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Author Topic: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!  (Read 51176 times)

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vertexguy

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The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« on: December 31, 2019, 02:10:59 pm »
Hey everyone!

My first project post is finally here and I'm really excited to get started!  Please feel free to leave questions and comments as I go. 

I am new to many of the skill sets required to pull this off so will need the full support of the community to succeed!

================================
Thread Table Of Contents:
================================
This section is kind of a place holder for now.  When the thread is complete I will see if I can make a comprehensive table of contents for easier navigation to particular topics.

1. Intro / Project Details and Status
2.  Where Ever I May Roam

================================
Primary Goal:
================================
My primary goal with this entire effort is to get this built quickly in 2020 so my kids and I can enjoy it together while they're still around the house.  I'm hoping to find ways we can build it together as well so the entire project focuses around family and making memories.


================================
Backstory:
================================
I'm a child of the late 70's, so naturally I spent a lot of time at the arcades growing up.  At one point I can remember trying to build one out of a giant refrigerator box in my back yard.  I have been dreaming of building my own real arcade since the early 90's, but many obstacles stood in my way.  I asked my dad to get me an old arcade shell and one day he did!  He found an old Defender cabinet through my uncle who once had invested in arcades and he modified it to hold my TV and game consoles.  That was as close as I got to the arcade dream.  I pursued working in the video games industry going into college and was able to be a big part of reviving pinball into the digital console era.  Fast forward to me being married with 4 kids, and the arcade dream is still hanging on.  After finally getting a house with a basement to have room for it, saving small amounts of cash over the years, and getting a general OK from my wife, the time has finally come!  I tried designing my own arcade cabinet almost 20 years ago and decided to throw that out once I found inspiration from sites like this one.  I haven't seen a ton of other cabinets but the few I have followed on here were incredibly inspirational and really opened my eyes to what is possible and how to do it properly.  The sheer amount of intimate detail and talent on sites like this and slagcoin are indispensable resources.

I decided to finally pull the trigger a year ago and started working on a detailed design and slowly started buying parts.  I decided to go big or go home and am aiming to make this thing do a lot and hopefully look professional enough to fool people into thinking it belongs in a legit arcade.   

Part of the journey will be developing a lot of new skills.  I am NOT skilled in ANY of the major crafts required to do this (ie wood working, electrical, circuitry, lifting heavy objects, etc), so I am definitely looking to the community for advice as I go!

One skill I can leverage is working in 3D, so I decided that would be the best way for me to start playing around with concepts.  So far it's helped me a lot, but despite the detail and looking like it might be finished in the renders, I still have a lot of underlying questions and problems to tackle.  The devil is always in the details!

I'd like to put together a very comprehensive step by step thread here covering every detail and keep it well organized.  At least that's my hope to offer something of value back to the community during this journey.

Here we go!


================================
Theme:
================================
Video games have had such a big influence on my life that there was no way I could settle for a single game theme.  I decided to try to make my own theme that represents a good majority of my all-time favorites that I played growing up.  Given that this machine will also play classic console games, I decided to represent a few from there as well.  The real trick is finding balance in the design as I don't want it to feel like a car bumper littered with stickers of all colors from around the world.  It needs to be a cohesive design that compliments my home but would fit perfectly in a real arcade.

The artwork for this is a combination of a lot of stuff I've found online, a lot of custom sprite grabbing from various games, and some original art.

I needed to settle on some base colors for the theme to be able to move forward on purchasing so I've settled on white / red / blue / purple / and black as my key palette.  The artwork in the renders is still a work in progress.


================================
Design Goals:
================================

- Must be a 4 player cabinet minimum, with the ability to support even more simultaneous players with additional USB controllers for games like X-Men.
- Needs to be as light weight as possible since I'm likely the only one who will be attempting to move this thing around up and down stairs with a dolly.
- Needs to weigh enough and be sturdy enough to not accidentally move around when playing with 4 people.
- Must be low profile to not take up a lot of space and must fit through 28" door frames.
- Everything starts up from a single power button.
- It's not apparent that the machine is running Windows (convincing boot sequence)
- Support a control panel capable of authentically playing as many games as possible while not feeling cluttered or overwhelming
- Utilizes LedBlinky or similar application to clearly light up the relevant controls for the current game, simplifying the massive control panel.
- Primary player controls are easily distinguishable from secondary functions and emulator specific controls.
- Must look really cool in the dark with some custom attract mode sequences
- All core controls are easily accessible on the main cabinet for quick game selection, load / save state, pause.  Additional control for master volume control, and custom game settings will also be available through a function key combo.  Keyboard will be available but ideally never needed.
- Has a drawer to house keyboard / mouse, and additional USB controllers.
- Front coin door area is a hidden cabinet to easily access future controllers (steering wheel, analog flight stick / throttle).
- Working coin door that supports custom tokens
- Control Panel is removable with only a few disconnects to make arcade fit through small door ways.
- Arcade cabinet is height adjustable and able to make level on any surface
- Cabinet is not at risk of damage from any minor spills or ground water
- Thinking about how I can attach an additional control panel to the front to secure a wheel or flight stick for games that use them.
- Look into existing apps that can track recently played games and high scores.  See if it's possible to integrate those into an attract mode state.


================================
Core Controls / Inputs:
================================

Joysticks:
4 Sanwa JLF 8 Way
1 Sanwa JLF 4 Way

Flight stick:
Ultimarc MiniGrip Stick
Ultimarc Ultrastik 360FS

Trackball:
Ultimarc U-Trak trackball

Spinner:
Ultimarc SpinTrak

Light Guns:
2 Ultimarc Aimtrak guns

Light Gun Sensor:
ArcadeGuns.com Extreme IR Sensor Bar V2

Buttons:
Mix of LED button colors / styles from Arcade Renovations.

USB Input Controller:
Ultimarc iPAC 4

USB LED Controller:
Ultimarc pacLED64



================================
Key Inspiration and Special Shouts:
================================

This list will likely grow and apologies if anyone accidently gets missed!

- ALL companies that provide and support arcade products  Without you none of this would be possible!
- Andy with Ultimarc for creating so many great solutions and answering questions along the way!
- Rich with Arcade Renovations for creating great product and providing additional support.
- Scott with GameOnGrafix for answering questions on Vinyl prints (my likely source when it comes time)
- Folks at ParadiseArcade for providing LED solutions!
- EVERYONE who has ever contributed to the BYOAC forum.  It's clearly a community where everyone has inspired each other in some way.  The free knowledge share and expertise is unbeatable!
- Arroyo / The Grid project that has excellent detail and originality.  Also for encouraging me to approach the build with a fresh perspective.  :)
- Space Paranoids Control Panel for looking really nice and inspiring me, but also making me realize I needed to do more homework on what works well for a 4 player layout.
- yotsuya and Mike A's advice early on to research the 4 player control panel, and providing general sage advice through out.
- Chance / Flynn's Arcade thread which was really the first major thread google happened to link me to years back when searching for 4 player cabinet designs.


That's it for now!  I hope you enjoy my journey in this project and find something useful in the process!

Chris Kline
https://www.vertexguy.com

« Last Edit: August 14, 2020, 08:11:37 pm by vertexguy »

Mike A

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #1 on: December 31, 2019, 02:29:58 pm »
The first thing you should do is forget about playing console games on an arcade cab.

Console games were designed to use game pads. For most console games the experience will be bad to terrible on an arcade cab. Also, console gaming sessions tend to last longer.

After you build your cab, put together a console emulation box and play console games from a comfy couch in front of your TV.

That will make your arcade cab game list much smaller and more manageable.

People quickly lose interest in wading through a game menu with a few thousand entries in it.

vertexguy

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #2 on: December 31, 2019, 02:31:16 pm »
...
« Last Edit: October 02, 2021, 12:22:21 am by vertexguy »

vertexguy

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #3 on: December 31, 2019, 02:41:37 pm »
-------------------------------------
2D / 3D Design Plans
-------------------------------------

*** WORK IN PROGRESS ***

Here are some renders of where I'm at in the design process so far.  All is subject to change as I gather input from the community to help me improve it.









Let me know your thoughts!

« Last Edit: January 03, 2020, 12:25:40 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #4 on: December 31, 2019, 02:42:14 pm »
A lot of people use MDF. I hate it.

It is heavy and it doesn't hold screws well.

The sawdust is toxic.

vertexguy

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #5 on: December 31, 2019, 02:55:58 pm »
The first thing you should do is forget about playing console games on an arcade cab.

Console games were designed to use game pads. For most console games the experience will be bad to terrible on an arcade cab. Also, console gaming sessions tend to last longer.

Yep, this is why I'm supporting external USB game pads through the cab.  I'm likely not going to attempt to support anything beyond the SNES era on this.  The current computer I'm using wouldn't support it anyway.  The main focus is games intended for arcade.  I'll likely end up getting some bar stools for longer play sessions.  A separate console box is a consideration for a future project though.  :)

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #6 on: December 31, 2019, 03:02:30 pm »
Yeah. sitting in front of an arcade cab with a game pad in your hands will feel really unnatural.

You are already pushing it with all of the controls on that cab.

I have a small arcade room with a little over a dozen dedicated games. I have parties with adults and kids present.

I have one MAME cab. It has a 4 way joystick, a trackball, and three buttons. There are about 20 games on it. People still have trouble figuring it out.



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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #7 on: December 31, 2019, 03:24:41 pm »
=============================================
Parts Inventory With Cost Breakdown
=============================================
I'll update this Excel file as I go.  I already have purchased most of what I should need.

CURRENT TOTAL: $2168

https://www.vertexguy.com/projects/arcade/the-klines-arcade-4p/arcade-cost-breakdown.xlsx


Keeping all this stuff organized has been a challenge as it comes in, but I think I have it broken down into some key category boxes now to help me find things faster.

Exploring Button Options



Big Box Of Buttons


Coin Door saved from the old defender cabinet I had growing up.


Drawer Slides!


iPac 4 Input Controller


pacLED64 - LED Controller Test


Big Box of Joysticks and Control Pads


LED box


LED Marquee Strips


Mounting Hardware box


Computer (Dell Optiplex GX620) running Windows 7


Power Button



Power Strip


Speakers


T-Molding


Misc Tools


TV (LED Flatscreen chosen for maximum viewing angle and light weight)


USB Extention Box


USB Hub


Wires and Electrical Connectors


LED Experiment Supplies


« Last Edit: December 31, 2019, 08:24:52 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #8 on: December 31, 2019, 03:43:17 pm »
Surprised Mike didn’t mention that bad CP shape design.
 ???

vertexguy

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #9 on: December 31, 2019, 03:58:27 pm »
Surprised Mike didn’t mention that bad CP shape design.
 ???

Uh oh... tell me more.  What are the concerns?

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #10 on: December 31, 2019, 03:59:21 pm »
Surprised Mike didn’t mention that bad CP shape design.
 ???

You just get numb to it after a while. I like to see new build threads, but once I see “four player” and “Flynn’s Arcade”, I cant help but mentally check out and unfollow.
***Build what you dig, bro. Build what you dig.***

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #11 on: December 31, 2019, 04:01:25 pm »
Oh, and I think I’d like the art and theme if you lost all the characters. Otherwise, the high tech bits look good. The characters just seem… forced. At least they blend in a bit, I’ll give you that.
***Build what you dig, bro. Build what you dig.***

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #12 on: December 31, 2019, 04:34:49 pm »
Surprised Mike didn’t mention that bad CP shape design.
 ???

Uh oh... tell me more.  What are the concerns?
Myself and many others have explained this on multiple occasions to multiple new builders.

So here goes again: that CP design, while having a fun shape is ergonomically bad for multiplayer. Basically it comes down to the P3 elbow interfering with P1’s joystick, and P4’s elbow getting in the way of P2’s button space.
You could always widen the CP, but then you’re compromising the layout and screen position of P3&4’s controls for what, a slightly different looking shape?

I’ve said it before, arcade control “craft” should be about ergonomics and playability first, aesthetics second.
Just look at all the original 4P cabs and take note of their shapes and control positions. There’s a reason why they didn’t make CPs with wild shapes for 4P cabinets.

Oh, and I think I’d like the art and theme if you lost all the characters. Otherwise, the high tech bits look good. The characters just seem… forced. At least they blend in a bit, I’ll give you that.
I’m in agreement with brother Yots here. But art seems to be more of a personal taste subject, so I’ll try to be mellow on this criticism. I do believe that a dedicated theme is stronger than a mishmash of characters thrown together with no context.

I’m also not too keen on titling an arcade cabinet as Arcade. It’s like putting a label on your car that said Car. Or a sign on your dog that says Dog.
We know it’s an arcade cabinet. You don’t need to hit us over the head with the arcade label. I suggest coming up with a creative name of your cab. Something that goes along with the art as a themed title.
 

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #13 on: December 31, 2019, 05:42:38 pm »
that CP design, while having a fun shape is ergonomically bad for multiplayer. Basically it comes down to the P3 elbow interfering with P1’s joystick, and P4’s elbow getting in the way of P2’s button space.

Related post:
I got this advice from multiple members on this board, and it was very hard for me to visualize what people were talking about.  In working on MULTIPLE configurations for a 4 player panel, I finally understand what everyone has been talking about.  I had planned after working on the build log to create a separate topic on the 4 player panel design to give visuals to what finally clicked for me.  Below kind of summarize it, if you build the controls at certain angles you force the players to either be close together or further apart:



VS.



You can see that by changing both the angle of the buttons and sticks as well as the shape of the panel affects the angle at which players play and of course whether or not they bump into each other.


Scott

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #14 on: December 31, 2019, 06:00:40 pm »
There should be a giant flashing banner on that Chance cab thread. Your CP shouldn't be shaped like a Batarang.

This is a very ambitious first build. I hope it comes out great.
Take all of the comments, negative and positive. Take what is useful and discard the rest.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #15 on: December 31, 2019, 07:24:42 pm »
Probably already ordered, but I'd recommend a Sanwa JLW or Ms. Pacman anniversary stick for 4-way.  Although the JLF insert can be rotated for 4-way, it isn't great as one.

I'm not sure of the quality of your buttons, but be wary of the cheapest knockoffs of the Japanese style convex buttons.  I received similar looking buttons with an analog joystick that I wanted to test out.  The action of them isn't smooth.  You press down, then meet some resistance, then push past the resistance to activate the switch.  Real Sanwa or Semitsu buttons feel like one smooth motion from initial press to bottomed out.  Buy one good name brand button as a reference point.   They may be fine.  The good ones and bad ones look pretty much the same.

I used Semitsu buttons in a curved layout on my cab because I wanted a modern look.  On games that use more than 3 buttons I find myself looking down at my hands to reset my fingers more often than I did on my old x-arcade cp.  If I were doing it over, I'd go back to concave buttons in a straight 6 layout.  The concave shape gives your fingers a reference to center themselves and not wander off the edges.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #16 on: December 31, 2019, 07:34:54 pm »
Oh, and there are no good flight stick games. Just Space Harrier, but that used an analog flight stick. (It's actually very playable with a standard joystick if you tweak the analog "digital" settings in MAME)

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #17 on: December 31, 2019, 08:40:13 pm »
Oh, and there are no good flight stick games.

For me it's primarily for Tron.  Might get me by for afterburner until I have a good analog stick attachment solution.  ;)

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #18 on: January 01, 2020, 03:09:00 pm »
So what are peoples opinions on wood?  Seems like the cab will be well over 300lbs with mdf and closer to 200 with ply so I'm leaning towards ply.  Why is ply harder to work with?  Will my 3/4 t-molding look odd if the ply thickness is less than 3/4?  I cant seem to find any that's the right thickness.

Some in other threads recommend Baltic birch but I cant find a place to get 8x4 sheets?

Regardless the ply type what can be done to prevent warping with humidity swings?


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #19 on: January 01, 2020, 03:31:59 pm »
I have a love/hate relationship with MDF.  I used it on my cab because it's available and machines well.  If you go with MDF, paint the inside and edges, especially the bottom.  Unless it's outdoors or in a basement that floods, humidity won't be a problem.

Better quality plywood like baltic birch can be found at suppliers for kitchen cabinet builders if you can figure out where your local cabinet builders shop.  The stuff they sell has more layers and fewer voids than the big box store stuff.
Plywood probably is superior.  I assume the reason people might say it is harder to work with is chipping.  Use a blade with a high tooth count to minimize chipping.  Depending on how smooth it is, you may also have to skim the sides with glazing putty and sand before applying side art.

They make a tool that trims the t-molding flush with the edges of the wood, but I am ok with a very, very slight overhang.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2020, 03:36:04 pm by BadMouth »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #20 on: January 01, 2020, 03:41:17 pm »
MDF is also easier to paint than Ply. Ply will require a lot of filling and sanding of the flat surfaces to get smooth, while mdf comes in smooth from the get-go.

Personally I think ply is the right way to go, regardless of the extra finishing work.
Lighter, less toxic dust.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #21 on: January 01, 2020, 03:50:17 pm »
Opt, I dont mind spending a little extra time to get things right.

What kind of filler should I use on ply and how much do you think is needed for 3 8x4 sheets?

I was debating doing that kind of work and priming and painting before making any cuts.  Seemed like it would be easier to just do touch ups that way.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #22 on: January 01, 2020, 04:05:50 pm »
What kind of wood are authentic classic cabinets like pacman. Centipede, etc. made from?

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #23 on: January 01, 2020, 04:07:16 pm »
What kind of wood are authentic classic cabinets like pacman. Centipede, etc. made from?

Some, like Pac-Man are ply, while all the Atari cabs I’ve seen are heavy-ass MDF/particleboard. It depends.
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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #24 on: January 01, 2020, 05:58:06 pm »
What kind of filler should I use on ply and how much do you think is needed for 3 8x4 sheets?
Bondo would be the most reliable. It’s an automobile filler that everyone uses for our hobby and is a bit tricky to use the first time you do it. But it drys fast and hard, and it’s easy to sand and shape.

What kind of wood are authentic classic cabinets like pacman. Centipede, etc. made from?
Just as Yots said, it varies. I just finished a 90’s Konami cab restoration that is made up of particle board. Terrible stuff. Chips easy and is heavy af. My Robotron is made of ply, as well as my DK Jr.. I think Dynamo’s are made of MDF, and I believe the Neo Geo cabs are as well. But don’t quote me on that one.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #25 on: January 01, 2020, 06:48:42 pm »
Nothing wrong with MDF, if you wear a mask.  If you do use it, go with an MDF core melamine.

I've had no issues with MDF holding screw, just use a a coarse thread screw, there's also specialty screws you can buy as well.

All of my cabs are MDF core melamine, mainly cause i refuse to paint another cabinet.  I spent more time sanding, filling and pulling splinters out of my hand etc.  The melamine layer is super smooth and is ready for graphics right out of the box.

Regardless a 4plyr cab is gonna be heavy no matter what  you use, every part adds weight.  My MDF core builds can be easily moved by one person no issue, without a dolley.  Minimizing inside space and shelving cuts down on the weight as well.

Also another idea if you want a lighter cab is go with 5/8 mdf or plywood and laminate both sides with 1/16 vertical cabinet grade laminate, that will get you 3/4 for your tmoulding.  Once you install your graphics and tmoulding, a sharp razor blade across the edge will make quick work of any overhang that you have.

But yes, you are going ambitious for a first build, and to Mike A's point shoving a crapload of games in that thing will get old really quick.  I've also found that a dedicated 4way stick is waste.  There are servo sticks and the kind where you can pull up and twist to go from 4 way to 8 way.  Dedicated 4ways don't tend to work up to expectations especially in wood panels.

The artwork is ok, no one is s real fan of the inifinite character mosaic :)

Also, take the pinball buttons off, playing pinball games one screen in a arcade cab sucks.

Before you invest in those guns, do your research the emulation for the compatible games isnt that great, people complain about the calibration and its either off or doesnt work at all.

Id take that 4 way out and put a real tron trigger in its place if your a tron junkie.

And bless your heart if your front end is hyperspin building the cab will be the easy part getting that software to work with all of those consoles, pc, games, mame etc seamlessly will push you into a state of F-this i'm buying a pandoras fight stick and call it a day.



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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #26 on: January 01, 2020, 10:45:10 pm »
Here's a more detailed view of what I was planning for the internal structure of this thing.  Note the thickness differences to save a bit on weight.  I was thinking the box frame of 1.5" pine would help with additional stability when opening / closing the front cabinet door and make assembly a bit easier.  I had planned on gluing everything and only having screws used as temporary clamps for gluing or on removable panels where they are screwing into something like a t-nut to prevent wear.  The base is an idea for the under lighting though it may be overkill.  I figured I would need the lighting moved away from the outer edge a bit and able to mount so it points outward, hence the second smaller box frame on the bottom.  I also thought the squares on the inner corners is where I would connect the adjustable feet.   Cabinet dimensions without the CP are 24" deep x 31.5" wide x 71.5" tall.  Thoughts?



« Last Edit: January 01, 2020, 11:02:17 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #27 on: January 01, 2020, 11:21:05 pm »
So what are peoples opinions on wood?  Seems like the cab will be well over 300lbs with mdf and closer to 200 with ply so I'm leaning towards ply.  Why is ply harder to work with?  Will my 3/4 t-molding look odd if the ply thickness is less than 3/4?  I cant seem to find any that's the right thickness.

