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Author Topic: The Leavicade (DONE)  (Read 12970 times)

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Turbo23

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The Leavicade (DONE)
« on: July 15, 2017, 12:26:21 am »
Hello all!  I'm hard at work building the Leavicade (pronounced as Levicade).  I actually started this project on June 29th, but I didn't know about this forum until I think last week, and I originally wasn't going to share anything about this with anyone other than my wife until it was done.  Well I've made an exception for this forum.  So this is going to be my personal build log, as well as a sharing thread for anyone who may be interested.  I'm going to try to be as detailed as possible with everything I post in here.

First off I want to address the name.  My last name is Leavitt.  I wanted to incorporate my name into the name of the cab somehow, but I didn't want "Brian's Arcade" or anything like that.  It had to be one word and this is what I settled on.

OK so like I stated before, I started this project at the end of last month.  I don't have a much time to work on it - typically an hour to an hour and a half after my kids go to bed every day.  I actually bought all of the controls for this a month before that and they just sat in the garage while I figured out how I wanted to build this thing.  Once I finally settled on that it was a couple more weeks before I finally went out and purchased the wood.  For the most part, I'm not really 'planning' any part of this.  I had the basic design in my head, nothing elaborate.  What I knew I wanted going in to this was a fairly slim cabinet, 4:3 monitor, not too expensive, and 2-player controls.  Other than that, I've just been deciding on what to do for each part as it comes.

In order to keep the timeline correct, I'll split this build in to individual posts for each day.  My memory is not so good so I'm basing what I did on what day off the day the photos were taken.  Thanks for reading and Stay tuned!
« Last Edit: July 30, 2017, 09:29:51 pm by Turbo23 »

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2017, 12:35:29 am »
6/29/17

Day 1!  Not much happened this day.  Most of the time I was deciding on and finalizing dimensions.  All that really got 'done' was I drew out the shape of the side panels on my wood.

Speaking of wood.  I decided on .75" maple plywood.  Once I bought the wood I decided I wasn't going to laminate or paint the cab, I was going to stain and apply a nice, hard clear finish over that.  I also decided I was going to leave the edges exposed rather than using the rubber edging you find on the majority of cabinets.  This plywood doesn't have the gaps cheaper ply has, and I like the look of the exposed plywood edge, personally.

It was at this point I also decided there would be no fasteners exposed externally.  Everything will be glued and nailed from the inside.  This is a bit more challenging when you're not covering the wood with anything but stain and varnish, but that's how it's gonna be!

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2017, 12:49:01 am »
6/30/17

Got some real work done today!  cut out my side panels.  So here's how that went.

I cut the first panel based off what I drew the day before.  Once that was cut out, I sanded the sides smooth.  To cut the other side, I laid the side that was already cut out on the second sheet of ply and traced the outline.  Then I cut the second side out, but roughly an eighth inch oversize.  Once it was cut out, I clamped them together and ran the router around the whole thing with a flush trim bit so they would be exactly the same.  Once that was done, I left them clamped together and did two things.  First I sanded all of the edges.  Second I filed the inside corners of side two to match side one.

Once they were matched I switched to the roundover bit in the router and rounded all of the edges on both sides except for the back.  I rounded over both sides of each panel because I decided I wanted to have the front panels inset a bit.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2017, 01:10:33 am »
7/1/17

First I got to sanding the side panels.  I spend a decent amount of time on this.  Everything had to be smooth - especially since it'll all be exposed.  After I finished sanding I went to work figuring out the angle at which I wanted the monitor.  So I stood there with the panel standing in front of me as if I were playing a game and tried to get the angle so the monitor is facing directly at me.  Once I figured that out I marked a line on each panel and moved on.

The next thing on the list was marking the panels for where the battens would be attached.  I knew I wanted the front panels inset from the front, but I hadn't decided by how much.  Well... to make it easy on myself I let my rule decide for me.  It is 1.5" wide, and my wood is .75" thick, so the panels are inset .75" from the front edge.  I simply laid the rule along the edge of the side panels and marked a line around the whole thing.

Once that was done I switch gears a bit and started cutting a few front panels.  This is the biggest pain of the whole build so far.  Some were easy, like the lower panel, the very top panel, and the panel for where the monitor will go.  The rest of them were simply annoying to cut.

