My first build: "Mimic"

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Laythe:
The top of my cabinet gets a bit complicated. It is made of 3/4" plywood and 1/16" aluminum sheet.

I happened to have saved the side panel off an old Lian Li aluminum tower case, which served as good donor material.

A bandsaw made quick work of the aluminum. I needed two rectangles.

These rectangles each receive a 90' fold to form a flange of 11/16" - this aluminum is quite soft, and bends nicely.

I machined 1/16" of thickness off the outside of each of the marquee sideplates, to sink the aluminum flush.

Then, countersunk and mounted the aluminum panels like so. The 11/16" flange, plus the 1/16" cutaway, forms a matching 3/4" edge that lines up with the thickness of the original board.

These pieces then get a thoroughly chamfered 1x4" attached to their inside faces, to act as a rail.

The cabinet verticals get capped with the odd looking square-with-an-angled-tab pieces, inboard - here, painted black. Then a 1x2" is attached, outboard, in line with the cabinet side, to form a C shape at the top. This all leaves a 1x4" slot for the aforementioned 1x4 board to slide into, from the front.

Resulting assembly of cabinet sides looks like...

(For anyone wondering what the :censored: I am doing all this for - I promise it all makes more sense from here out.)

Laythe:
Next up, priming and painting.

This cabinet has a mix of painted and laminated parts. Everything to be painted got sanded down, primed with Killz grey latex primer, sanded down, given a second coat of primer, and then sanded down again.

Shown here is the overhead speaker panel, the center column, and the L-shaped control access panel.

My control panel fits snugly between the verticals, and I couldn't figure out a good way to hinge it without risking it scraping up the cabinet sides that it nests between - worse, scraping them up on the top, right where the damage would be most visible. So, I decided to hard-mount the control panel between batons like any other permanent piece of the cabinet. This L-shaped panel on the right forms the front wall and underside of the control panel ledge, and has 4 1/4-20 capscrews running up into metal nut inserts in the batons to make it removable and reinstallable. Any scratches it accrues are on the bottom, out of normal sight.

This gives me a big access hatch to remove, for the inevitable servicing of the control panel parts. It works, but I don't know if I'd do things this way again - working overhead on the sticks and buttons, while laying on your back, is kind of a pain.

I couldn't find an exact paint match for the color of my printed control panel artwork, so I bought the closest two colors I could find and mixed them 50/50.

The result went on DISTRESSINGLY purple, but dried to a pretty good match to the art I made for it -

Panels painted, with grills reinstalled:

The cabinet color scheme is two-tone, dark grey paint and black laminate.

I learned a fair bit about applying laminate from reading these forums - using contact cement, spacing things with dowels, rolling it down, then trimming with a router afterward, made the whole task almost not unpleasant. :) (As compared to the first project I ever did with laminate, long ago, wherein I trimmed it all to fit with a large hand file. I wish I was kidding.)

Here you can see the power strip mounted in the upper section, wired through the cable pass-through down to the power input box, the orientation of the CPU shelf and fans as installed, and the whole thing starting to take shape. Also, a test fit of the white T-mold.

(Ignore the second power strip on the right - that's what I was plugging my tools into.)

Assembling everything onto the center column, and adding some small white vinyl lettering to explain the function of the buttons, produces this:

Thanks for the CDRs and the coin door art, Randy. At knee height, in a dimly lit room, with the buttons lit - it's a surprisingly effective illusion.

Laythe:
I got the control panel populated. Ultimarc Servosticks for P1 and P2, with Paradise transparent balltops and roll-my-own RGB leds in them. Electric Ice 2 buttons with RGB Drive IIs from GGG, going through an Ultimarc I-PAC Ultimate I/O... I think I ordered parts from most of the vendors who hang out here.

Things are tightly packed under my panel. The neatness of my wiring won't be winning me any awards. Considering that it's mostly prefab harnesses, it probably could have been worse.

Probably.

But hey, it looks better from the top.

This was the stage where I did a bunch of the software development, and committed the classic error of realizing the thing was playable.

(That panel may have sat on those stacked 2x4s for a few weeks as a result.)

Here's the cabinet, as assembled and freestanding for the first time, with the control panel in place.

The T-molding for the top box needed to be extensively modified - the center barb is shaved flush for the entire span it runs over the aluminum flashing. At this point the insides of the verticals still need to be primed and painted black. The wall mounting panel is visible in the back, above the power strip.

Looking from the CPU shelf towards the front of the machine:

you can see the tops of the four silver nut inserts that the L panel screws into. There's a lot of room down there, for a reason I'll be explaining in the next post.

After painting the insides of the verticals, here's a player's-eye-view of the control panel, as installed.

(I know RGB controls get a mixed reaction here, but I wanted to be able to color-highlight the active control set for the current game, in the appropriate game colors. Having anything be RGB, to me suggested that everything ought to be RGB. If the trackball is going to light up when it's active, then the buttons should do the same, and if the buttons do, then I think the sticks should, too - consistency of meaning, and it seems to help people trying out a new game to see it.)

Token:

--- Quote from: Laythe on January 17, 2016, 04:07:06 am ---(I know RGB controls get a mixed reaction here, but I wanted to be able to color-highlight the active control set for the current game, in the appropriate game colors. Having anything be RGB, to me suggested that everything ought to be RGB. If the trackball is going to light up when it's active, then the buttons should do the same, and if the buttons do, then I think the sticks should, too - consistency of meaning, and it seems to help people trying out a new game to see it.)

--- End quote ---

+1

This makes a MAME cab much more guest friendly.

Alejo I:
Not a huge fan of slim builds, but that CP is just lovely. Simple, yet so eye pleasing.

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