Some in other threads recommend Baltic birch but I cant find a place to get 8x4 sheets?

Regardless the ply type what can be done to prevent warping with humidity swings?
The pieces once screwed together tend not to warp after the fact...Normally I personally buy 2x the wood a year in advance and let it cure before I cut it (extreme I know, and normally not necessary) as long as the moisture content is relatively low your good to go...Secretly Jennifer has been experimenting with Coosa board (a carbon fiber ply like substance) Normally used in boat construction that shows incredible promise in moisture control,  absorption rates, and since it is a ply quite workable with wood tooling (although blades dull quickly) and has excellent screw retention.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2020, 11:34:13 pm by jennifer »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #28 on: January 01, 2020, 11:24:15 pm »
You can see that by changing both the angle of the buttons and sticks as well as the shape of the panel affects the angle at which players play and of course whether or not they bump into each other.

Thank you for posting the visual!  That definitely explains things better than words.  I agree that the play-ability and ergonomics outweighs aesthetic.  That's why you'll note that my layout isn't simply symmetrical.  I've been shuffling a lot of buttons and controls around.

I had done a digital test with bipeds early on with this panel design as a starting point and I admit I'm not sold on it yet.  The problem I have with the 90 degree turn on the outer players is the severe compromise on viewing angle for a little elbow room.  That bothers me more than squishing against someone.  There's gotta be a better happy medium somewhere...

I'm hoping to do several tests both digitally and physically to prove out the ergonomics and viewing angles to find a suitable solution.  I'll likely start up a whole category in this thread just focused on the control panel when I get to that point.  For the moment, hopefully you notice that the layout is modified from what others like Chance had used.  I'm trying to carefully think about button access from each players perspective and in different combinations for different game types.  When I get the core cabinet up. I plan on doing a fast CP top to physically test it out, especially from P3 / P4.  Another unknown is how much I'll end up whacking other controls trying to use the trackball for games like Marble Madness and Golden Tee.   I tried to do some guess work based on some simple measurements of how far my hand moved but nothing beats testing a physical working prototype.

...drop the pinball buttons...

Regarding the pinball buttons, I'm not sure I'll get into pinball on this either, but figured I'd give it a shot.  I did develop some nice console pinball games in the past so I know there's hope for it being enjoyable...at least for me.  ;)
 Worst case I planned on doubling those controls up as volume controls when holding the function button down (front plunger button).  I already bought 2 sets of buttons for them.  One set are black classic Happ style for more authentic feel. and the others are the blue eclipse style in the renders.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2020, 11:47:27 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #29 on: January 02, 2020, 12:26:41 am »
The side viewing angles aren’t as severe as you think they’re going to be. People are standing back away from the screen, after all!
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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #30 on: January 02, 2020, 12:35:53 am »
Word of advice, don’t use Chance as your arcade messiah. He just regurgitated information siphoned off other member’s projects here, then practically disowned the forum to promote his YouTube channel posing like he’s an authority on the subject matter. This is one of the major issues with why people keep propagating his bad CP design. The guy doesn’t even post here anymore other than to respond to bumps to his own threads.

There are multiple other projects here that have way better examples on building a scratch cab. Check out the hall of fame sticky. Many of the projects there have some great ideas and themes, and are far better examples for reference.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2020, 03:09:21 am by opt2not »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #31 on: January 02, 2020, 02:08:24 am »
Never really thought about it, But it does seem to explain the desire, that and the lure of one machine that does everything but make toast...personally, I think his design isn't far off the mark, but that insistent use of plexi kills the machines soul, something about real glass and steel that just lights up the night.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #32 on: January 02, 2020, 01:01:29 pm »
Word of advice, don’t use Chance as your arcade messiah. He just regurgitated information siphoned off other member’s projects here, then practically disowned the forum to promote his YouTube channel posing like he’s an authority on the subject matter. This is one of the major issues with why people keep propagating his bad CP design. The guy doesn’t even post here anymore other than to respond to bumps to his own threads.

There are multiple other projects here that have way better examples on building a scratch cab. Check out the hall of fame sticky. Many of the projects there have some great ideas and themes, and are far better examples for reference.

Clearly there is some friction with that project around here. :(  I had no idea and am not at all saying any one project is the superior solution to reference.  Fact of the matter is, that's just where google routed me back when I was searching 4 player cabinet designs years ago.  I tried looking at others but several in the hall of fame and elsewhere lack photos.  They all point to photobucket urls that don't seem to work anymore. :/ .  I'm also not sure there's nearly as many 4 player builds to reference as 2, so that limited my searching.

Bottom line, I don't think anyone on a forum like this should assume their contributions didn't some how influence everyone around here.  I'm looking to the community for help and wisdom.  I assumed he brought a few things of his own to the table, but even if not, there's no way I would know that, and it doesn't make it any less relevant to helping others.  I simply referenced what caught my attention back then and nothing more.  I'll try to make that more clear in my intro post.  If someone covered something well in an existing post, please link me to it.  One of my goals is to consolidate that information into one place to make it easier for everyone to find in one comprehensive build thread.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #33 on: January 02, 2020, 01:08:01 pm »
Never really thought about it, But it does seem to explain the desire, that and the lure of one machine that does everything but make toast...personally, I think his design isn't far off the mark, but that insistent use of plexi kills the machines soul, something about real glass and steel that just lights up the night.

You lost me?  Was this intended for a different thread?  I don't follow the context?

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #34 on: January 02, 2020, 04:01:25 pm »

Clearly there is some friction with that project around here.

And I'm not entirely sure why.  There are some observations about the placement of the four players and I'm sure there's a lot to be learned from the wisdom of others on that matter.  But there's also a lot of great information and attention to detail in that project.  I remember when I first came across it and nearly didn't read the thread because the cabinet design wasn't really to my taste, but the thread is a great read and the cabinet is a quality product.  It also lead me on to check his other projects, which gave me a huge amount of information that I'm using in my own build (and he's still providing input on that thread).  Take what you can from a variety of cabinets on here, but don't ignore Chance's projects because there's a lot to be learned from them.

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The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #35 on: January 02, 2020, 04:36:23 pm »

Clearly there is some friction with that project around here.

And I'm not entirely sure why.  There are some observations about the placement of the four players and I'm sure there's a lot to be learned from the wisdom of others on that matter.  But there's also a lot of great information and attention to detail in that project.  I remember when I first came across it and nearly didn't read the thread because the cabinet design wasn't really to my taste, but the thread is a great read and the cabinet is a quality product.  It also lead me on to check his other projects, which gave me a huge amount of information that I'm using in my own build (and he's still providing input on that thread).  Take what you can from a variety of cabinets on here, but don't ignore Chance's projects because there's a lot to be learned from them.

It goes a lot deeper than just simply the cab and it’s not worth rehashing. The problem is that people see that cab and project and lock on to it without seeing what else is out there or the cons of that design. They fall in love with the bling and the thought of a 4 player cab and never get deeper than that until the “project announcement” phase, and by then it’s too late to give feedback without feelings getting bruised.

I chat with Chance from time to time off this site. I hope he comes to ZapCon one day. But I’m not a fan of the cab (well, really just the control panel shape). You can learn a lot from his thread. But it’s not the end all/be all that some new builders think it is.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2020, 04:52:50 pm by yotsuya »
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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #36 on: January 02, 2020, 11:06:52 pm »
Never really thought about it, But it does seem to explain the desire, that and the lure of one machine that does everything but make toast...personally, I think his design isn't far off the mark, but that insistent use of plexi kills the machines soul, something about real glass and steel that just lights up the night.

You lost me?  Was this intended for a different thread?  I don't follow the context?
I was talking to Opt2...Might as well be in a different thread since it was so lost on you.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #37 on: January 02, 2020, 11:36:32 pm »
First off, that is some slick cad work.  If you bring that level of detail to your other skill development your cab will be excellent.

I think I’m in the same boat as you.  Started off here with a Google search wanted the 4 player and stumbled on the cab.  I posted that example of the 4 player angles from my research that Scott posted so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking over this thing.

It’s clear you’ve got an eye for detail and I’d push you to come up with something on your own.  Not because I don’t like Chance’s stuff, like you he’s documentation got me going on mine.  Rather it’s clear you have the skills to design something on your own, and I know that would suck and be a lot of work but I think you’d look back and be glad you can call it your own.

I only say this cause as someone knee deep in a build, it’s a lot of work, and you won’t change what you are doing once you commit to something, so just be sure you like what you go with. 

We need more creativity around here these days and I think you’ve got the chops to do it.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #38 on: January 03, 2020, 01:07:52 am »
We need more creativity around here these days and I think you’ve got the chops to do it.

Subscribed!

Thanks Arroyo!  I needed that about now.  :)
« Last Edit: January 03, 2020, 01:09:53 am by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #39 on: January 03, 2020, 09:38:47 am »
On the subject of console games on arcade cabinets; I went all-in on my cabinet's game selection as well with stuff from the 8/16-bit era, Playstation, Dreamcast, etc. along side wired USB controllers. It's certainly a mixed bag, but I'd say on the whole in my own set up it wasn't detrimental to the function of the system. I think there are enough arcade-like console games to be worth including. Similarly, my kids were often happy to play longer console games on a stool, elbows on the control panel, holding a wired controller.

The only real frustration with multiple systems that we ever ran into was my choice of front-end. I like the over-the-top flashiness of Hyperspin and the animated game selections screens it supported. At the time it didn't support mixing systems on a single selection menu, so having the kids struggled a little with remembering which submenu the games they liked were in. When I built a console-dedicated emulation computer for the family room TV, I found Emulation Station supported a favorites menu that mixes multiple systems' items.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #40 on: January 03, 2020, 12:51:39 pm »
that CP design, while having a fun shape is ergonomically bad for multiplayer. Basically it comes down to the P3 elbow interfering with P1’s joystick, and P4’s elbow getting in the way of P2’s button space.

I put my bipeds back in the scene to test and to no surprise found some things I needed to adjust.  When it comes to general spacing concerns, this isn't terrible, but I'm not done yet either.



The bigger problem I see with the "aircraft carrier" look is the placement on some of the controls in the original concept.  Even with my revisions I see issues to fix now.  Notice Player 3 (far left) needed the buttons moved down to be more accessible for instance given their right arm won't have the same reach.  Likewise P4 (far right) needs the joystick to be lower to accommodate the angle they stand at.  I can further understand from this why a cabinet like X-Men has all the button orientation turning as you work your way around the cabinet.   Now obviously the size of the person is a big factor here too.  I'm solving for my family scenario and trying to keep this cab as small as possible.

Surprisingly CP height may still be a consideration for me to adjust from this test.  I'm going to do further tests with a mix of kid sized bipeds and adults to try to dial it in.  I remember searching forums far and wide for average CP heights on classic machines.  If I remember correctly it was something like 34"-36" at the lowest point?  These bipeds are just under 6ft tall and would struggle putting their palm flat on the CP.


