*Scratch Build - Green Bay Packers Bartop*

[a1pharm]

So this cab also plays pinball games, and it needed pinball flipper buttons.  The furring strips allowed for the button to be in place, but not the whole button nut.  I clipped the nut to allow it to fit on the button shaft and the cab.  I removed the button, spring, and switch.  Then  I super glued the threads of the nut, and placed it on the button shaft.  Then I used gorilla glue between the nut and the furring strip near the contact points.  This button is now super stable, but completely locked in place.

[a1pharm]

I cut the back of an old power supply apart, and used that as the power port + switch + fan exhaust plate for this cab.  I screwed the plate to the cab, but also had to reinforce it with braces to prevent wobble when plugging/unplugging (I used furring strips as the braces).  Also, I had to spray paint it to match the rest of the cab.  There is a chip in the pic, but this is now touched up nicely.

[a1pharm]

The marquee is removable.  I achieved this by stealing another of Martijn's ideas.  I used T-nuts on the underside of the top of the cab.  I pinched these in place.  I also made sure they matched up perfectly with the holes I drilled in the top aluminum L rail used as the marquee holder.  These enable me to use machined screws to hold the rail in place, and is an elegant way to keep the marquee and internals accessible.

[a1pharm]

So there simply wasn't room in the cab for the coin door    Oh well, I guess I'll have to use that for another project 

Here's some close to finished pics.  You can see the speaker panel quite nicely in these pics.  Again, I stole Martijn's idea for it (I also used it on my full cab).

[a1pharm]

Here's the final accounting sheet for the project:

Computer   54
Monitor   25
Coin Mech (NOT USED)   
GGG order   137.4
Plexiglass   11.98
Artwork   90
Paint   6
Wood   40.26
Speakers   10.55
L-Bracket   3.97
Keyboard   12.98
GGG order 2   28.92
Video Card   44.62

Grand Total   465.68

For those of you paying close attention, you'll notice the deletion of the coin door, and the addition of the video card.  I bought a EVGA GeForce GT 610 from tigerdirect.com (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3853853&CatId=8754).

I did this so Future Pinball would work.  This is just a workstation graphics card, but works surprisingly perfectly for future pinball at 1280 x 1024.  Solid 60+ FPS.  In addition, this is just a P4 3 gHz computer.  If anyone is interested in full specs, let me know.

[a1pharm]

Here's one last pic (it's HDR for all of you photography geeks out there).

This was a great build experience.  I already have an order to build an exact replica.  I won't be documenting that build, but if anyone wants additional details on how to build one like this, let me know, and I'll take pics of the requested process during the next build over the next 3 months.

Cheers, BYOAC!
 

[markronz]

Looks great!  I'm from Green Bay myself.  Always good to see more Packers pride!

[a1pharm]

Final Measurements:

For anyone who is looking to copy this build, I took very accurate measurements of the final cab.  Everything that you would want to know, measurement-wise, is in the picture below: