James and Anne's Arcade Machine

[kahlid74]

A friend was getting married so I decided to build him a cabinet.  He had mentioned several times before he would like to help me build one and I thought I could give him one and then he could mess around with it and slowly dive into the hobby.  More often than not my design centers around good deals.  I got a 28" insignia LED TV from best buy as an opened/banged up item for $25 bucks, which then drove the size.  Another friend wanted to help me build it so I walked him through the process.  He, being the best man, knew the grooms house was small and recomended something besides a full cab.  I went with a pseudo Evolution cab and I used the Knievel evo cab as a guide.

So just some high level items:

• Four player cab with six buttons for 1/2 player and four buttons for 3/4 player.
• Happ 3" trackball lit (finally bought one off Ebay instead of through Happ.  Saved a boat load and worked exactly as expected)
• Control panel cover is a whiteboard vinyl.  Basically throught it was a fun play so you could write high scores on it and controls, etc.  (I'm not a big fan of art on the CP, personal preference)
• Opt2Not's art services for the side.  Sides were fantastic again.  Printed through Game on Graffix (fing amazing service and superb printing quality).
• PACLED64 and iPac4 player.  Both worked fantastically.  LED buttons through Ultimarc
• Computer running Intel G840 with Geforce 620 card, 8 GB memory and 500 GB HD
• Blue LED's standard 12volt string LED from Ebay.  Driven by LED driver with remote control for on/off and raising/lowering intesity
• two sets of double coin doors.  All work and empty through a wood tray into a bucket inside the cab.  Switch lock for whether CP buttons work or coin doors only.
• All wood MDF 3/4"
• Paint - 2 coats Primer rolled on, 2 coats latex White sprayed on with Wagner spray gun
• Hyperspin front end with MAME, Sega Genesis, SNES and NES (Not a big fan of any other emulators as they don't translate well to standup cabs IMO)

Things I wish I would have done better on the first pass but ran out of time to fix:

• The Marquee: It's simple, which was my goal but spacing looks/feels kind of off.  I also wanted to use the Marquette font but for $130 bucks F that.
• The Control panel enclosure size.  I made it about 1" too small.  This resulted in buttons/joysticks being SUPER close to the forward facing wall.  Which resulted in me poking holes through the top surface that I didn't really need

It was a fun build and it was super fun teaching the best man all of the in's and outs of every phase.  It was also fun watching his reaction doing certain things.  Like having him drill one hole with my driver and frostner and then showing him the drill press and pumping the whole panel out in 15 minutes.  Router Flush trim bit was also super fun to watch his reaction to how well it works.

While the groom and bride were at their rehearsal dinner I grabbed a friend and we delivered the cabinet.  The last picture is his reaction upon walking into his house to see the cabinet sitting there lit up and rocking the hyperspin intro.  He's the guy in the white jacket.

I made a paint boot for my spray gun as in the past spray droplets went everywhere:



Control panel (I have a template that I use for all of my control panels.  I use it and then scale it either up or down)



Control panel enclosure:




Mock put together, making sure things fit:


Dry run:





Finished:




In it's new home:





The Bachelor:




This is Cabinet 7 for me now.  I feel like I've gotten better at certain things and worse at others.  I'm still super susceptible to the do things fast, kind of crappy looking and it annoys the fudge out of me.

[ChanceKJ]

I love the whiteboard idea. That's really cool.

Great cab, it's one hell of a wedding gift.

[Felsir]

Love that sideart!

[Slippyblade]

I like the light panels on the front, nice touch.

Angled sticks!  Argh!!!

[kahlid74]

Angled sticks!  Argh!!!

They aren't angled, they are true north, the same as 1/2 player.  I learned that lesson after the first cab I built.

[mgb]

That's a great wedding gift.
Very nice job.
Opt2not's artwork is awesome

[yotsuya]

Angled sticks!  Argh!!!

They aren't angled, they are true north, the same as 1/2 player.  I learned that lesson after the first cab I built.

Yeah, I thought that too, until I saw the bolt patterns in the finals product photos. My boy Kahlid wouldn't let me down! 

[wp34]

That's an impressively compact 4-player cabinet.   The lighting is a nice touch.  Great work.   

[Slippyblade]

Angled sticks!  Argh!!!

They aren't angled, they are true north, the same as 1/2 player.  I learned that lesson after the first cab I built.

Got it. When I looked at the paper templates taped down they are angled.  I was a little shocked.

[DarakuTenshi]

Let me say this is very cool of you to do. As for your comment earlier about how you do somethings better now and others worse... over all I think it's a great end product. The only thing I would change is the marquee, but that can be done at any time.

[kahlid74]

Angled sticks!  Argh!!!

They aren't angled, they are true north, the same as 1/2 player.  I learned that lesson after the first cab I built.

Got it. When I looked at the paper templates taped down they are angled.  I was a little shocked.

Ahh gotcha.  The template was only used for the main hole.  Before I drilled the corner posts I rotated them to be true north.

[opt2not]

Well done! The cabinet turned out great! I like what you did with the Evo design. Glad the sideart worked out for you, and I'm extremely happy about the amount of coverage. It works really well with the shape of the cabinet!

We gotta do something about that marquee though. 
Let's talk about making you one at a discounted cost.  You've come back to me for art, and I appreciate that, but also it hurts my soul to see the colorful full sideart paired with a lackluster marquee.

[kahlid74]

Well done! The cabinet turned out great! I like what you did with the Evo design. Glad the sideart worked out for you, and I'm extremely happy about the amount of coverage. It works really well with the shape of the cabinet!

We gotta do something about that marquee though. 
Let's talk about making you one at a discounted cost.  You've come back to me for art, and I appreciate that, but also it hurts my soul to see the colorful full sideart paired with a lackluster marquee.

Haha yeah, I wanted simple and then after I was like meh, I don't like it.

[dcraun]

absolutely love the look! could you post the dimensions of your side panel I would love to make something similar

[Vigo]

Looks awesome!  I never thought I would see a Marquette cab.

[BobA]

You are a great friend and you build is really nice.    Little touch ups aside it is GREAT WORK!    Anyone would love to be presented with your work.