« Last Edit: January 04, 2020, 04:29:54 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #41 on: January 03, 2020, 01:01:31 pm »
If you swing player 3 and 4 buttons out more, you can fit more obese skeletons around your panel easily.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #42 on: January 03, 2020, 01:30:50 pm »
Poor player 3 looks uncomfortable, tucked in that alcove. Do they really have to keep their arms close to their body like that?

It’s good you’re doing your homework, though.
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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #43 on: January 03, 2020, 08:24:07 pm »
Your mockups certainly look prettier than many of the other gargantuan 4p panels that have been done in years past. Also +1 for real coin door.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #44 on: January 03, 2020, 11:05:22 pm »
Nothing beats real life mockups, preferably functional ones.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #45 on: January 05, 2020, 06:30:26 pm »


Ok, here's my latest revision to the CP.  Please check my work and see if I'm missing anything.

This is a modification past my previous one to the "aircraft carrier" design.  I abandoned that but tried to keep some of the appealing aspects.  Several things have changed that I think solve the problems a lot better.  Good luck naming this shape if it proves to work well.  ;)

- Overall the dimensions are the same as before (technically a hair less wide).  This should keep it fitting a standard 8x4 sheet...hopefully.
- Player 3 and 4 are angled and pushed as far down towards player 1/2 as possible, while keeping an inviting angle to stand against vs a pointy box corner.
- Button positioning / orientation and joysticks have moved a bit.
- All players should have enough room for a palm rest
- Viewing angle is maximized for Players 3 and 4.
- Plenty of room in between players for even more drastically bent elbows and people of various sizes.
- I keep just enough room for pinball buttons and pushed them down more so I can vertically stack them with an offset as I originally wanted.  They will be hidden from the top and theres a slight chamfered edge to rest your hand against.
- There's about a 6inch radius from the center of the trackball before you risk running into anything.  With a 3 inch ball that means 9 inches of motion.
- I still maintain a lip around the top of the CP, but it's reduced to 1/2 inch.
- Green lines between the joysticks and buttons measure at least 3 11/16ths to keep with the slagcoin japanese layout distances.

Thoughts?

« Last Edit: January 05, 2020, 07:03:18 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #46 on: January 05, 2020, 06:34:08 pm »


Ok, here's my latest revision to the CP.  Please check my work and see if I'm missing anything.

This is a modification past my previous one to the "aircraft carrier" design.  Several things have changed that I think solve the problems a lot better.

- Overall the dimensions are the same as before (technically a hair less wide).  This should keep it fitting a standard 8x4 sheet...hopefully.
- Player 3 and 4 are angled and pushed as far down towards player 1/2 as possible.
- Button positioning / orientation and joysticks have moved a bit.
- All players should have enough room for a palm rest
- Viewing angle is maximized for Players 3 and 4.
- Plenty of room in between players for even more drastically bent elbows and people of various sizes.
- I keep just enough room for pinball buttons and pushed them down more so I can vertically stack them with an offset as I originally wanted.
- There's about a 6inch radius from the center of the trackball before you risk running into anything.  With a 3 inch ball that means 9 inches of motion.
- I still maintain a lip around the top of the CP, but it's reduced to 1/2 inch.
- Green lines between the joysticks and buttons measure at least 3 11/16ths to keep with the slagcoin japanese layout distances.

Thoughts?

Much better. P3 doesn’t look like he’s being punished anymore.
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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #47 on: January 05, 2020, 06:46:02 pm »
Player 3 on the left it may not be a bad idea to move the buttons up.    When you sit and play at that position which I often do, it’s nice to have the ability to rest your wrist or arm on the cp between you and player 1.  My first cp had the buttons for 3 and 4 closer to the edges but was thanked on my second build by people for having more room to rest arms and wrists.

Looks great though nice work!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #48 on: January 05, 2020, 07:24:28 pm »
Player 3 on the left it may not be a bad idea to move the buttons up.    When you sit and play at that position which I often do, it’s nice to have the ability to rest your wrist or arm on the cp between you and player 1.  My first cp had the buttons for 3 and 4 closer to the edges but was thanked on my second build by people for having more room to rest arms and wrists.

Looks great though nice work!

Good point - that’s why the standard Midway/Konami 4p panel is superior to any cut-corner job.
***Build what you dig, bro. Build what you dig.***

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #49 on: January 08, 2020, 11:52:16 am »
Player 3 on the left it may not be a bad idea to move the buttons up.    When you sit and play at that position which I often do, it’s nice to have the ability to rest your wrist or arm on the cp between you and player 1.  My first cp had the buttons for 3 and 4 closer to the edges but was thanked on my second build by people for having more room to rest arms and wrists.

Looks great though nice work!

Thanks for the feedback dougan.  I double checked and sure enough my measurement was off.  Based on my test from the bottom first button center to the edge of the panel I'm going for at least 4.5" for a decent wrist rest.  The compromise of moving it further up the panel is changing the approach angle of the player and distance from the screen.  It's not a mile off or anything so I need to do a little bit of shuffling pushing it up some on ALL the players.  Next update today will fix all that and show the panel from multiple angles.

Side note, I'm also playing with some revision ideas on the artwork.  Really like some elements of The Grid project concept where the bottom artwork wraps around the sides.  Also testing out some concepts to make the characters even more cohesive in style and tie it all closer with a pixel theme.  The title of the cab may change too.  I had another idea in mind but we'll see.  I'm trying not to get TOO caught up in art right now as my plan is still to build the cab and do more physical play tests with the CP before I finalize artwork.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #50 on: January 08, 2020, 04:31:50 pm »
On another note, have any other projects come up with a good way to add a ring light to the base of a spinner and a flight stick?  I have some concepts but love to see what others have done.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #51 on: January 08, 2020, 05:18:53 pm »
Good point - that’s why the standard Midway/Konami 4p panel is superior to any cut-corner job.

 :stupid

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #52 on: January 20, 2020, 02:49:20 pm »
I've been playing around more with the control panel trying to test out positions as best I could digitally and decided it's time for some physical prototype testing.

First I went to home depot and picked up some of the extra heavy duty large boxes as these were conveniently 24" wide.  Two of those sides together will get me to the 48" width of the CP.  I don't think the single layer boxes they sell in similar size would have been strong enough to hold everything in place well.  My initial thought was to double up on the heavy layer for even better support.  I tried laying down hot glue but the surface area was too big.  By the time I had it reasonably covered, the glue was drying too fast.  I decided to roll with just the original thickness of the extra heavy cardboard and try it out.



After getting the boxes all cut into workable pieces I went back to my digital model to write down measurements from the outer edges to each button and joystick center point.  This was painfully slow and hard to make sure I was accurate.  Once I had a joystick and related button plotted for a player I decided to try to use the printed controller layout template to "speed things up".  This proved to be tricky as well.  Since you can't see through it, I found it hard to get it lined up properly with the starting points.  I also found that because the center holes were being marked with a not so great pencil, it left for roughly a 16th to an 8th of variability in the marks, which is problematic further down the road.




Initially I ended up using slightly too large of a forstner bit, which gave too much wiggle room to the buttons, making it harder to align them properly.  I also discovered that going slow with cardboard and power tools doesn't seem to work well.  It ended up tearing more of the edges and moving slightly out of alignment as I went.

After I found a smaller bit that was a much closer fit to the buttons I was using, I tried again on the second half of the panel.  This time I tried the drill at max speed before plunging in, and that seemed to work a lot better.

I also realized after starting to put in the controls that some of my measurements were off. :(  Simple things from my ruler sliding slightly over a large area can make for big problems.  The way I notated my measurements split between the panels also made it a little more confusing.  In a couple instances I measured from the wrong side of the CP edge which threw things off.  That's exactly why I wanted to start with some simple test runs though.  Hopefully as I keep going I can refine my process and avoid these mistakes by the time I get to the real construction.



Getting a way of propping this thing up at the proper height proved to be very challenging.  Fortunately between some kid toy storage furniture, additional plastic bins, and some wooden rail road tracks I was able to get it very close to the proper height (~38 1/4").

Then I did a bunch of position tests between myself and some of my kids.










After some quick measuring I realized that the side flaps on the box, when cut in half, were perfect for a bulky arm and the correct length to go from finger tip to elbow.  This let me make some simple test arms to attach, aligning based on my real arm positions.  Then I could physically test from the side positions for P3 and P4 more effectively.



I refined several things about the CP layout from these simple tests.  I may end up making one more CP from cardboard with the refined layout for practice and to be completely sure I like the adjustments.  I payed particular close attention to how easy it was for my youngest to reach the dedicated 4 way classic controls in the back center, as well as trying to come up with adjustments to allow more room for aggressive side to side movements with the trackball without whacking the P2 joystick.  My conclusion was that if I make the CP 2 inches deeper, I can move the trackball down and a little to the left and should have just enough clearance (if your arm is aligned with it) to where your finger tips just miss the P2 joystick with an aggressive move to the right.  I also moved player 1 and 2 up by a half inch I believe.

I looked at other games like Missile Command to see how much room was between their trackball and the right edge, and it wasn't a lot.  This adjustment gives more room.  A game like centipede. and most of the trackball centric games, seem to have the ball centered in the CP with a ton of room on either side.  Replicating that with this layout is tough, but I'm hoping these adjustments will do the trick.  I plan on making a working CP to test this theory soon.  It's games like Crystal Castles, Marble Madness, and Golden Tee that will require maximum agility.  I've looked at so many different custom panels. both 2 and 4 player and scratch my head every time when I see the trackball centered on the panel with less than 6 inches of space to the nearest joystick.  Not sure what games they plan on supporting with that limited space?


Next I wanted to focus more on the pinball controls.  If I'm going to bother to have them, I want it to feel right.  I used to have a ton of measurements from when I visited the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas to make the digital versions of the tables, but sadly don't think I have them anymore.  From what I could gather on google, the average width of the playfield should be around 22.5" wide.   As is the buttons would be 30" apart, which is doable for an adult but feels really wide and unnatural to a real table.  It's also not great for kids.  Given my adjustments and desire to be able to bring the trackball down more, it gave me an excuse to adjust these to be the proper distance.

Here you can see I've moved them inward so they are exactly 22.5" apart.  This feels pretty good.  Given the height I'm not sure I would comfortably wrap my hand around the side of the lower part of the panel to play, but if I simple free hang or use my thumbs as anchors on the top of the CP, it seemed like it would work well.  I may adjust these a bit more yet and go with an even vertical alignment on the buttons.



Digitally, this is what the CP would look like with all these new adjustments.




I may still play with the design a bit more too once I put it back on the arcade.  I'm trying to find an interesting shape that doesn't impact any of the layout requirements, and at the same time is hopefully something I can actually pull off.


