Waiting patiently for updates on this build
Thanks for the nudge, lol! I've totally been slacking on updating my thread. You know how it is -- life gets in the way.
Anyway, before I dive into updates, a little background on my trackball situation. So early/mid last year I bought a black Happ high lip trackball for the project. I didn't know much about the Happ trackball mounts at the time, so along with the trackball I ordered a standard trackball mount. The listing on eBay said that it works with both the standard and high lip track balls, which, in fairness I suppose is true. But the opening on the trackball mount isn’t big enough for the lip to fit through; it pushes up against the bottom of the mount. A few threads here in the forums go over this; not sure if I read those before or after ordering. Oh well. Anyway, I didn’t want this because it didn’t look as clean to me, so back in December when all this was happening I went looking to order a mount for the high lip. Found out that NOBODY had them in stock (I tried a handful of different vendors), and Happ had (still has?) them on backorder til February or so of this year. So then I thought of this grand idea to just use a hole saw to widen the opening of the standard mount I had from 3” to 3 ¼”. Here’s a picture of how that went:
The dumb guide bit had a mind of its own and traveled all over the place in the wood. I should have clamped the mount down to something metal, I guess. I was angry. My wife could tell haha. I thought about waiting for the high lip mount, but instead I went ahead and ordered a U-trak. I kinda wanted a white ball instead of the black one I ordered with the Happ, and after looking at ChanceKJ’s flush mount technique on his Flynn’s Arcade with the U-track, I thought that would look good on my panel.
After impatiently waiting for an unexpected 2 week delivery time I had the U-Trak in my hands. (For the record, I didn’t order from Andy’s Ultimarc website. If I had, I would expect the 2 weeks since I’m in the US. In fact, I think my i-pac ultimate came faster than 2 weeks, which I DID order from Andy’s site I think early 2016.)
Being excited with the new toy, I busted out my router and flush trim bit and got the hole for the trackball just right. I also routed out about 1/8” on the underside so that the lip of the trackball would sit flush with the surface of the CPO.
While I was at it, I drilled, routed, and chiseled the placements for the joystick mounts. I used
these joystick mounting plates from Paradise Arcade Shop. They gave me just enough room to work with my wood inserts. Actually, for safe measure I used my Dremel and cut off the ends of the inserts:
I didn’t want any chance of ruining my panel, so I used a scrap piece of wood to create a drill bit stop to make sure the depth was right for each insert.
Here’s what I had after the woodworking:
I like the S style mounting plates cause they allowed me to get the proper joystick shaft height as recommended/mentioned at Slagcoin while bottom-mounting them. It also provides options down the road should I have to change anything. And, blind mounting the joysticks just looks better imho.
Ok back to the U-Trak. So, I had originally accommodated for the depth of the Happ trackball. Space is limited under my control panel, so I made sure I had measurements just right. BUT, now I had a U-trak, and as luck would have it, it didn’t fit!! The control panel wouldn’t close all the way. The bottom of the trackball housing was hitting the panel below the control panel. I don’t think the U-trak is larger than the Happ, but the Happ mounting plate allowed for about 5/8” more space. So, I took apart the u-trak to see what I was working with:
After inspecting the housing, I figured I could cut off a bit of it where it was hitting the bottom panel. I mounted it to a board and cut it on the table saw.
Mounted it to test fit again. Still wouldn’t close. I needed a tiny bit more room. So I took my router and cut out some of the bottom panel it was hitting against. I also drilled out a little extra for the mounting bolt using a forster bit.
That did the trick, without a mm to spare lol.
Once that was taken care of it was on to installing all the buttons and wiring it up. Took forever! I used the Dupont style housings and terminals. Real estate is limited with this CP, so I was forced to mount the ipac ultimate above (well, technically speaking, below) player 2’s joystick. I really didn’t want the hassle of mounting it somewhere else. It worked fine in the end. Here she is before being mounted to the cabinet.
I’ve got more, but I want to post what I’ve jotted down so far. I feel like I just wrote an essay
lol. I think I'll have a bit of free time later tonight. Thanks for checking it out!