Now, I have plenty of tools.  The problem is some of them are pure crap.  I have a really nice circular saw, my router is just OK, miter saw is fine, but my table saw is pretty terrible.  I got this saw probably 13 years ago and it was about the cheapest name-brand table saw on earth.  So I tried to avoid using the table saw at all, but I knew it was going to have to happen at some point.  I had to make several angled cut so these panels would fit flush with each other.

I don't remember exactly which panels I cut today, but I know I did all of them with the circular saw, using the rule as a guide.  All of the cut angles are different (naturally) so I used my angle finder and a ruler to figure them all out.  It cause some serious distress to my pea brain.

All the while, my work area is getting more and more cluttered, and my car is getting very upset with me for having to sit outside while I work on this.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2017, 01:31:02 am »
7/2/17

Got some fun stuff done today.  Finalized my side and from art and lasered them onto the panels.  The laser I have at home will fit a 20" x 28" object inside.  Needless to say, none of the panels I wanted to laser would fit inside.  I have a larger laser at the shop, but it's still only 28" x 40" and I didn't want to transport the wood back and forth anyways.  So I had to be a little creative.

I did the side panels first.  My home laser is designed to have pass through capability.  This means I can open the front lower panel, back lower panel, or both to get larger objects in there.  I will say that this is technically correct.  I can get larger objects to "fit" while sticking out the front.  The problem is the steel support between the lower and upper doors on the machine won't allow me to focus correctly on the piece being lasered when it's sticking out the front.  Well, I got it as close as I could.  It was out of focus a bit more than I'm typically comfortable with, but I ran a test on a piece of scrap and it worked out fine.  So I took the plunge and hit the actual cab panels with the laser and, fortunately, they also came out fine.  I mask them before lasering, which prevents the edges from getting smoke residue on them.

Once the panels were done I moved on to figuring out how high the base needed to be.  I had already bought casters so I measured the height and added 1.25" to that, and marked the line for the battens.  Where did 1.25" come from?  Well I'll tell ya, for extra support here I'm using two pieces of .75" ply glued and nailed together.  The that's 1.5".  I wanted the casters sticking out the bottom a quarter of an inch so there you go.

Once finished I got to cutting most of the battens I would need.  They're not pretty, but you don't see them either so who cares?  Got them all cut out, and glued and nailed them to the side panels.

Last thing I did was mark out the inside dimension of my marquee panel and drill starter holes.  Then it was time to go in and make dinner. :)

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2017, 01:34:41 am »
7/5/17

This is a small update.  All I really did between Sunday and today was cut out the marquee and monitor panels, sand, and round over the inside cut of each.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2017, 01:37:39 am »
7/7/17

Another short one.  I started on staining today.  I stained all of the panels prior to assembly.  It's just easier when they're laying flat on sawhorses instead of standing up on the floor.  Now, I will say that while this was the easier way to do it, I should have waited to stain the speaker panel until after I had drilled the holes for the speakers.  More on that later, though.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2017, 01:41:07 am »
7/8/17

Starting assembly!  I couldn't put a lot of it together just yet since I had yet to do my speaker holes and I hadn't decided on how I was going to mount the marquee to the marquee panel.  Still, a milestone was reached and I got to see it standing up for the first time.  I'd almost compare it to seeing my kids take their first steps, but not quite.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #8 on: July 15, 2017, 01:48:15 am »
7/9/17

NOW I finally started on the speaker panel.  So what I did was set up in my graphics program how the holes would be laid out, lasered this onto the masked speaker panel, and drilled each of the 276 holes that needed to be drilled.  I did as many of the holes as I could with the drill press, but I couldn't get all of them, so many of them had to be done with a regular ol' cordless drill.

Here's the issue I brought up before with staining the speaker panel.  I should definitely waited until the holes were drilled.  I neglected to take into account how rough the drilling would leave the face of the panel.  So I ended up having to sand a re-stain the whole thing.  Not really that big of a deal.  Just a minor annoyance.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2017, 01:51:15 am »
7/10/17

Today I attached the speaker panel.  Fit nice and looks pretty good, in my humble, but accurate opinion.  :P

I also attached the marquee panel, which I forgot about until I looked at the photos a second time.

Titchgamer

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #10 on: July 15, 2017, 01:58:05 am »
Really liking the way you are going with this, with the stained wood and laser etching very cool :)

Are you going to laser the CP as well?

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #11 on: July 15, 2017, 02:00:34 am »
7/11/17

Today I decided to build the light box.  I stopped by Lowe's on the way home and picked up a piano hinge, some magnetic latches, and a "closet" light.  I didn't know before today that there are specific lights for closets.

