Total rookie question on mounting hardware

[AzureKnight]

Do joysticks typically come with mounting hardware?  If not what is the best option?  I see that Ultimarc sells a joystick mounting kit for $7, is it really worth it?

[Ginsu Victim]

They don't come with mounting hardware. I have the mounting kit from groovygamegear and it's excellent.

[Gatt]

The mounting kit definitely has advantages.

Thing is though,  you should probably say what kind of material you're working with.  If you're in particle board,  I wouldn't do anything but carriage bolts,  particle board doesn't like screws very much.

MDF seems to hold screws pretty well,  but I've seen people discussing "Blow outs",  where a fair size portion of where you're screwing just gives way.  MDF is what I'm using right now,  and I ended up opting for the carriage bolts.  I would've loved to use GGG's installation kit,  but I wasn't brave enough,  of course,  I'm already thinking of revisions so...

Wood,  you're perfectly fine using those kits with wood.

There's a number of vendors who sell carriage bolts for this purpose,  some even come in black instead of silver reducing their impact a little.

[AzureKnight]

Well, I would love to build the cabinet from scratch myself, but my total lack of wood working skills has me leaning in the direction of buying an Ultimate Arcade II from Mameroom.  They use melamine.  

So you are saying my best bet would be carriage bolts if I go that route, that is really good to know thank you!  But does that mean I'll have to see the bolts on top of the CP?  I plan on getting an overlay from GameOnGrafix, would I be able to countersink the bolts and hide them with the CP overlay?  I'm really new at all this stuff and woodworking has me really curious but also a bit uneasy due to my total lack of knowledge.

Anything else I should know about working with melamine particleboard (besides that the dust is really unhealthy)?  I'll have to dig through the forums and see what I can find about cutting/drilling/etc so any advice is welcome.

[Gatt]

Yeah,  I used a slikstick blank as my first panel,  with hardware I'd chosen.  It did *not* like the screws at all,  my IPAC was hanging by a thread,  and nothing was very tight.  I'm not a fan of particle board at all.

If it helps any,  the last time I touched a piece of wood was when I was 8 years old pounding random nails into discarded wood from my father working on stuff.

In the last couple of months,  I've been building my own panels without any major difficulty.  I give you my word,  it is not at all difficulty,  especially if you do the research here and ask questions when you're not sure.  I spent $35 on a corded hand drill,  $35 on a jigsaw,  and bought a router for $50(Still trying to figure out how that thing works,  lol).  The MDF boards cost me $9 apiece.  Bits are cheap.  Fostner bits for drilling holes make the thing incredibly simple(Protip:  Drill a small guidehole before using the fostner bit,  it actually makes a huge difference in how fast it cuts).

For cuts in the middle,  use the fostner bit to drill a hole,  then just jigsaw out pieces to get the shape you want.  (Trackball,  flightstick,  driving controls)

Measuring is easy,  once you have the height/width of the panel,  find the middle and mark it.  That's where your joysticks will sit.  The buttons for a neo-geo setup seem (IMO) most naturally to be ~2.5" from joystick and 3/4" above/below midline,  with 3/4" in between(Can go down to 1/2" for smaller hands). 


There's a number of different patterns,  this site gives a good rundown...

http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html

As far as countersinking goes,  there's no reason why not.  Wouldn't be too hard to do.

[kronic24601]

Typically you will first need to decide between top or bottom mounting. There are trade offs with each, but I don't like the idea of having to destroy my artwork by peeling it off the top to get to my joys if they need repairs of replacement ... so I went with Bottom mount. I decided the best solution for was to do a partial Metal partial wood CP. The whole CP is made of wood, but I bought some thing metal at OSH (local hardware store), just a little larger than the Joys, then drilled 1 large hole in the center and 4 holes for screws to support the joy. I recessed the metal mount from the top, and bolt the joys on the bottom. best of both worlds!

My suggestion would be to take a look at some of the projects here and see what others have done, I did this for a few months before I started to craft plans for my cab.