Next steps for me is trying to figure out a way to get my TV at the correct height and angle so I can do some functional play tests and make sure I'm happy with the viewing angles for P3 and P4.

« Last Edit: January 20, 2020, 05:19:22 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #53 on: January 20, 2020, 02:57:39 pm »
I will say this - no one can accuse you of not doing your research! :cheers
***Build what you dig, bro. Build what you dig.***

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #54 on: January 20, 2020, 03:17:05 pm »
Fantastic prototyping.  This is exactly how it should be done!  Anything that has to do with human interfacing and ergonomics should be prototyped IRL before any wood is cut.
Good on you for doing this initial phase and getting the "focus group" involved.  :)

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #55 on: January 20, 2020, 05:15:35 pm »
Thanks guys.   ;D

One concern I've had even before extending the depth of the CP is the tip ratio.  I don't know how I can calculate this, but how do I know it wouldn't be easy for a person (or 4) to start to tip the cabinet during play if they're leaning into it or pushing down for some reason?



This ties into my idea for extending the CP with some sort of modular attachment base that I can strap down a steering wheel or analog flight stick to when needed.







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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #56 on: January 20, 2020, 05:35:00 pm »
Thanks guys.   ;D

One concern I've had even before extending the depth of the CP is the tip ratio.  I don't know how I can calculate this, but how do I know it wouldn't be easy for a person (or 4) to start to tip the cabinet during play if they're leaning into it or pushing down for some reason?



This ties into my idea for extending the CP with some sort of modular attachment base that I can strap down a steering wheel or analog flight stick to when needed.



I wouldn’t do that, especially with a thin cabinet. If you’re going to do that, strap it to the wall.
***Build what you dig, bro. Build what you dig.***

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #57 on: January 20, 2020, 05:58:42 pm »
^ agreed.

If you’re set on wanting swappable controls, I’d figure out a solution for swapping the existing CP.
Molex connectors for quick disconnecting, maybe a latch solution for quickly pulling off the CP top.

Japanese sit-down cabinets ( New Astro City, Blast City, etc..) could be your inspiration here. They have detachable panels that are screwed to the housing and have AMP connectors for connecting the controls. I can swap a full panel in <5mins. 

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #58 on: January 21, 2020, 03:08:51 am »
...Given the height I'm not sure I would comfortably wrap my hand around the side of the lower part of the panel to play, but if I simple free hang or use my thumbs as anchors on the top of the CP, it seemed like it would work well.  I may adjust these a bit more yet and go with an even vertical alignment on the buttons.
Any chance a thumb hook of some sort above the pinball buttons would help? It would move the buttons in and down some, but might solve the free hang problem.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #59 on: January 21, 2020, 09:12:54 am »
Love the cardboard mock-ups!  Prototyping the CP is essential, IMO.  Get it exactly how you think you want it then sleep on it for a few days and refine if necessary.  Do the same thing with the artwork once you get there.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #60 on: January 23, 2020, 12:03:18 am »
I'd agree that's it's great that you are prototyping with the cardboard.  Nothing like feeling it out in IRL.  You are now butting up against what I believe is every Frankenpanel owners biggest challenge, balancing the many controls with the ergonomics/aesthetics/functionality of a design. 

I grappled with a lot of what you are going through, moving things all over the place. 

With regards to your question of tipping.  This took me a long while to figure out, but after awhile got clear.  Think of it as a teeter totter.  Your fulcrum point (teeter totter base), is your closest leg leveler/castor.  The further out you get from it the more leverage a person/child can apply weight and try to tip it over.  It's fine if the weight on the other side of that fulcrum is heavy (meaning you have more weight on the other side of the leg leveler/castor), however if your cab is light and the control panel sticks out far past your closest point on the ground then it becomes easier to tip.....

This leads to the next thought.  Although it may make sense to move that track ball further away from the joysticks to create clearance, it creates a lot more depth, and subsequently a greater probability of tipping.  In playing trackball games I can think of only one game that some people need the clearance to smack the trackball hard and need that, and that's Golden Tee.  Every other trackball game is more subtle movements, and I don't know if it's worth creating a whole control panel scheme based on that one game  :dunno.  The other option is to create a deeper cab (which originals were anyway), and then your fulcrum point gets pushed out and you can create more depth in your control panel and be covered.

Anyway good work on the research.  Keep it up.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #61 on: January 24, 2020, 10:04:53 am »
If the machine ends up that front-heavy, you might also be able to counter-balance it with some removable weights on the inside. Something like a pair of 10lbs weight plates hanging on hooks on the back wall.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #62 on: January 24, 2020, 10:14:52 am »
This is why, in addition to using CRTs, original arcade games were not thin profile. It doesn't do you much good to save space under the CP by overhanging it. Just extend the bottom half of the cab out further to support the CP better. As long as you don't extend past the CP it takes up the same amount of floor space. Look at an original TMNT cab. It is a 4 player cab that is 27 or 28 inches wide with the CP removed. You could sit on the CP and it will not tip even with the CRT removed.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #63 on: January 24, 2020, 12:46:59 pm »
Thanks everyone for the thoughts on the tipping concern.  The counter balance to simply making everything bigger and heavier are some of my key restrictions in the original design requirements.

- I have to be able to fit it through 28" wide doors. (that's with doors removed)
- I have to be able to move it up and down my basement stairs by myself (with a dolly?).
- I'm trying to avoid having to completely take the thing apart to move it around. (otherwise screws and a lot of assembly time would solve most of this)

So step one was to make sure the CP can be removed fairly easily.
Given the width to fit the TV, and a desire for a little wiggle room on components so they can be swapped out easily down the road when they fail, that left me forced with 32"s wide from the front.  So to counter that and help keep it from looking so monstrously huge and get it through doors, I made the depth 24" in the current design.  That also makes both side panels nicely fit a 97x49 sheet of MDF.  Now I'm still considering a baltic birch option if I can find it and the price is right but that may also shrink my raw material size even more.  Originally I was hoping to get this all in 2 sheets but its looking more like 3 already.  Less concerned about total sheets as long as the wood cost isn't crazy.

So all that said, I'd be comfortable extending some of the base area depth out a couple inches for additional CP support if needed.  I'm just not sure that will make or break the tip factor.  I also assume others who have built slim 4 player cabinets haven't have a tipping problem because I haven't seen it called out.  If the design is flawed I'd sure like to catch it up front.

I did consider adding some sort of removable weight as an option.  It might still be a good idea to keep it portable but solve any balance concern?

It would be awesome if anyone reading with a slim 4 player cab could chime in on any tipping / wobble concerns!


As for the additional controller extension...I agree that really makes it look easily tipped.  I'm trying to avoid swapping out the CP entirely as kids definitely won't be doing that.  Might end up being an additional folding table of some kind they can quickly setup and plug the controller into the front USB ports.   :dunno



« Last Edit: January 24, 2020, 01:06:38 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #64 on: January 24, 2020, 08:52:01 pm »
Concerning moving it up or down steps, the "Bigfoot" hand truck from harbor freight rolls over stairs fairly well.
https://www.harborfreight.com/700-lb-Capacity-Bigfoot-Hand-Truck-62900.html


Concerning it tipping, just plan on anchoring it to the wall and call it good.  That's my $.02

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #65 on: January 27, 2020, 09:09:00 am »
Concerning moving it up or down steps, the "Bigfoot" hand truck from harbor freight rolls over stairs fairly well.
https://www.harborfreight.com/700-lb-Capacity-Bigfoot-Hand-Truck-62900.html


Concerning it tipping, just plan on anchoring it to the wall and call it good.  That's my $.02

I've got a dolly like that for moving cabinets around.  Works great and makes stairs a LOT easier.

Agreed on anchoring it to the wall to prevent tipping.  Someone would have to sit or pull on the CP to get it to come out of the wall if you anchor it properly.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #66 on: February 18, 2020, 10:01:03 pm »
Been a while since an update, so here goes:

Surprisingly busy last couple of months for me, so to no surprise things didn't get done as fast as I'd hoped.   I did make some progress on research and refinement items with the CP and display.

A working prototype (sort of):



I'm not able to easily hook up the main controls on this with all the stuff I'm using underneath to hold it up at the moment, so I focused tests around the trackball, and viewing angles for the outer players.


After comparing the wiring harnesses that came with my joysticks I was a bit surprised to find the one I ordered off ebay came with a nice long 19.5" harness while the others I got from arcade renovations were only 11.5" long.   Neither of these will reach where the controller was going to be.  :/  I was hoping not to have to buy a heat gun and shrink tubing to extend wires.


The viewing angle from P4 isn't too bad.  This is me matching the angle of the CP top.


TRACKBALL TESTING!:
==============

I hooked this up and tested every major trackball game I could find.  So far I'm pleased with the results.  I think I only very lightly bumped the P2 joystick once as I was adjusting my play.  Games like Marble Madness and Crystal Castles worked well.  Even Golden Tee tested out great with no joystick collisions.  I come mighty close though so I think I would think twice before having less than about 5 inches of room from the edge of the ball in any given direction.  I also found that a less experienced player (like my youngest daughter) tended to bump the P2 stick a little more frequent with games like Marble Madness, but it wasn't a deal breaker.

The best feedback was all of my kids asking me when they could play more arcade games. :)

So with those tests in mind I'm going to make a few more tweaks to the model and probably not extend it out an additional 2 inches.  Not doing the extension poses some challenge with the pinball button placement though....so I've got some design work to do.

I was out of town this past weekend and managed to stop by a big indorr / outdoor arcade in Manitou Springs, CO that I've been to a few times now.  I wanted to look at a few more details in person and try to compare the feel on some of the joysticks (although they're all pretty warn out).


I looked at things like joystick height relative to the control panel top, and reminded myself what a true 4 way felt like.


Looked at distances on Centipede and trackball height.  Sadly it was the only trackball game I could find in the place.


Flightstick and Spinner reference.


An interesting coin slot mechanism on the CP.  Never seen this before...


I couldn't pass up a shot with Tron.  :)  Now I really take notice of how low the CP is.



Lastly, I just got in my order for the new Ultrastick 360 Flight Stick model.  I'm anxious to try this out as a better solution for analog games like Afterburner while hopefully working well for games like Tron as well.  Should fit perfectly where I had the mini grip stick.


Kind of hard figuring out next steps to stay productive but I'm going to continue with CP refinement and probably attempt to build that first before everything else.  Hopefully I can find time to make that happen soon.  I have a decent 3/4 inch ply sheet with some sort of white laminent from getting our kitchen overhauled that I might use as a test run.  That way if I mess up too much, it's really no loss and hopefully I can learn from it.  Maybe it'll even work as the final if it turns out and vinyl print sticks to it.



