Thanks Nephasth. I wasn't clear about this earlier, but I am already 2 weeks into my build and have purchased most of the parts, although some have yet to arrive. Still aggressive on the schedule, but I feel like I'm making good progress.
Since the beginning my thought has been to paint the cabinet black and use Mortal Kombat style red t-molding. With that in mind, I enlisted the help of a friend to do my CPO design...
Simple but cool, that was what I was goign for. Note the top layer is my ACAD drawing, used for scale and positioning. Obviously that layer was turned off when I sent it to Gameongrafix...
When it came time to do the marquee, I was all out of creative ideas. Anxious to get the CPO ordered, I just bought a generic marquee, I'll do something more clever when the idea comes to me.
On to the building!
First we started by going over the Lusid design, my modifications, and our approach. It was time well spent, as you can see above my only real "plan" is the side of the cabinet itself. How it all fits together is something we're figuring out as we go.
First the cabinet side rough cuts
Then a test of the control panel front curve. I noted the radius on my ACAD drawing, we just had to measure that distance (49.5") from the inside of the router bit and screw down a long board to make the arc.
Test cut shows we're right where we're supposed to be (after a couple of adjustments)
Then we cut the actual top
I laid the full size template over the CP and punched a center point for each button and joystick. A few minutes on the drillpress had all the holes, nice and clean - although I learned afterward that the Happ Comp buttons wiggle a little bit in the 1 1/8" holes. Not terrible or anything, but I could have gotten away with a hand drill for the holes.
Personally, I thought the sticks felt short bottom mounted, so I routed 1/4" into the back to mount the joys (Happ Comp 8-way)
And the kids hold up the outcome. Note the trackball hasn't been dealt with at all at this point.
Lastly, we made a jig for the monitor area, jigsawed then cleaned up with the router and jig, and then clamped the two sides and trimmed a couple of spots to make them perfectly line up. This is the first moment the kids recognized what we were doing.
End of weekend 1...