This light is perfect for my box.  It's 18" wide, LED, and is designed for hard-wiring so the individual wires come out the back of the light assembly rather than a plug out the side.  I didn't get any photos of the building process of this thing, but I have a few of the finished product.  This is when I found out I have an entire drawer full of drawer pulls I had forgotten about.

I also cut and installed the inside shelf for the cabinet.  This shelf sits directly below the control panel and is where I will store the keyboard/mouse combo, and probably a few other thing.  I'll probably mount the control interface and Raspberry Pi here as well.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #12 on: July 15, 2017, 02:02:52 am »
Really liking the way you are going with this, with the stained wood and laser etching very cool :)

Are you going to laser the CP as well?
Thank you, Titch!  Yes and no on the control panel.  The control panel is essentially done.  I basically marked the cut lines and hole locations with the laser.  It'll be in a post here in a little while.  I'm going to sit here and post until this thread is brought up to date!

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #13 on: July 15, 2017, 02:22:04 am »
7/12/17

Some exciting things happened today!  I got my glass cut for the monitor area and my graphics arrived.  I got "grey" glass, which is sort of tinted.  Better than clear glass anyways.  I could have gone darker and gotten tinted plexi, but I wanted real glass because my 8 and 10-year-old kids will be using this thing and I don't want it getting scratched up.

Because my graphics came in, I finally got to get working on the control panel.  I had already drawn up the panel in Corel and was waiting for the control panel overlay to come in to I could actually make the thing.

So here's how that went.  I ordered the control panel graphics a half-inch oversize each way, and cut my wood to that dimension as well.  Then I adhered the panel overlay to the wood and threw them in the laser.  I lasered the cut lines and hole locations.  A word of caution though.  Lasering vinyl is a very bad idea.  It contains chlorine and when lasered emits chlorine gas.  This is both bad for the laser itself and very poisonous to humans.  I've known this for a long time.  So why, you may ask, would I laser it if I know it's that bad?  A couple of reasons, I guess.  First, I have good fume extraction so all of that bad stuff is getting blown outside and not into my garage.  Second... well... it's a one-time thing, and it was a fairly quick operation for the exposure was minimal.

After lasering I made some of the most nerve wracking cuts of this whole project.  I think I spent a half hour setting up and making only the first cut.  This one was the worst because it was an angled cut and had to be perfectly straight.  I once again used the angle finder to set the angle on the saw.  Then I clamped a straight edge to the control panel.  The actual cut went fairly quick, but I was extremely careful to keep the saw sitting flat on the work piece and butted up against the straight edge.  In the end, the cut was perfect.  The next two were easier because they didn't have to be angled, but I was still paranoid the panel overlay was going to get messed up so I took my time setting up the cuts.

That was all the stress I wanted to deal with that night so I called it quits after the third rip.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #14 on: July 15, 2017, 02:39:01 am »
7/13/17

Aside from varnishing, I pretty much finished up the control panel today.  And I also screwed it up, but then I fixed my screw-up so it's all good.

I didn't get photos of the last cuts, but I made the front, curved cut, and two notches at the back of the control panel with the scroll saw today.  The front cut was another extremely careful one because there was no fixing it if I messed it up.  It took a while, but ended up about as good as I could expect.

Then I went to round over the edges of the control panel with the router.  This is where I screwed up.  You will see a slight difference in the shape of the panel between the first and second pictures attached to this post.  When I was routing the edges, I initially slipped and went in too fast with the router, catching the vinyl and ripping a piece off.  Thankfully, the problem area was small enough that I could just round the back corners on the belt sander to get rid of the mistake.  Then I realized I like it better this way so I'm actually glad I screwed up with the routing!

After that was done I very carefully drilled all of the required holes with a hole saw in the drill press.  This was done verrry slowly so as not to rip the vinyl in the process.  In the end, it came out just as I'd hoped it would.  It's attached to the cabinet with four magnets so it's very easy to remove to get to the future guts of the system.  It can move slightly so I'm going to have to add something to secure it, but still keep it easy to remove.  Still thinking on that one.

Once I was done with that, I soldered up a plug to the marquee light, tested it out, and secured the wire to the inside of the cabinet.