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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #67 on: February 18, 2020, 11:57:42 pm »
Kind of hard figuring out next steps to stay productive but I'm going to continue with CP refinement and probably attempt to build that first before everything else.

Don’t do it!!!  Many a great projects were killed cause the builder finished the control panel and started playing games.

Save the control panel for last!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #68 on: February 29, 2020, 06:30:16 pm »
A few weeks ago when my brother in law stopped by, I showed him my prototype CP and let him play a few games with the trackball.  I noticed that he tended to use his finger tips at the center of the trackball and occasionally rested his wrist just below the ball.  This worked with the initial prototype layout but wouldn't be possible if I moved the trackball down further like I was contemplating.  At least you would be losing a wrist rest there...

This leads me to the question:

To those who play trackball games, what is your typical play style?
Vote TB 1. Fingertips on the center area of the ball with your wrist sometimes or always resting just below the ball
Vote TB 2. Palm rested on the center of the ball utilizing more arm movement
Vote TB 3 Some mix of the two depending on the game
Vote TB 4 Some other technique (Please Describe)

I found myself using more of my palms for games like Marble Madness and Golden Tee.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #69 on: February 29, 2020, 07:57:11 pm »
TB 1
***Build what you dig, bro. Build what you dig.***

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #70 on: February 29, 2020, 09:21:55 pm »
Agreed TB1, at least that’s how I play all track ball games except Golden Tee.  For that one I place the fingers on the top part of the support plate and use my thumbs to generate the power.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #71 on: March 01, 2020, 04:35:18 pm »
TB1, except the fling games. (but I wouldn't quite call those TB2)

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #72 on: March 16, 2020, 02:33:37 pm »
I placed another order for some more electrical accessories and a heat gun.  Time for some woodworking questions I haven't fully solved in my designs yet. 

I need all you drawer and cabinet maker experts advise.

The front coin door section is intended to have a drawer above it, and the lower half is a larger cabinet door for storage / easier access to accessories like steering wheels / pedals / pc access when I get there.

I've not yet figured out how to make these accessible without an exposed door handle, and not rely on magnets that will probably lose grab over time.  I'm trying to keep it feeling as much like a legit front of an arcade as possible.  The drawer above is to house the keyboard / mouse, which won't be used often, BUT it will also house USb controllers that will get used a lot... so it validates the need more in my eyes.

The idea I had for the main front door was to leave about a 1/2 inch lip at the bottom which would meet up with the base of the cabinet, so it can be colored the same to help hide it and given its on the ground it's less noticeable.  I thought MAYBE I could pull on that easily enough to open and close it with some sort of stiff pull hinges.  Needs to be somewhat kid friendly too.  I'd also like to figure out a locking mechanism so it doesn't flop open in transport

Similar deal with the top sliding drawer.  I have the slides already but am not sure how I can hide a handle.  I figure this drawer will get a lot more action then the bottom cabinet drawer so it should be built to last and kid friendly.  Also not sure how I can have some sort of lock to keep it in place during transport.

Any suggestions?

« Last Edit: March 16, 2020, 04:58:19 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #73 on: March 16, 2020, 02:40:00 pm »
Quote
and not rely on magnets that will probably lose grab over time

Do you plan on passing this cabinet along for like 1000 generations?

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #74 on: March 16, 2020, 02:44:38 pm »
Quote
and not rely on magnets that will probably lose grab over time

Do you plan on passing this cabinet along for like 1000 generations?

Maybe? :)  I've only ever experienced cheap magnet doors on entertainment centers and haven't been impressed with their grab.  The other consideration is the weight of the door with the coin door on it.  If magnets are viable with a better quality part I'm all ears.... although lasting less than 1000 years could be a deal breaker. ;)




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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #75 on: March 16, 2020, 02:48:09 pm »
I use rare earth magnets to hold oak plaques to a steel wall. They have great holding power.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #76 on: March 16, 2020, 04:18:11 pm »
Mostly TB1 but sometimes TB2 for games like Missile Command.

Opinion:  You're trying to cram too many things on 1 control panel.

Why the extra joystick and buttons in the middle next to the spinner?

I would make P2 and P3 have 6 buttons each, move P3 joystick more to the right and put 2 buttons to the right of the trackball for trackball games.

Remove the joystick in the middle which is next to the spinner and the buttons and only put 2 buttons next to the spinner for games like Tempest, Archanoid, etc.



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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #77 on: March 23, 2020, 12:09:31 pm »
Why the extra joystick and buttons in the middle next to the spinner?
Dedicated 4 way controller for more authentic feel on classic games.

I would make P2 and P3 have 6 buttons each, move P3 joystick more to the right and put 2 buttons to the right of the trackball for trackball games.
Why would Player 3 need 6 buttons?  What arcade game would utilize it?


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #78 on: March 23, 2020, 12:21:08 pm »
Bumping my current questions about hidden drawers and cabinets: 
Maybe there's another build link someone can point me to where someone did something similar?

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,161694.msg1709769.html#msg1709769

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #79 on: March 23, 2020, 12:33:55 pm »
Hinge the front panel on one side. Latch it shut with a control panel latch on the other side, inside the cab.

You can reach in through the coin door to unlatch it.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #80 on: March 24, 2020, 01:06:55 pm »
I made a 4 player pedestal with a similar layout to your CP. I use the pinball buttons all the time. Desktop VPX is amazing!

My main issue is that my kids are polygon snobs. Generally, they don't go for 2D games with digital controls. And they like new games. They are 9 and 13 years old, so maybe that will change, or maybe they won't embrace retro until they're my age and it will be Switch games or PS2 for my son, since that is one of his favorite consoles.

If you want to get a sense of how much room there is for each player, on the 3rd page of the build thread, there is a picture with 4 kids playing the Simpsons arcade.

I've been very satisfied with the layout of my aircraft carrier, although its large and multipurpose design isn't for everyone. I'm typing on it right now to make this post. Yep, it's also a desk. With the width of the peninsula matching the width of a pinball machine, I can easily type on a full-sized keyboard and have room to rest my wrists.

When he's not on the couch across the room, my son often puts his feet up on the deck while he's playing games on PS3 or on Steam with wireless controllers. Even  though the arcade controls are the least used part of the whole project, I'm just glad it gets used, one way or another, because it seems like only people of a narrow age range want to play arcade games at all, minus playing maybe a few minutes of Frogger or some other classic.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,154133.0.html

Good luck with finishing your project! It looks really good so far.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #81 on: March 29, 2020, 05:09:23 pm »
Here's a very minor update.  I ordered a heat gun and tubing since it became clear that I would inevitably need to extend wiring harnesses for the controls to properly reach the ipac on a 4 player cab.  I'm not very good with a soldering iron, but hoping I can watch a few videos and improve enough to twist, solder, and cover the wires properly for a good extension.  This gun seemed reasonably priced with decent reviews...hopefully it ends up working well.  From my research online it seemed like it made the most sense to buy 3/32" heat shrink tubing as this would cover the bases for 18 and 22 gauge wire used in the project.  Got a 100 foot roll so assume I should have plenty to spare.




I thought I might have more opportunity to work on this given all the forced staying at home for the corona pandemic, but it's actually been the opposite.  I've been working longer hours and we have really big initiatives still trying to kick off.  :dunno

I've been bouncing between different aspects of the project trying to solve outlier things in the design and also experimenting with new themes and names for the cabinet.  Might make a few more mods to the side shape of the design too.

Just for fun, here was a really early design I did over a year ago with a slightly different color schema and shapes instead of detailed graphics.  I liked aspects of it.




@Mike A:  I'm considering your suggestion for hiding the main cabinet door handle with a hidden latch accessed through the coin door.  That of course means I have to leave the key out for the door and leave it in.  Only concern there is the younger kids misplacing or bending the key.  Assuming you can easily get those keys copied I might go that route and keep a spare elsewhere in the cab.


Meanwhile here's a bunch more questions in topics for people to chime in on.

==================
HIDDEN SLIDE DRAWER
==================

Still not sure how I make a handleless slide drawer work.

==============
TV MOUNT
==============

With the TV mount, I was hoping to avoid having to buy an actual TV mount.  All of them seem to be designed to drop and hook into place, letting gravity help keep the TV in place on the wall.  That seemed to present a problem where it could potentially slide off during transportation if the cabs on it's side and say bumping up and and down stairs.  I was looking to simply fabricate my own mount from wood that would have the ease of hanging to get it mounted correctly or removed easily, but also be bolted down so it can bump around in any direction without ever moving.  I think my design for this is sound but the only unknown for me is where I get the proper length / size screws to go into the back of the TV, and how I fit those onto the wood mount.  What have others done?




===========================
BEZEL WITH MINIMALLY VISIBLE SCREWS
===========================

My idea for this was to have plexi resting on wood braces on the sides, and have a small rabbit hole at the base that it sits in.  At the top I would have a small thumb screw on the large side panels that sticks out just enough to hold the plexi in place up top.  Underneath the thumb screw I would tuck a thin strip of material that's attached to the back of the plexi to work as a hidden pull tab once the thumb screw is removed.  The idea here is that I can very quickly remove the plexi (say weekly) to clean it as necessary without much hassle.  If someone has a better solution and a way to be screw free, that would be even better.

===========================
Light Gun Sensor
===========================

I haven't yet figured out how I'm going to mount this.  It doesn't have a case so it just "sits" on something.  Obviously I want it anchored somehow and am not sure if this will work through a tinted / painted plexi bezel or what my best option is to hide it.  I was thinking some sort of hanging metal or wood mount coming down from the speaker area just above the TV to anchor it to, all behind the bezel.

===========================
Marquee With Hidden Screws
===========================
 
Another thing to solve was not having any visible screws on the bottom metal angle bracket holding the marquee.  Every arcade in the real world seems to have at least 2 screws holding this in place.  While I guess it's not critical, it would be cool if I can keep the no visible screw theme in tact and figure out a way to anchor this in place.  The bottom would never need to move again.  The top will have screws to service it as those are high enough up and out of the way to not matter.  Plus there will be other service screws up top anyway.  Also what is the right kind of screw to hold this in place, and do I need some sort of threaded insert for every screw I plan on making a service point?




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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #83 on: March 30, 2020, 06:17:15 am »
You should fine that Pyle TV's will take M8 Bolts 40mm  (Maybe 50mm) High Tensile should do the job nicely. Just drill corresponding vesa mounting holes in the mounting board and mount through the wood, If you are using 3/4 inch for the mount it will hold with no issues.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #84 on: May 06, 2020, 12:14:53 am »
Thanks MikeA an Drnick for the links and advice.  Still got plenty of outstanding questions up there for any takers!

