Bartop Arcades ~Lots of PICTURES~

[CoryBee]

Here is a build log of what started out as one Bartop Arcade.


First I start out with my template I created by perfecting how I liked my first model. Traced and labeled each piece so I know what is what when it comes down to assembly.



Cut them out into manageable pieces for precise cutting later.



Side panels need to be exact so I layered a blank piece on top of my traced template.





Completed side panels



Here is a makeshift guide I made from part of the 1x1, takes a little bit longer to setup then just cutting but boy does it make my cuts straighter.



And here it is completely cut out and trimmed.



To make sure that I have it perfect when I make another one of this model I then trace the pieces onto more mdf board.



Okay, I decided to trace it out a few more times....





While my garage was nice and saw-dusty I thought I might as well cut all of them out. (Each set is labeled A, B, C)







Since I have yet to PDF my plans and part list, here is the lengths to cut my 1x1s. (Touchscreen monitor hangs on my workbench for ease of use)



Marked and ready for cutting, I placed two pieces side by side since I am now more shells







Each one is labeled before being cut so I know where to place them. Started mounting them in their places. (The screws I have are a little too long so I made due by not drilling all the way thru)



Pre-drilled and placing the panels on







Pieces in place for one and finishing up another



Here is another shot, the shell on the far left is not mine but my brother's. He used my template as a base but changed it so that it is a little bit shorter and at an angle so there is no hang-over marquee. (Also a pile of pieces I will save to trace onto more MDF when I get it)

Also my cuts were a little bit off in some areas but were quickly fixed with a palm sander.





Another shot but with my last bartop next to the three.



I am still designing Mark 3 (a two player bartop with light gun), but here is part of that process. About the size of the control panel and a little bit wider than the Mark 2.



Thanks for looking, I will be adding the laptops in and taking a lot of pictures during that process.

[ark_ader]

OMG that looks so familiar.... 

I did the same design but to fit a TP 365X.

Nice work, hope you paint it black. 

[CoryBee]

Do you have pictures of your design that is similar?

And I have different color and pattern contact paper. If you look at http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=120010.0 you will see I have this one in all black.

[ChrisK]

This is an awesome step-by-step log!  Thanks, CoryDee!

[CoryBee]

Thanks! I am getting the parts in to put these things together. Ordered tons of buttons! I love it.

[Gray_Area]

Why three of them?

[CoryBee]

Because friends have asked me to build them one =). Plus had the extra wood. Can make probably 4 shells with $14.50 in Particle board.

[CoryBee]

I got my buttons and other items in to make a working laptop. Here is the work I completed last night.

Dell D410 Laptop that I purchased for 15 dollars that was missing a hard drive. Bought a 30gb IDE laptop drive for around 15 dollars. Same laptop model to the left, still waiting on back-light inverter board to finish.



Installing Windows XP Black Edition (Stripped down XP)



After successful windows install and copying over Mala, mame, and roms\emulator I started taking it apart.







All the way down to the motherboard.



Building a frame for the screen and motherboard to be mounted to. Just 4 pieces of the 1x1, pretty simple.







Mounting the Screen with some nice Hot Glue stick pieces I heat up with a pen torch and then place where I traced the outside.





After it was nice and mounted I was ready to solder on the +\- wires for the external power plug.

I use a technique I learned from an old friend of mine to create twisted wires. Helps to keep things organized. Basically consists of placing the two desired wires together in a power drill and holding one end while slowly pulling the trigger down.





Prepping the +\- leads from the motherboard with silver based solder from radio shack. Was easy to find what was what with a multimeter. Then soldering them on.





Shot of the DC jack after soldering wires on.



Mounted the motherboard on the other side of my custom screen mount.



Shot of power button before and after soldering. Uses a surface mount switch so had to use a really small wire for this. Ground connection was easy to do because, well because it is everywhere. The goop stuff you see is just FLUX to keep solder from spreading to the "ground".





