Metal control panels

[fantoboy]

I see quite a few metal CPs in the project announcements.  Are people making them themselves for the most part, or is there a place that makes them on order?  What are the advantages?

[mgb]

A few guys here have fabricated their own. A number of places have blank metal control panels but from what I've seen most of them are Midway style like what would be on a Pacman so they are going to be a little narrow for some.
My cp is metal and I love it but my cab was an arcade machine. I find some wood CPs to be a bit bulky. I just love the original simplicity of a metal cp

[SavannahLion]

My current CP project is metal.

Come to think of it, I don't have any cabinet that has a wood CP nor have I managed to salvage a cab with wood. Just dumb luck I guess. 

Back to the topic. I know there are a few places selling blanks in one fashion or another but I've always found myself doing the work myself. Whether it's patching an existing CP to make fill in errant holes or, like right now, fabricating my own. The dominate panels in my collection are from the "Z back" Dynamos with the fold-down front CP. They ALL need work so I haven't done much with them. The rest are custom interfaces such as Hang-On.

It really comes down to personal preference I guess. My current project is metal because I intend to anodize a color into it. Wood is nice, but it's near impossible to get that look. That's all.

[mgb]

I think part of deciding between metal or wood will be what you're attempting to build.
All the metal CPs I see always fit between the sides of the cabinets where alot of wood ones go wider than the cabinet.
So I would think if you want a four player control panel or a fighter cp with decent room between the players, you may wanna go with wood.
Same thing goes for trackballs for games like golden tee. I used to have a wooden cp and it was around 16 inches or so from the front to the monitor glass, my current metal cp is little more than half that so the way some people play golden tee, they'd be smacking my monitor glass and I'd be smacking them.
I have found that button noise and switch click can be a more muted with wood. On my metal cp, I used rubber gaskets.