Been very slow going the past few months, but I had to try to make some progress somewhere.  I ordered some new soldering iron tips from Radio Shack because the one I had didn't seem to be working well anymore.  Once those came in I quickly realize that regardless of having a new tip, I still am not very good at soldering!  I decided to try and get my PC power switch converted over to the external light up switch I purchased as what I hoped would be a simple endeavor one day.  However, to no surprise I ran into all kinds of challenges with it.

First I made some rookie mistakes by immediately jumping to soldering on wires confidently trusting everything would be ok.  Boy was I wrong.  Then because I decided to wrap the wires inside the holes of the prong and loop them around before heavily covering them in solder, I had a heck of a time figuring out a way to get them back out.  Turns out my micro flat head screwdriver was helpful because the solder wouldn't stick to it well and I could use that to try to slowly pry and unwrap the wire while keeping the iron on it with the other hand.  Also learned you gotta be more careful with hot solder flying around.  All that tugging flicked some hot specs back at me, causing me to flinch and drop the iron.  Fortunately the iron landed on something metal instead of the carpet. :)  The other big mistake I made was trying to pry a big excess glob of solder off one of the prongs sticking out of the back of the PC power switch board.  Turns out that solder holds pretty tight and I took the prong off with it.  :)  So.... then I had to create a make shift solder connection point with the bottom metal pad that was now exposed on the board.  After managing to get the two wires connected to the bottom of the board, I was finally read to try to do some connection tests and make sure all was good before making anything more perminent.

I was given a wiring diagram online from the seller of the switch and it seemed pretty straight forward, so I thought it would all just work.  However, after many tests I quickly realized that I could manage to get the button to light up, but that was about it.

After a lot of time thinking about it and going for a walk, I came back and decided to start trying other combinations of connections to see if I could get it to work.  In order to do this, I needed to make some additional wire connections based on the original diagram.  Fortunately I have some solid core #22 gauge wire I mistakenly ordered years back thinking it was stranded, and decided to use some of that to make some crude additional jumpers I could bend on and off to test.  This actually worked, and after studying it a bit more and trying different combos, I FINALLY found one that worked!  I still don't quite understand why it's so different than the diagram I was given.  My only guess is maybe it will work different if I have a separate power source like the diagram wants?  Any electronic wizards wanna shed some light on that for me?








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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #85 on: July 19, 2020, 04:50:24 pm »
It’s finally time for an update!  I took a big leap and started working with wood and power tools at one point.  It’s a long one so I’ll break up the posting.  Here’s the updated journey…

We’ll start with something technical on the programmer side.  One of the many tasks left ahead of me was to easily translate my 3d model work into real world measurements to replicate.  The problem is, the version of 3d studio max I have has very primitive measuring tools that take a lot of steps to manually setup and adjust.  Furthermore, there’s no easy way to export all those measurements to a document to print.  This makes iterating a lot slower.  It’s as if they don’t want you to make anything in the real world unless you buy autoCAD.   :angry:  I also didn’t want to rely on making giant print outs to avoid additional cost and potentially new problems.  Since this was around the start of things shutting down for COVID, I also needed something that I could do myself in isolation.

My solution was to bite the bullet and re-learn enough MaxScript to write my own automatic tool within the software.  I wanted to simply be able to specify an “origin” point to start all my measurements from, select what I wanted included in the measuring, and then have the system automatically generate all of them in a print friendly format, and provide a visual map for reference.  MaxScript has always been challenging because of odd syntax and the documentation for it is pretty bad.  It took a day or so but I was able to find enough examples of different core functions to stitch together what I wanted, and make it flexible in some areas.
The result looks something like this:





I want accuracy down to 1/32 of an inch with everything but since none of my big rulers have 32nds, I wanted it represented as a decimal value on a 16th.  This way I don’t have to worry about getting confused with conversions and making more mistakes when measuring and plotting it in real life… or at least that’s the hope.  I created a threshold for the decimal to round down, round to a 32nd or round up.  Technically with the way I built it I can pretty easily swap to something else like 64ths or metric.  If anyone is interested in this script, let me know.  I find it pretty handy.

Next I wanted to test out my new measurements in action.  Since I had modified a bunch on my CP layout from the first cardboard prototype I did, I made another one to test it.

Here’s the result:



It turns out there were a few errors, but not because of my tool! Rather I guess precision measuring and doing this late at night with my brother in laws help over Memorial Day weekend was a flawed combo.  You can see that the Player 2 controls are about an inch higher up than they should be.  Couple other random mistakes elsewhere too.



Despite those minor setbacks, I was still able to do some good tests to validate the changes I made.
First checking arm positions to make sure we have good elbow room.




All good, and no need to push the outer players too close to the screen or at a hard 90 degree angle to everyone else.  The viewing angle is the same from the previous test, so I didn’t need to put up a monitor again.
Made sure the trackball has just the right amount of wrist rest room for precision play, plus still has enough room for a strong whack in any direction without hitting a joystick.

 


The flightstick sits comfortably in between the P2 joystick and buttons so even with your wrist and arm resting, you’re not hitting anything.



The spinner sits in comfortable reach relative to the flightstick and the 3 buttons for alternate 4 way player 1 controls.



The 4 way alternate player 1 joystick can be comfortably grabbed with plenty of wrist rest room without hitting other buttons.



The Player 3 and Player 4 controls have just enough wrist rest, and have angle cut edges to minimize their profile.




The pinball buttons have the proper distance from the edge of the CP to reach both the top and bottom buttons, with arc of motion considered between them.




Lastly the spacing between the outer edges that contain the pinball buttons are exactly 22.5 inches apart to match average real world pinball table sizes.  Most other CP designs I’ve seen tend to push these out quite a bit wider.

I also tested a few small things in this layout, like a slight angle turn to the P1 / P2 buttons to see if I liked it better and if it helped arm space any.  I believe I ended up reverting that idea.

« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 11:35:56 am by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #86 on: July 19, 2020, 04:54:46 pm »
Once I was as happy as one can be with a cardboard prototype, I decided it’s time to put on my big boy pants and start cutting some wood!
Fair warning, I’m a total noob at this stuff, so this is going to be an interesting learning process.  I have a good sized piece of ¾” ply with some kind of finish on it left over from our kitchen remodel.  I figured this would be a great way to test building out the CP.  If it works it’s presumably a decent quality ply so I could probably just roll with it.  If not, not a big deal.



I decided to mark several test cuts beyond the length I needed for the CP so I could get used to the tools a little first.



As you can see, I had some problems.  Oddly enough in this example I tried using a 2x4 as a fence with a jigsaw.  I had issues with the blade bending as I went after about half way through so I wasn’t getting a nice 90 degree edge.  I also may have been pushing too hard against the fence?  Somehow between that and perhaps a measurement that was somehow off, I noticed when I got to the end of the cut that I wasn’t lined up with my other tick mark.  I then tried cutting from the opposite direction to finish it off and avoid chipping at the ends, and this was the result.  Yuk!

I eventually got a better cut with the jigsaw just free handing it.  Still some wobble though.  My last attempt I switched to the skill saw and used that for my edge cut to get it down to the proper CP size.  That came out pretty straight freehand, and was probably the best of all cuts.  Still not what I was hoping for.  Definitely need more practice.
Next up, I decided to utilize some of the small MDF pieces I got a long time back to start testing out control panel buttons.  I wanted to practice drilling straight, which is a lot harder than is sounds, and then work my way to building out my test joystick ring glow design, which would require a lot more tools and materials, including using the router for the first time.
I decided to try fast tracking the measuring with a print out to see how well it would hold up if only taped tightly at the edges with some scotch tape.



Surprisingly it held up pretty well… but you wanna make sure you start drilling at a high speed or it can tear and pull pretty easily.


One thing I forgot but wasn’t too concerned with was the blow out damage on the other side doing it this way.  For the real deal I’ll make sure I’m drilling with a scrap piece of wood tightly under it to avoid this.


« Last Edit: July 19, 2020, 07:10:13 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #87 on: July 19, 2020, 05:00:13 pm »
Next up I wanted to try an experiment with a sheet of Lexan I got from Lowes.  I’ve seen others use a thick tube of polycarbonate for this, but when I searched and couldn’t find anything less than 40-50 bucks for a small tube, I opted to try another way with a 5 dollar sheet.



  I also have this vision in my head of a slightly different look.  I’m not going for a glowing hole.  I want a nice vibrantly lit up ring under my joysticks.  I also want the top of it to be nice and smooth, crystal clear to give off a nice spectral highlight.

So I found a cheap holesaw set at Harbor Freight that had enough increments to help me create the size needed for the task.
The first go at it shows it creates some rough edges that need to be fixed up.



I think this was a combination of me cutting it too fast and pushing too much alone with some drill wobble.  I intentionally left the cover plastic on the lexan sheet to help protect it from scratches during all this, so that adds to the edge mess too.

I used a file of a finer grit to carefully work the edges down, which took a fair amount of time.  I had to bend the edges back and forth a bit too before it would snap off the excess.  When all is said and done, I got a decent clear ring out of it.



Next I got out my sander. And used a 120 grit (finest I had) to test out making a frosted version that would hopefully diffuse the light a little better.



Here you can see them stacked with the clear ring on top.



More on this a little later…
« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 11:46:03 am by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #88 on: July 19, 2020, 05:06:47 pm »
Next I’ll backtrack a tiny bit because I want to cover all the wirework and knowledge of tools and process there in order to extend the wiring from the short LED wires (that are only 26 gauge) to longer harnesses that plug into the PacLED64.  There was a lot to learn here too.  If you know all about this stuff, skip forward, but I’ll probably reference this many times myself as a reminder.
First we need dupont connectors.  I had no idea that’s what these things were called until I got into this arcade project.  Even when I ordered a dupont kit and opened it up, I wasn’t sure what all I was looking at.  They come attached to a strip of metal in a long roll.  You break them off like this.



As a side note, Scott was kind enough to PM me these notes about the metal roll after I posted.  I will try this process the next time I crimp and see how it goes.

"Actually, that "pins on a roll" setup is designed for you to cut through the center of the rectangular holes parallel to the pin so you end up with a piece of roll and a pin that look like a T.

The metal roll acts as a depth gauge while crimping.
- Insert the pin into the crimper until the roll is against the side of the die and you're at the right depth.

The roll also provides a handle outside the crimp die jaws for keeping the pin and wire properly aligned.  Changing your grip can cause the wire to shift.
- Use your left thumb and index finger to pinch the wire to the roll at the correct depth in the pin.
- Insert the pin and wire into the die.
- Crimp with your right hand.

After the crimp is completed, that's when you break the roll off the pin.   :cheers:


Scott
"

Here I thought the roll was just part of the manufacturing process to dispense them in rolls.  Cheers Scoot!  So that approach will help with proper alignment of the pin in the crimping tool.  I'll be trying this next time I crimp.