Shot of motherboard with power switch strip glued in place.



Test fitting and drilling of screen mount after I found the ideal angle.







Prepping control panel. Marking button and joystick drilling locations.



After drilling with spade bit (1 1/8th bit) and testing the Plexi glass I cut.







Covering the Control panel in Contact paper. The design is black in the middle and white on the outsides. Trim the edges with a razor blade and scored the holes to prep for buttons.







Added the acrylic. And test fit the buttons. Shiny.







Looking nice





Added the momentary switches to the buttons and I like to face them all the same way for neatness.



----------Onto the wiring----------

I bought terminal strips to keep things clean. Had enough ports for all 8 buttons and the 4 directional switches for joystick but not for the two ground connections needed. I used a three terminal strip to compensate. Soldered the ends together.





Mounted the terminal strips and the $3.50 chinese USB Gamepad I chose to be the interface. I bought ten of them for later projects =).



Button contacts, plus prepping with solder.









Soldering wires on and adding to terminal strip.

----- Note: These USB Gamepads (pretty much all on the market) have a slight issue when it comes to the Ground connections. As most of us know when it comes to keyboards and gamepads button lead plus common ground connection equals a button press. Well these are tricky. All of the buttons except "UP" and "Right" work using this method. I have found that they use what I like to call a secret ground. So I scrape some off some board coating where their secret ground is. Orange Wire represents Secret Ground and Red Wire represents Common Ground. If you do not use this secret ground the "Up" & "Right" buttons come up as a "Down" & "Left" button press. Hope this helps -----

The gamepad uses 10 buttons and I only have use for 8. It was about this time that I decided I would use the extra two buttons as Pinball controls. Needed another 3x terminal strip.





Testing all the solder connections to make sure they are properly recognized. Successful the first time.



Soldering common and secret ground



Added the active button wires



Marked and drilled out the holes for my pinball buttons.



Cutting and placing both the black and white contact paper.







Here are some shots of it with the Punch out black Bartop I made previously.








That is all for the UPDATE as of now. I still must cut the acrylic for the screen bezel & marquee, buy buttons and dc jack for the power. Need to get bulbs for the marquee and more wire as I ran out and am using wire scavenged from an old arcade board.

Will update again when I get more parts in. Thanks for looking again!

[spkywlnt73]

Man, these bartops are so cool! As soon as I get some of my other projects out of the way, I'll be building one of these. Nice work, and I really love how much you went into details on this. I'll be looking this project up when I goto build mine! 

[CoryBee]

Thanks a lot. I love these things too. They are a rather simple design that can be easily replicated. I am taking a ton of pictures and hopping they are useful to someone.

[CoryBee]

Added Malafe and pinball games. More pictures soon of electronics install.

[molton]

As soon as I get a garage, I'm buying some tools and making me one of these, this is bad ass.  Thanks for the detailed how to.

How did you figure out that secret ground business?

[CoryBee]

I found that if i connect the common ground to the Right button pad it would register a Left button press. Same with Up, it would produce a Down button press. Bothered the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of me. So I just scraped off some of the board off where the ground is that they share and soldered my own pad for the "secret ground". I haven't the slightest reason why, I have guesses but not sure at all. If someone knows please inform me of this.

[emb]

Great work so far. I love the pics. They really show some useful techniques.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[CoryBee]

Thanks again. Just got back from radio shack and got the rest of the parts to finish the electrical portion.

 Anyone have any ideas for a marquee holder that is slim for a bartop?

[CoryBee]

Okay, so I am putting the white arcade on hold for a quick second to produce a different bartop for a good friend of mine. He wanted 8 main buttons and 4 of which light up. I quite like the layout he chose too. Here are some images.

Don't mind the saw dust (need a shop-vac)

[PL1]

Anyone have any ideas for a marquee holder that is slim for a bartop?

Have you looked in this thread?

