Well I guess I wasn’t lying when I said I would post at a slow pace :-)
Spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to move forward and been doing a lot of experimenting. Got some results I like and almost getting to the point of calling it done so I can move on to ya know building an
actual arcade cabinet.
First thing was securing the screws into the mounting plate so I can swap out controllers. Considered welding at one point, but it’s complicated without using the same materials (i.e. all steel, oh and I don’t own a welder might be a problem as well…hmmmmm), so instead started researching epoxies. Seemed pretty good from what I read so decided to give it a shot. First thing I read was that you get a stronger bond with a roughed up surface:
Busted out the J.B. Weld slow drying epoxy:
Mixed equal parts, used a piece of Acrylic to mix it together (wood stick probably would have been better), applied to the countersunk holes in the mounting plate and put the screws through till they were flush. Noticed that I got some epoxy on the threads of the screw and quickly wiped off (would have been better to have used some plastic wrap to protect the threads). Let it dry over 15 hours and:
Man this stuff is crazy strong. It held up well to multiple attempts to over tighten the wing nuts I’m using
Side note: to quickly cut the Acrylic I used this tool that I picked up from Tap Plastics:
Instead of needing a special blade on a table saw, you just use this and a straight edge. Make a few swipes till you get a decent depth, and then snap the remaining part over a straight ledge. You get a very clean cut.
Anyway….
Needed to drill out the hole in the center of the mounting plate because I needed to fit the addressable (WS2812) ring LED that I will be using to light up the center of the joysticks. Made a 1 1/8” forester hole through wood as a guide, and then used a 1 1/8” hole saw to make the cut (I did this before the epoxy FWIW):
With that out of the way, I put the mounting plate back into the CP wood to finally be able to make a permanent install:
I’ve been using a white piece of paper behind the laser etched Acrylic (thanks again MikeA!), but needed something more permanent. Picked up some Oracle 651 Matte White Vinyl:
Did what most guys do and used a sharp Exacto knife and followed the edges to cut it to size:
Cut out the etched Acrylic using the router mounted to the router table and used a flush trim bit to follow the wood outline:
I think I mentioned it before, but I love using this double sided adhesive (3M Scotch double sided mounting tape), it’s crazy strong, so much that you only need just a little before it becomes almost impossible to pull it back apart. It makes pattern cutting very easy though.
Next I put the etched acrylic on top:
Then applied the graphics between the two pieces of acrylic and used the same Exacto knife then to cutout the holes:
I forgot to mention that while I was routing the etched Acrylic I had to do two things. I needed to shave off around 1/32” all around so that it would create a gap between the top layer acrylic and the wood layer:
You can see that ever so slight offset of the lower plastic from the top and bottom above, that where the edge lighting from the LED’s is accounted for so as to not bulge the T-Moulding.
Also broke out the Map Gas Torch to make the edges optically clear for the LED’s (no I did not do it this way, the flame is far from the stuff around it)
Next was putting the buttons in. The buttons act as a clamp for all of the layers and hold things together. The only problem I had was getting the lighting I wanted on the buttons. The side lighting from the LED’s lit up the buttons from the sides and washed out the colors from below. Looks cool without the buttons in:
It seemed simple enough to line the hole with some Oracle 651 matte black vinyl to block the light. It worked, however I got a tunnel problem on the buttons where the light wouldn’t spread out to fill the edges:
I thought to use some mirror vinyl to help, and it did but still not quite perfect:
It got better as I lowered the mirror vinyl down from being flush with the surface allowing the light to bounce more to the sides and reach the edges of the buttons. Still not being satisfied I decided to break out a router bit I’d been meaning try.
1/16” roundover to give a smooth edge to the button holes helped a lot (I tired many other things including black vinyl rings below the graphics, and all sorts of combos), this worked best:
I also used the roundover on the joystick hole so that it would have a smooth edge and not markup a clear dust washer.
More to come………