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Cafe au Cade - Coffee table arcade conversion - Finished with loads of pics!
Evetsllub:
Hi all,
Been lurking around here for a few months now. I came across some commercially available arcade machine coffee tables online and instantly wanted one. The price tag of a few grand or so was enough to put that one off, but then every night i started eyeing off my coffee table and my old laptop with the broken hinge and i thought "this could work". The wife when told of the plans rolled her eyes but she knows there is no way to stop me and i will be attempting to make it as living room friendly as possible. Suprisingly I havent come across many examples of what I am doing, not even with the hundreds of great builds on here.
One of the key things i want to do is reuse whatever possible, both from a cost and sustainability perspective, thats why i like to use a coffee table and a computer i already have. The main two costs are going to be the controllers and the glass inlay, everything else should be pretty cheap.
Here's the donor coffee table. I bought it about 5 years ago in some flood damage sales at a local place that sells indonesian imported furniture. The cost of it would have been no more than $50, and it has copped a beating ever since. I was planning on sanding and restaining the top anyway as this baby has never seen a coaster on it and hot drinks have left plenty of marks.
The donor laptop, a Dell XPSM1530. Broken hinge thanks to me dropping it a while back... When i purchased it though i upgraded the screen so it is pretty high quality, with a decent viewing angle. Decased and screen flipped (and looking very dirty...).
The wife left me at home one weekend, when she returned this is what i'd done to the coffee table:
I was a little concerned that the timber insert was glued in, in which case pulling it out could have been ugly. Thankfully it was just screwed in so after removing the screws (and drilling a couple out that has stripped heads) it came straight out.
With a decased laptop and a coffee table with a big hole in it now i could get a feel for how it will look like when its done:
Next step was building some control panels. I'm going to build some 'wings' that will go out either end. I live in a small unit in the city, so this was a job to take back to dad's where he has the biggest shed you've ever seen and just about every power tool a man could dream of. A few hours with drop saws, table saws, table top sanders and nail guns and we came up with 2 nice looking control panels that will screw onto the sides of the table and should look pretty nice. In my interest of sustainability and recycling, I reused the timber I pulled off the top of the coffee table and then used some scrap wood for the extra pieces i need. When stained dark it should all look the same.
Didnt get many photos of the build of the CPs as i didnt have a camera with me, but grabbed this one on my phone. It is the completed panel with the control template stuck on to drill pilot holes for the controller holes. I got the template from here. I also spaced out the space between the joystick and buttons as you can see where there is a gap, and added 2 extra holes at the end for start/coin buttons. There will be some buttons on the front of the P1 panel for admin buttons (exit, pause, menu)... not sure yet, i'll see how many buttons i can fit and the rest will be from a shift button. Going with 6 button so i can play the fighters, the split screen mode works pretty well so P1 and P2 can play fighters and the screen size is decent enough given how close you are to the screen when you are playing.
Thats all for now. The next challenge is soldering a power button onto the laptop button. Bender gave me a nice pic of his soldering effort on the same computer he used for the Benderama build. I managed to short the circuit and fire it up just with a wire so i am certain of the 2 contact points, but damn it is a couple of tiny contact points. I thought dad might be able to solder it for me too as he used to be a technician and do a lot of soldering. He doesnt have an iron small enough but will hunt one down from someone and work and have a crack at it.
Moving house next weekend (should be packing right now!) so there wont be much action over the next couple of weeks, but i've got my controllers so once the panels are stained and lacquered i can screw them on and get going with working out how i am going to fit everything inside this thing! Also need to get some glass ordered and have a crack at painting the back of it to form a bezel. How i will mount the laptop in there? No idea at the moment. Where am i going to fit speakers? No idea at the moment. How will i run power to it? No idea at the moment.
Hope to have an update soon!
EightBySix:
A man after my own heart! How are you going to attach the control panel?
LeedsFan:
This... looks... AWESOME!!! :cheers:
The decased monitor fits perfectly in that space! Isn't it a great feeling when a plan comes together perfectly like that? :applaud:
I love cute little projects like this and I'm keen to see how this turns out.
What do you have planned for a bezel or cover? It looks like you could lower the monitor a little and then drop in a piece of plexi to replace the square you removed. Painting the back of the plexi with a stain you use on the rest of the table could make a perfect bezel. Though how well that would "take" to the plexi is another matter.
drventure:
Great little project! Love it.
Looks like you have a decent about of space underneath the top, I'm betting a pair of smallish computer speakers and the rest of the laptop will fit there nicely.
If it hangs down a bit, just build a nice wood box to hide it, stain the box the same dark color and noone will notice it. That's how I hung the computer (and the subwoofer) underneath my buffet project.
Evetsllub:
Thanks for the encouragement guys!
Eightbysix - Control pane screwed onto the side of the table. I have sanded the pieces where it attaches to be the same curve as the table, so it will slot in nicely. Should be plenty strong enough.
Leedsfan - Planning on getting a piece of glass cut and tempered, then just painting the back black for the bezel. Never used Plexi before but i cant imagine it being as scratch proof as glass. the stain is a good idea to match colours but i just dont know how you'd make it stick...
drventure - yeah i'm hoping theres enough room under there to mount some little computer speakers.
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