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=119998.0


Scott

[CoryBee]

Good call, I will try to find that at my local Home Depot in California

[CoryBee]

Preparing the edges of the control panel. He wants an all white arcade as well. Don't have any white so I used white primer.



Taking apart the controller that will be my control interface. The blue ones have Turbo & Slow, I might end up using this later on. Black (http://www.ebay.com/itm/260754213640?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649) (Blue - Turbo http://www.ebay.com/itm/370503470516?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649)









Mounting terminals and controller via hot glue.



More soldering again like before.



The dell laptop power cord needs to be switched so I can use it with the DC jack.





Fitting the buttons on the acrylic.





Solder the buttons.



Ground





I have the LEDs hooked through the USB Controller so I got a Step Up Module that takes the 5v to 12v perfectly.





Oh and by the way I recently purchased an automatic wire stripper and it was the best damned 3 bucks I ever spent. (eBay - http://www.ebay.com/itm/220886275387?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649)



Mess o' Wires for pretty lights











More updates and pictures coming.

[capsule]

Nice laptop hack!

I love hacking gamepads too but be careful with vibrations. I used to solder directly on the board like you did but ran into tracks lifting up and then breaking because the cable acts as a lever (these chinese boards are crap)... I now drill a tiny hole using a dremel and solder like on a regular circuit board with the cable coming from the bottom. Easier to solder and more robust.

I'm also suprised about your "hidden" ground issue. I'm using Trustmaster gamepad and they got only one ground.

Anyway, you bought 10 of them so you can still replace yours later and solder them "properly" :-)

[CoryBee]

Well thanks for the tip, i will try that hole drilling on the solder pad. Never thought of that, ingenious. I haven't had any issues thus far, everything is secured though. Yea I am not sure why there is this hidden ground issue either, the USB SNES gamepad I used had a common ground. Chinese mentality...space saver or something I dunno. The turbo\slow buttons use the common ground too.

[CoryBee]

Finished applying most of the Contact paper, painting the edges and fitting some of the back panel electronics.

Two things I thought were clever my friend wanted on his arcade was a fold out cup holder (for beer probably) and an external port to plug in a Male-Male usb. So that he can use the whole bartop as a game controller on a larger PC\screen.



----USB, Rocker Switch for main power, DC Jack, Power momentary switch----







Soldering the ground connections



Live mains and Switch







Cup Holder









Video of plugging in External USB. Powers lights as well because it gets voltage though the gamepads usb.

[iconrl]

How much wood did it take for the build?  Was it an entire 4 x 8 sheet or just partial?  I'd be interested in copying this design exactly.

[CoryBee]

I can make at least 4 of these bartops from one sheet of 4x8 =)  . Hope my many pictures is helping anyone.

[CoryBee]

finishing up assembling the speakers and audio taper (volume control), pictures soon

[CoryBee]

More pictures and a video

Shot of the marquee bottom speaker area.



Grabbing the "+" off of the USB port for powering the Amplifier.



I encountered an issue when using the bartop as a USB device. It only liked being connected to the closest computer. So I added two switches to the USB cord, the data lines and it fixed it nicely. So when I want to play with the bartop as just a controller I turn the data lines going to the Laptop off.





Added a tiny diode to restrict the flow of electricity as to not damage the laptop with another computer's 5v usb.



Assembled





And a video of the Bartop "USB Gamepad Mode" in action.

[CoryBee]

Just got the Bulbs in for the marquee light and am getting ready to cut the acrylic for the monitor bezel.

[CoryBee]

Just got finished cutting\painting the Acrylic Monitor Bezel and installed the Bayonet Bulbs. Here are some shots of it.






Cup Holder Extended







Just about done, only need to add marquee and art. All programing is done already as well.

[CoryBee]

Picked up some edge things I am not sure what they go to but I will be using it as the marquee holder. Need to cut it down a bit first though.