That pretty much brings us up to date, finally.  I didn't do anything with it yesterday as I was waiting for my varnish to come in.  I put the first coat on today, and will lightly sand and add coats every day for basically the next week.  While I'm doing that, I'm also setting up some of the electrical stuff so I'll probably update on Sunday.  Other than that, there's not going to be much of anything to update until I get the varnishing done and start working on the fun stuff.  If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #15 on: July 15, 2017, 04:17:33 am »
Ahh its a shame you have not lasered the CP.
Think it would look cool having the joystick direction arrows, Start, A,B,C etc lasered in!

Still looking good :)

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #16 on: July 15, 2017, 04:43:46 am »
Ahh its a shame you have not lasered the CP.
Think it would look cool having the joystick direction arrows, Start, A,B,C etc lasered in!

Still looking good :)
I did think about doing something like that, but I didn't want it to look too monotone and I wanted the top of the control panel to be smooth.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #17 on: July 15, 2017, 09:15:06 pm »
Cool laser work.  I too would have liked to see the CP lasered.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #18 on: July 15, 2017, 09:58:42 pm »
Well we'll see.  I have no plans of lasering one, but I will if I don't like the look of the graphic against the wood that would be my next choice.  From what I can tell through the masking, I think I'm going to like it the way it is.  Time will tell.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #19 on: July 15, 2017, 11:46:09 pm »
I've been following your updates since you started adding them which was kind of nice getting alerts to the next part of the story every 10 minutes lol.

My concern for the cp and not using t-moulding is the general wear and tear on the edge of the panel. Will varnish provide enough protection from the vinyl being caught and lifted or from moisture getting in there? T-moulding would have made this job a lot easier.

Still, I can see from the style this is that perhaps plastic trims would fight with the natural wood look so see why you haven't done that I suppose.

Great to follow this and I am enjoying seeing the whole thing coming together. That glass was a nice touch, looking forward to seeing how the tint looks against the monitor.

Well done, keep going :)


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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #20 on: July 16, 2017, 02:39:37 am »
Black paint in the etching would make it really stand out. The stain muted the impact of the laser etching.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #21 on: July 16, 2017, 02:43:29 am »
My concern for the cp and not using t-moulding is the general wear and tear on the edge of the panel. Will varnish provide enough protection from the vinyl being caught and lifted or from moisture getting in there? T-moulding would have made this job a lot easier.
What I originally wanted to do was to apply the varnish to the wood AND the graphic which would have eliminated any concern of the graphic lifting, but after corresponding with the manufacturer of the varnish, neither of us was confident that is would adhere properly to the polycarbonate laminate.  So all I can say is hopefully it will be OK.  Having rounded over the edge will help keep things from catching on the graphic, and this particular varnish, once cured, is much more durable than anything the Home Depot would carry.  I'm going to stay positive until I have a reason not to. :)

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #22 on: July 16, 2017, 02:49:38 am »
Black paint in the etching would make it really stand out. The stain muted the impact of the laser etching.
I contemplated paint filling the engraving.  I'm still thinking about it.  Actually, I've been going between leaving it as-is, paint filling, and cutting inlays.  I knew the stain would make the engraving not stand out, but I wasn't, and am still not sure if I really want it to stand out that much or not.  I'm not making any more decisions on that part until everything else is done and I get get a good overall picture of the sucker.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #23 on: July 16, 2017, 02:52:32 am »
If you are crafty enough for inlays they look great. Really good results can be achieved with paint, and it is much easier, at least for me.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #24 on: July 16, 2017, 03:03:48 am »
7/16/17


Had a pretty decent night of work, for the most part.  I got my plug/power strip wired up and attached to the lower back panel, and got the ATX PSU I'm using for the LED's modified.


Today I got the second coat of varnish on the cab.  Halfway through this I tipped over the can of varnish and spilled a large portion on my garage floor.  :banghead:   So I might have to order another can to finish this up.  I'm going for 5-6 coats in total.  Probably 7 or 8 on the control panel.  It's a wipe-on varnish so it goes on very thin and I can only do one coat every 24 hours.


After that was done I got to wiring the fused input plug and hard wiring the surge protector to it.  Not really that much to talk about there.  After that I got to modifying the ATX PSU I'm using to power the LED's.  I opened up the case, de-soldered and removed all of the unnecessary wires, and soldered the green turn-on wire directly to ground.  Put it back together, tested, and it's working fine.  I'm about two hours in to a 14 hour 3D print of a bracket to mount the PSU on the back panel.  No photos of that yet as at this point it just looks like an orange square.
« Last Edit: July 18, 2017, 01:45:08 am by Turbo23 »

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #25 on: July 16, 2017, 03:12:23 am »
If you are crafty enough for inlays they look great. Really good results can be achieved with paint, and it is much easier, at least for me.

