Arcade machines have exposed edges, pinball machines' exposed edges are only on the head, which is where you'll find t-molding on the ones that have it (i.e. modern Sterns).
True, but you could build an arcade cabinet with fingered corners like pinball boxes have, I think - the exposed edges were a design choice that they made there. Or, you could build a pinball box with exposed edges and corner blocking like an arcade cabinet has - but I guess fitting the legs would cause a problem. I wonder if that might be what forced the fingered corner joinery, and then that drove the finished-edge head to visually match?
Good counterexample on modern Sterns, I didn't know about those - I was thinking of Pinball 2000 cabinets as the only ones I thought had t-mold.
Meanwhile, more progress to share.
In my last post I showed how the actuator that pushes out or stows the control panel fits near the gear shift. The anchor point where the ram attaches to the plywood should be strong, as it's going to take some load. Here's what I wound up with:
The ram of the actuator bolts in via the threaded hole, and then the other nine holes with countersinks are for wood screws.
This is a pretty thick piece of aluminum, equal to the distance between a flat of the ram out to the round actuator housing; that gets me all the thickness for threads that I can get, and minimizes the cantilever on the bolt going through the ram. (Plus, I figure if I'm clamping the ram against this, then I'm also pre-tensioning the bolt, and getting some help from clamped together friction too.)
I worked out exactly where it ought to go - and changed my mind a few times, so you see some extra lines here - then transferred the screw hole positions with the points of the wood screws.
I didn't think to do this before gluing up parts of the box it goes in, so installing it requires drilling some holes pretty close to the inside corners of that structure. I did my predrilling for the screws with this 90' head on my dremel, it does a good job getting into places like this. I wrapped the bit in aluminum tape as a depth mark, because these screws should only go about 90% through the plywood, not all the way.
Here's the holes.
I roughed the back of the bracket up a ton with a scribe, wiped it down with methanol, swept off the plywood, mixed up a batch of devcon 2-ton epoxy, slathered the back of the bracket with it, slapped it down and immediately ran the 9 screws into it. When I torqued them down, epoxy squeezed out just about everywhere. A useful knifemaker trick - you can clean that up with methanol before it cures, and it does a pretty good job.
As installed:
I now trust this point of attachment - at least, it's the strongest thing I think I can make that still clears the gear shifter and doesn't use up any extra length front to back.
To visualize how this will articulate - the round body of the actuator remains stationary, it'll be attached to the back wall of the frame. The hexagonal ram will extend 14" further out of the round body, and all the wooden structure here will move with it. Pictured is fully retracted.
In a prior post I talked about the big forstner holes
gone almost terribly wrong that I managed to
fix up alright. I got the stainless steel faceplate made up and mounted over that:
This'll carry 2x DB15s and 2x DB25s for things that need to get into and out of the back cabinet. I'm going to flip the genders on the matching pairs, so that you can't connect anything in the wrong place.
One DB25 is finished - it runs to the front cabinet, carrying: switch signal and lighting for coin1, coin2, start game, launch ball - additional switches for the 4x pinball inside-coindoor admin buttons, the exit game button, and the coindoor open switch, doubled wires for the driving mode left speaker that lives in the front cabinet, common ground and common +5v, for about 20 conductors of the 25 used there.
The plugs kinda match the faceplate. The next run will be a DB15 run to go to the moving control panel carrying: switch signal and lighting for start, 4x VR view buttons, and coin1, additional switch for exit game, common ground and common +5v - that'll completely fill that, 15 of 15, but that's all I need in the moving part of the control panel.
The other remaining DB25 and DB15 are going to be for things like limit switches to see when moving parts have arrived where they belong, locking pins to lock the control panel in place, the actuator to rotate the playfield monitor, pinball solenoids, and such like that. Figured it was better to have headroom than run short.
Next I did some work with my dad on the audio switching setup. I've now got the 12v relay in the backbox wired across one of the Ultimate I/O 1A drivers, and it flips the amplified audio out from the headbox speakers for pinball mode, to the identical but differently placed lower speakers for cockpit mode. That way, stereo left-right remains correct regardless of which mode you're using the thing in. My custom front-end turns that pin on when you go between pinball games and cockpit games.
It was ridiculously gratifying to hear that thing CLICK and the sound switch speakers under my software control. Works perfectly now. That gives me some hope that driving the actuators might be similarly achievable.
One last bit of fabrication to close this update out with - I've been working on the area of the VR buttons, left side of the control panel, and I find I'm redesigning it a bit on the fly.
In CAD, it seemed like the VR buttons should be visually centered under the throttle - that'd look intentional and nice. But now that I play with mocking it up, I think that's a bit troubling with regards to legroom, as it might kind of encroach. So I'm pushing the VR buttons as far left as I can, as far up as I can, and a little bit in under the front edge, where they should still be completely visible, but should be as out of the way as I can get them.
I want the flat control panel to attach as a roof over all this, so I decided to build this part upside down clamped to a glass plate - hopefully that'll guarantee it's fairly flat.
I glued and clamped all this up, then chased it around with a machinist square, nudging things straight. I figure I can probably get it off the glass, even though the wood glue dripped on it in the corners - we'll find out.
In efforts to get them as far out of the legroom as I can, I've reduced the VR button plate quite a bit from
what it used to be, and also beveled the bottom edge. I plan to put a big radius on the plywood sides as well.
Soon, I hope to slide this VR assembly onto the left rail, the gearshifter/PC/actuator/console onto the right rail, bridge between them with the control panel, and make all of that stuff permanently one big piece with bearing trucks on both ends. I really want to see how that all looks and fits and slides.