[CoryBee]

Nice, just got my friend to finish designing his marquee art and boot screen. Will post soon, been fixing these two LCD TVs I might use for a standup arcade.

[CheffoJeffo]

If somebody else has already asked, then I apologize.

Why the hell didn't you go with a material that could provide a better finish ?

You put a lot of time in and your work is diminished by a poor choice in materials ... and no t-molding.

Can we move this to PA ?

[CoryBee]

Yes, someone mentioned this already. I didn't realize my material choice until after I bought several sheets of this ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. That is why I went with the contact paper to cover the finish. I wasn't sure at the time what MDF was, I hadn't done much with wood since making my workbench and high school wood-shop. Also, I can't find T-Moulding that is a quarter of an inch. If you have source let me know, Thanks for the input.

[CoryBee]

Looks to be a bit bigger than 1/4

[CoryBee]

I will be sticking with the way it is now. I don't think it looks that bad, but there is a ton of room for improvement on this visually. I will be going to home-depot today or tomorrow to get some MDF for my next bartops\stand up arcade. What thickness should I get for a bartop and for a stand up? 1/2" for bartop and a 3/4" or 1" for stand-up is what I was thinking.....

[mytymaus007]

Awsome pics and documentation most people charge for this! your the man!!I love this forum everyone shares their work!! Greedy people must leave now

[CoryBee]

Haha, thanks boss. I mostly pulled this stuff out of ---my bottom--- and tried to shine it into gold. Working some things out and getting new wood at the moment so we will see how much more shiny I can get it.

[CoryBee]

Just a quick update. Printed out (x2) the marquee my friend finally picked out and cut the acrylic for it. Just need to install the marquee holder now, shell MalaFE and this one is done.

[Unstupid]

Because friends have asked me to build them one =). Plus had the extra wood. Can make probably 4 shells with $14.50 in MDF board.

You do realize that what you are using is not MDF? 

[gamuhar]

Very nice. Just one thing. Your signature does not belong on the MAME splash screen, I'm afraid. And the placement... you don't want people to think you created MAME, right? Your signature belongs on the cabinet itself, unless you just copied iCade design, in which case you shouldn't give yourself too much credit anyway. Sorry if this doesn't sound too friendly as I do think you are doing a good job, but there is no need to take away someone else's credit and your work will still be cool for all the things that you did do yourself.


@unstupid:
Are you a drama writer, or actor? Why are you being rhetoric when you could simply say what the material is? So, what is it, please?

[CoryBee]

Very nice. Just one thing. Your signature does not belong on the MAME splash screen, I'm afraid. And the placement... you don't want people to think you created MAME, right? Your signature belongs on the cabinet itself, unless you just copied iCade design, in which case you shouldn't give yourself too much credit anyway. Sorry if this doesn't sound too friendly as I do think you are doing a good job, but there is no need to take away someone else's credit and your work will still be cool for all the things that you did do yourself.


@unstupid:
Are you a drama writer, or actor? Why are you being rhetoric when you could simply say what the material is? So, what is it, please?

Yea I realize that it isn't MDF, when I first started getting into I wasn't sure what was what. By the time I wrote that though I not sure what I was thinking cause I knew the difference. I already stated this and will be using MDF in the future.

I created the design for the bartop myself, was the hardest part in my opinion. That curve was a ---smurfette--- to get right.

As for the signature, it was just to take credit for the bartop itself. I have built them for my friends and they seem to like that it is there. I didn't think that it would look like I created MAME altogether =) .... Also don't like the idea of physically signing it which is why I went to edit the boot logo.

Speaking of which, this latest white one wont have the mame boot screen, but will have the dreamcast system boot logo. I edited that one with MAME by Cory, and am now second guessing what it should say. What do you think would be a decent signature on the MAME boot and Dreamcast boot??




I take no offense to constructive criticism. I don't have many tools to work with or a background in woodshop so I do what I can. The first one I made all I had was a Jigsaw, Ruler, and a drill.