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I do quite a bit of color-filling in wood for work, but I usually do it by masking the wood, lasering through the mask, and spraying it whatever color it needs to be.  I do have some dedicated paint-fill paint.  Whether or not that would work on this depends on how smooth I get the finish.  I can't do it by hand with a brush.  My hands are not steady enough for that.  For me, inlays would probably be the easiest route if I decide I want some color in there.  I won't really know what I want to do until I get the cabinet into the house and where it will go.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #26 on: July 17, 2017, 02:14:46 am »
7-17-17


Three things done today.  More like two and a half, but I'm counting it as three.  Back panel finished and installed, speakers installed, and glass sort of mounted.


I was printing a mounting bracket for the ATX PSU.  It was running all night without issue.  I checked on it a few times during the day and all was going well.  But.... with about an hour and a half left in the print, one of the grub screws that attached the extruder drive gear to the shaft came loose and got lodged in the heat sink, preventing the extrusion of plastic.   :(   It wasn't a huge deal.  I still used the piece, but instead of simply clipping the PSU into the bracket, I had to drill a couple of holes in it and attach the PSU with zip ties.  No biggie... plenty secure and no one's going to see it anyways.


Everything went fine with the speakers.  I used the same set of speakers I use with the laptop in my garage.  It's the Logitech Z313 and contains two speakers and a subwoofer.  Sounds pretty good and is plenty loud.  For those I just wedged them up into the speaker area and nailed a chunk of wood below them to keep them in place.  Really easy and they're not going anywhere.


For the glass I used my router table to rout a notch in a strip of wood.  I measured the actual thickness of the glass, set the depth of the router, and slid 'er through.  Glued and nailed to the cabinet and test fit.  Perfect fit.  Once I get to actually installing the glass I'll set it down into the newly created channel and glue and nail a couple pieces of wood at the top of the glass.  That way I'll be able to slide it out the top if I ever need to remove it.  I still need to figure out how I'm going to mount the monitor, but I have an idea of how I will do it.


Other than another coat (#3) of varnish, that's it for today.  One of the photos might show the screws sticking out the back of the back panel.  Those will be cut off, but I didn't feel like doing it today.

Turbo23

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #27 on: July 17, 2017, 05:43:32 pm »
I picked up the button labels today.  Had them cut by a sign company we sometimes work with, to match the font of the "LEAVICADE" text.  I'm not sure which version I want to use.  Circles or no circles?  Going in LED buttons.  Opinions?

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #28 on: July 17, 2017, 07:41:18 pm »
This is coming together very well!

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #29 on: July 18, 2017, 01:35:38 am »
This is coming together very well!

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It's coming along a little at a time!  My goal is to have it in the house in two weeks.  The kids are going to crap their pants when they see it.  They have no clue I'm doing this.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #30 on: July 18, 2017, 01:43:37 am »
7/18/17


Not a whole lot to report.  Like I said in an earlier post, I got my vinyl decals.  I put them on the appropriate buttons tonight.  I also got the cabinet sanded and re-coated.  I sanded this time with 220 grit.  Subsequent sandings will be with 400 grit just to keep it smooth and even between coats.  I was going to apply the bezel graphic to the glass tonight, but I haven't gone to sleep before 5am (I get up at 6:45 for work...) for the past week so I'm going to turn in a little early tonight.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #31 on: July 19, 2017, 12:35:42 am »
7/19/17


Another coat of varnish.  This is not news, and I'll not update this thread after every coat. 


But I also got the bezel graphic applied to the glass and set the monitor behind it so see how it'll look.  I like it!  It essentially just looks black where the monitor is.  If you look close, you can see the edge of the screen and the beginning of the plastic surround, but they're both black so it's barely noticeable.  The monitor is behind the glass in the attached photo.  I cut the bezel graphic so it's roughly an eighth of an inch shy of the actual screen on all sides, just in case of any slight misalignment when installing the screen for good.  Don't want any of the screen cut off by the graphic.


I think I've finally run out of stuff to do while finishing the cab so this may be the last update for a few days.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #32 on: July 19, 2017, 12:51:44 am »
I'll wait here then. Ooh look at the priddy screen.

Good choice I think; on the button stickers. I think they look better than the other set you had.

You'd think that rub on stuff would dry really quickly.

