill new holes?

Anyone have any luck doing this?

Thanks,

Brent
 
I have gone the route of having the holes filled by a shop that welded in the holes, but when you do that, it is likely the panel will warp from the heat and the expansion and shrinking caused by the heat and cooling...

If ever faced with that problem agai I will use epoxy to glue a thin piece of sheet metal on the back of the panel, and then fill the hole using epoxy as well. And then drill the new holes through the epoxy...
 
I saw this done using a large enough washer with epoxy stuck on the back and then a smaller washer with more epoxy filling the hole. THe same as vegas12's suggestion but work in a pinch if you don't have sheet metal.
 
I have gone the route of having the holes filled by a shop that welded in the holes, but when you do that, it is likely the panel will warp from the heat and the expansion and shrinking caused by the heat and cooling...

If ever faced with that problem agai I will use epoxy to glue a thin piece of sheet metal on the back of the panel, and then fill the hole using epoxy as well. And then drill the new holes through the epoxy...

I've tried this and it doesn't work well. When you drill the new hole the heat from the drill melts the epoxy and the metal falls off.

If you need to re drill holes it will be best to get it welded by someone who can do it with no warping.
 
If you need to re drill holes it will be best to get it welded by someone who can do it with no warping.

Yea, you are probably going to want to use someone who is familiar with welding body panels on cars.. it's a slow and deliberate process to keep the panels from warping.
 
Just have it welded up. Welding the thin sheet metal that cars are made of is far harder than welding a CP. Nothing will be as strong and permanent as welding it.
If you were local I'd say bring it over and we would knock it out rather quickly.
 
I have a metal control panel that has had several extra holes drilled into it.

What's the best way to fill them in so it's strong enough to drill new holes?

Anyone have any luck doing this?

Thanks,

Brent

yeah
depending on the void (holes)

Ill take another piece of sheet metal and use the same size hole saw.
tack weld them in and use my angle grinder to flatten it.
 
If they are single holes... not huge (trackball hole for example) or a bunch of holesdrilled creating a large hole... I've successfully used bondo. I use duct tape on the good side, then slather it on... let it dry, sand down the underside a little (so button nuts can work nicely) and then sand the top even. I've drilled other holes that included partial cuts in to the bondo without issue.
 
Who is welding these that warps them?

I suck at welding and I've never wrapped a body panel.

Sounds like the welder settings were incorrect.

I'd offer to do it for you for free if you have the replacement metal, but you're kind of far away.

If you have some scrap metal of the same size (thickness) as the CP and the filler metal, bring that so the person doing the welding can fine tune the settings on those instead of what you actually want fixed.
 
I have a metal control panel that has had several extra holes drilled into it.

What's the best way to fill them in so it's strong enough to drill new holes?

Anyone have any luck doing this?

Thanks,

Brent

I've been successful using JB Weld to bond a piece of sheet metal to the bottom of the panel. As long as it's for buttons or the sheet metal doesn't interfere with what you're mounting you should be OK. If it's somewhere that's going to show through, like a joystick hole then not so much. If you're just covering up a hole and not mounting anything there you can do like Frizz suggested but I prefer JB Weld to bondo for that. Same for coin doors to fill in the myriad of holes people drill in them.
 
Who is welding these that warps them?

I suck at welding and I've never wrapped a body panel.

Sounds like the welder settings were incorrect.

I'd offer to do it for you for free if you have the replacement metal, but you're kind of far away.

If you have some scrap metal of the same size (thickness) as the CP and the filler metal, bring that so the person doing the welding can fine tune the settings on those instead of what you actually want fixed.

Its not that hard...
Too much heat in one area (middle of a panel) and hold it in one spot way too long will warp the metal.. any welder will agree.

What control panel are you trying to repair btw?
 
I've also used bondo and it worked great. I used a thin metal plug (got it in the electrical aisle) and I used epoxy to mount it to the bottom of the control panel. Then I just filled in from the top with a small amount of bondo and sanded it flush. Haven't had any issues at all. I also filled in where all of the little divots were from the bolts that are underneath. I'll attach a few pictures. Here's a link to the full restore of this game with more details, if needed. http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=353232&page=3
 

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Bear in mind the more holes you have, the more welding will be involved. Not to suggest there aren't strategies to minimize it, but welding by it's very nature will cause warping because the cooling metal shrinks. So the more welding you have, the more warping you'll have. I tried this on a swiss cheese panel for my generic drawer cab I use for mame and was unhappy with the warping.

What I did on my second panel was to tack in a sheet of metal on the underside of the panel and then filled the holes with bondo. I was very happy with the results.
 
Who is welding these that warps them?

I suck at welding and I've never wrapped a body panel.

Sounds like the welder settings were incorrect.

I'd offer to do it for you for free if you have the replacement metal, but you're kind of far away.

If you have some scrap metal of the same size (thickness) as the CP and the filler metal, bring that so the person doing the welding can fine tune the settings on those instead of what you actually want fixed.


Same here
I welded the Asteroids holes when converting it to Lunar Lander

Just tack weld them (And wait for it to cool etc) all till the whole circle if done and have a sponge handy

The panel was thick enough to take it (No warping)
 
It's an old crap panel with a bunch of badly drilled holes in it. I'm going to use the tape and JB Weld and see how that works.

Thanks for the tips.
 
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