Too kind Laythe, appreciate the sentiment.
I’ve been needing to post here for a long time, but have put my energy into making cabs instead. Long overdue so here we go.
Artwork needed to get installed:
Sprayed it down with Isopropyl Alcohol to remove any oils.
Laid out the artwork from Szabo’s arcade print shop:
Nice part was I designed it in Photoshop to have a 1/2” hang on all sides and Szabo plot cut it to the shape. Made it easier to install as I could see all the sides. I did the usual painters tape in the middle once I had aligned it so it wouldn’t move. Then did the hinge method of peeling away the backing and used a squeegee to slowly press it down. This stuff is very forgiving with bubbles as it is perforated. Having said that I have since discovered Rapid Tac and would use that in the future.
Rubber mallet for installing the t-molding. I found that not using a towel was better. When I wrapped it in microfiber it actually left impressions of the fibers in the plastic. If I hit it with the mallet directly it was better.
Other side:
Very happy with how the artwork came out:
Wrap around for entire scene:
Put back together before CP install, always looks funny without the CP on.
Full view of the CP with wiring completed and gas struts installed to keep it held up:
CP back in place:
Finishing touch was the monitor surrounds:
When you rotate the monitor vertically the graphics light up around it. Looks really cool during the day as the monitor looks like it’s floating in space:
Not quite as cool at night as LCD shows light to the edges of the screen. Had it been an OLED then it would work much better at night.
One last thing that I haven’t quite completed but thought the idea was fun. Early on I had the idea of using a clear track ball, however instead of using an led to make it a particular color I thought it would be fun to put a screen under it so you could make whatever you wanted show up inside. Trick is it has to be very close otherwise the image becomes inverted (upside down). It is a really cool effect, looks like you are looking through VR glasses. To do this I bought a small LCD screen from a Blackberry off of Aliexpress with an HDMI interface:
Here you can get a sense of what it looks like (this was early on when using a clear globe I had):
I thought it would be fun if someone built a Star Wars cab and had the death star on rotation, seems like it would look really cool.
I’m sure I will come back to this and button up the lighting and trackball, for now however I have many other projects to get to. So done for now
Completed cab:
Latest MAJOR project can be found here:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,167585.0.html