Oh and regarding the rounded edge you mentioned on cp. I hadn't released you'd done that when I made my last comment so yeah should be cool.

Had any more thoughts on the laser etching you've done and if you want to add anything to make the pattern stand out. Sometimes pics don't show how light works off an object so this may already be easy to see which is why i have no opinion on either choice.



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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #33 on: July 19, 2017, 01:20:38 am »
The engraving does stand out more than it looks like it does in most of the photos.  There's more contrast in person.  I'm not applying any finish to the engraving so it stands out more against the glossy wood surrounding it.  I'm not going to do anything with the engraving on the side, but I'm not sure yet if I will do anything with the front or not.


I'm using an oil/urethane-based finish so it doesn't dry as fast as a water-based finish.  That, along with the humidity here, is why I can only pull off one coat a day.  But the oil-based finish makes for a richer look when all is said and done so it's worth the added time.  Since I spilled most of it, I'm just about out of finish.  The new can will be here Thursday, though.  I'd like to think I'll be done with varnishing by the end of this weekend.  It's supposed to cure for a week after that, which is fine because I'll be working on mounting the glass and monitor, and setting up the fun stuff during that time.  I'm shooting for the weekend of the 28/29th to get it moved inside.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #34 on: July 21, 2017, 01:03:32 am »
7/21/17


OK I lied a little bit.  I got parts in today so I did a little work.  I decided to mount the joysticks using insert nuts.  These are for a 10-32 machine screw.  I drilled the 3/8" holes in the plywood using a bit with a depth stop on it.  This way I don't have to worry about punching through the front of the panel.  Then I mixed up some epoxy and applied it to both the holes in the wood and the threads of the insert nuts.  To get them in, I used a fat, stubby flat head screwdriver because I was too cheap to buy the tool to insert them.  It was not needed.  They went in fine, and once the epoxy cures they should be nice and secure.  I'll probably add a bit of blue Loctite to the threads of the machine screws once I install the joysticks.


Also more sanding and applying another coat of varnish.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2017, 02:47:28 am by Turbo23 »

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #35 on: July 22, 2017, 02:55:38 am »
7/22/17


I think tonight was the last coat of varnish.  I'm happy with the look.  It's definitely the last coat on the control panel because I removed the masking, but I'll get a better look at the cab tomorrow.  So since the masking was off, I went ahead and installed the hardware on the control panel.  Not wiring it up just yet, but everything's on there and ready to go.  I have four buttons to go on the front of the cabinet, but I can't put those on just yet.  I'll probably do those tomorrow night.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2017, 02:47:07 am by Turbo23 »

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #36 on: July 23, 2017, 01:11:27 am »
Cool design, I like that.

Wow that bottom pic really shows how that varnish shines. Looks almost like walnut on the left side.

What do you call that plunge depth stopper you have on your drill bit and do you just fix that at the depth you want? I need something like that, I've always just attempted to it by hand and it's never ended well.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #37 on: July 23, 2017, 01:24:53 am »
They're just called depth stops.  They attach to the bit with a set screw.  You just plunge the drill until the stop hits the work piece.  It won't go any further.  I've had these for years, but this is the first time I've needed one!

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #38 on: July 23, 2017, 02:43:48 am »
7/23/17


I didn't get as much done today as I wanted to, but I had other things to do tonight so I was short on time.  What I did get done was installing the marquee, installing the buttons into the front of the cab, attaching locator strips to the back of the glass for the monitor, and installing the glass.  To mount the locator strips on the glass I just used plaque tape, which is a strong, double-sided tape.  It's not supporting the weight of the monitor or anything.  They're just so I make sure the monitor gets mounted in exactly the right place. 


The marquee is just being held in with screws at the moment.  Once I finish installing the monitor I'm going to apply a black sealant to all of the interior corners and around the glass and marquee.  This will both help hold them in place and prevent any possible light leaks.


Earlier today I was thing think on how I was going to mount the controller encoder.  3D printer to the rescue again!  I printed out an enclosure and I'll mount it, probably, to the bottom of the control panel.


I really wanted to start on wiring tonight, but I ran out of time doing other, unrelated things, and I don't want to start on it at 2:30am.  Still, it at least looks almost complete.  I'm liking it.

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Re: The Leavicade
« Reply #39 on: July 23, 2017, 05:59:30 am »
Everything is looking good. Going by the pictures I would say you really should inlay or paint the etching in the front. It is not standing out like it should.