The wire you plan on connecting it to only needs a little bit exposed.  More specifically, just enough to reach the end of the second split metal ring that will be crimped down to grab it.  In this photo, you see the proper length in line with the dupont connector above it. 



The pointy wing like metal tips on the left end of the dupont connector are meant to grab the wire shielding, then just a little further to the right you see metal arcs on the top and bottom that are meant to pinch together to grab the bare wire.   According to everything I read online, you don’t want your wire to extend beyond this.

Next we put the dupont connector in our crimping tool that supports this type of connector.  On mine it’s the #3 spot. 

There’s an important lesson coming up with how it’s placed in the tool.  Start orienting the dupont connector as shown in the tool, then tighten it down just enough so you can still move the connector within the tool, but it won’t easily slip out.





Now we have a quick example of what NOT to do.  I missed a step with the tool and shoved the wire in and went to crimp too quickly. DOH!





Here you can see the insulation around the wire is too far to the right, pushing into the metal that’s supposed to be grabbing just bare wire.  I also noted that the dupont connector as a whole was now slightly bent.  Clearly something wasn’t right…. Then I remembered…

Back to the correct way!

When you put the connector in the tool, you want to PULL it away from the edge and there’s a little notch inside the tool that will stop it from coming all the way out.



Notice the difference?  It’s not lined up with the edge of the tool anymore like my previous photo showed.  This step is important!
The other thing I realized is that it can be easy to shove the wire in too far from that side.  So, once I had the connector hitting the notch, I flipped the tool when inserting the wire so you can see the end of the wire coming through and make sure it doesn’t go past the split metal ring part that’s meant to grab it.



The result is a perfect dupont crimp! Yay!  Only about 99,999 more of these to go!



Here was another point I messed up routinely.  DO NOT forget to add your heat shrink tubing at this point or you will end up having no way to get it back on your wire with parts at each end.
The next part of the process is to use a 1x4 housing (not sure what these are called) to hold the dupont pin in the proper place and complete the wiring harness.  This is as easy and inserting the dupont pin into the correct end of the plastic adapter and the little plastic tabs further down it will push out as the pin enters and then snap back to hold it in place.



If you screw up and forget your heat shrink tubing like I did, you can use a tiny flat head screw driver to GENTLY lift those tabs and pull the dupont pin back out.
For this test I wanted to build 2 long harnesses that should work for anywhere on my CP without knowing the exact measurements.  This way Its more than just a test harness and saves on parts.  Technically the PacLED 64 comes with 4 long harness connectors that I could have used, but since this is a tiny test I just wanted to use a small adapter from the dupont set I bought.
That’s it.  You should not need to add solder anywhere in this process because the crimping is plenty when done right.

The other end of my wires needed to be spliced together to the LED.  In order to do that, first I needed to build myself a little helping hands tool.  I had been looking at these online and reading reviews and all of them seemed to be rather cheaply made and seemingly easy to knock over.  I had bought an alligator clip set a while back just in case, and decided this would be a big part of my solution.  The real trick was finding “arms” for it that would be strong enough but also bendable.  What I came up with was using this metal strip stuff I got for anchoring my old wooden fence around my house to metal stakes.  When double layered, it’s pretty strong but still bendable.  The alligator clips have a little screw on them so that worked perfect to anchor them to the ends.  The other end of the arm just gets screwed into a block of wood.
Here’s the result:



I added some electrical tape around the alligator clips to soften their grib a bit.  As is they were a little too strong and pierced the wiring insulation too much.
In this case I had to connect a 26 gauge wire to a 22 gauge.  That was a bit challenging.  My first attempt without any help was to just do a classic twist of the two wires and fold it over.  I also added some solder.  Apparently there are better ways to do this, which I’ll cover.



After doing some research I found the Nasa grade approach, or Lineman’s splice.  While I know I’m not doing it quite right up to the full Nasa standard, and that’s probably a bit excessive anyway, I was able to find a quick twist method that seems to work well.  Just make an X with your wires.  Hold the bottom right of the X straight while bending the top of the X to a 90 degree angle relative to the bottom X.  Then coil it as tightly as you can around the bottom of the X, making at least 2 complete loops.  Then repeat for the left side.



Again this is by no means full quality Nasa standard, but when done, you should be able to tug on both wires a bit and not have them pull apart.  The next step is coating them with a healthy amount of solder on all sides.



This looks better!

Now onto the heat shrink tubing.  I used a mark on a board outside to line up the center of the bare wire as a reference point. 



Then pull the heat shrink tubing over it with equal amounts to either side of that center line.



Next hit it with a heat gun.  For mine it seems to work well with the dial control on setting 3 and the switch turned onto setting 2.   BEGINNING TIP:  When you first get a brand new heat gun, it likely won't warn you about this anywhere on the box or in the instructions, but I found out the hard way it will start smoking A LOT.  Best explanation I found was that it's residual oils from the factory burning off the heating element.  This is why you shouldn't use it in doors unless you want your fire alarms going off. :)



I also had an attachment on the front of the gun to narrow the air flow to a more appropriate size for wiring.  Hit it with that for a few seconds and you’ll see the tubing shrunk around it tight.

That’s it.



« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 05:54:12 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #89 on: July 19, 2020, 05:08:00 pm »
The next thing I wanted to try was seeing the difference between 5v and 12v on the Leds.  Everything I read indicated that my Leds are meant to be run at 12v, but the problem is the PacLED 64 runs at 5v.  I spoke with Andy from Ultimarc about this a while back and he told me despite some other posts on this board indicating otherwise, the PacLED 64 can be run at 12v safely without any problems.  All I had to do was alter the molex plug to pull from the 12v wire on the computer instead of the 5v.

I found a neat trick online for getting molex cables apart.  Like the dupont connectors, they use a pinching mechanism (this time on the metal pins) that expands to catch the plastic connector and hold everything in place.  The trick with these is that you can’t access them easily like a dupont connector.  You need something very thin yet pretty strong to wedge in between the pin you want to remove and the plastic housing to depress the tab and pull it free. 

The solution was to use 2 staples from my stable gun.  Bend them into an L shape and that gives you a pointy end to push into the molex plug by the pin, while providing a flat surface at the other end of the L shape to push in. 



Push one staple in on each side of the pin you want to remove.  Look carefully at the pin to make sure you line up with the little tabs holding it in.  These go in on the side of the molex connector that plugs into something, not the side the wires are leading into. 



I used magnifying glasses for soldering so I could more easily see the little metal tabs on each pin and line up the staples.  You give them a good push to really wedge them in there and then the metal pin should pull right out without much effort.



In this process you may end up bending the little tab on the metal molex pin too far in (which you can see in the above photo), so you go to plug it back into a slot and it won't stay.  If that happens, just use the staple, this time putting it on the INSIDE hole of the pin and put slight pressure on the end of the tab to bend it back outwards.  When done, the tabs on the pin will look like little wings sticking out a tiny bit, kinda like a V shape.  That prevents you from being able to pull it out backwards.

I did this process with a Y splitter molex plug I had lying around so I wouldn’t risk messing anything up on something important.  Once done, I labeled that Y splitter as 12V LED on the end where I switched the wiring around.  Then I could easily plug 1 end into the computer, and swap the Y end between 5v and 12v that goes to the PacLED 64.  You wouldn't want to leave this cable lying around unlabeled and forget what it was meant for and try to use it for something else in your computer.  You would be sending the wrong voltage and bad things may happen.




« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 05:59:03 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #90 on: July 19, 2020, 05:11:49 pm »
Next up, I realize I needed to do more research on Router basics before I attempted the next part of the process with wood.  Since I couldn’t wait to try out the ring light and LEDs, I threw together a quick cardboard prototype of it.
Here’s the underside where I experimented with some tin foil and tape to hold things in place.  I put some tape around the rings as well to hold them in, so that’s noticeable in the result along with rough cardboard edges.  I used a sharpie on the cardboard to help give it a more authentic end result look.



Here it is from the top:



And with the joystick assembled:



Not bad.  However I will note that I spent a good hour messing with settings on my phones camera and found some interesting things out about it.  First, no matter what I did, it over exposes the glow…meaning it’s a lot subtler than this.  I also noticed that the camera failed to correctly represent some of the colors as they cycled from Red to Green to Blue to White.  Green in particular came out far more blue.  Once I hooked up the software to control my PacLED 64 from the computer and test other color combos, I found other mismatches too.  I guess the important thing I’m pointing out is that when you see photos of lit up stuff on these forms, it’s hard to trust the camera accuracy.

I wanted to make sure the center of the stick stays nice and black, and the ring itself isn’t as thick as the hole / CP thickness as well.  This helps give it kind of an “eclipse” button style. But in joystick form.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #91 on: July 19, 2020, 05:21:18 pm »
After some additional help on the board here with router bit questions, I realized I had ordered the wrong bits for the type of work I needed to do (I have 3 flush trim bits)… bummer.  So after a trip to Lowes, I bought a new mortising / straight router bit that should do fine for the bulk of the work needed.  It was about 20 bucks.



As others have stated, I strongly recommend watching a lot of basic tutorials on handling a router for safety first.  These things are very loud and powerful.  I’m a bit shocked they don’t have a safer on / off mechanism.  Mine is really hard to reach when the router is on and you’re trying to hold it steady and flip it back off.  There’s also clearly techniques to be understood with using them to get good results and not have it catch the wood and bounce back on you, which could be dangerous.

One of the challenges I immediately saw using the router was being able to actually SEE what I was cutting.  The back side of it has a plastic cover to catch debris and allow you to see the cutting area.  However, this window almost instantly becomes foggy and covered with dust, making it worthless.  I found myself leaning to look at the front opening of the router, where again, debris likes to fly out.  By not having plastic there I could at least see the blade a little more clearly.
Another important note, wear good protective eye glasses and use a mask!  I was cutting ¾ MDF in these tests and it makes a TON of super fine dust that gets everywhere and is apparently toxic.  I’m also doing all this stuff outside to have a little better air flow.


The next step was to get the right depth for the cuts. 



I did a mix of drawing stuff out on paper, and then eventually moving it into 3d to figure out how to make this complex channeling work.  A consideration with my design is that I need room underneath for the black dust cover to be able to move around freely, while providing a closed surface to mount the joystick too.  From the top I wanted a hole just big enough to fit my plastic rings and hold them in place with glue and perhaps a tiny wood ledge. 

This top hole is challenging because I don’t necessarily have the exact size bit to make this happen.  My rings are custom fabrications of a somewhat odd size.  I purchased a forstner bit set online with a lot of different small metric sizes.  In this case I needed my biggest bit which seems very close to the right size.

Once I knew the right depths for everything from the 3d model, I needed to set the proper depth of cut on the router.  For this I put a ruler straight against the edge of it next the blade and slowly went back and forth adjusting the height until it looked to be exactly what I needed.  Then for further precise confirmation, I made a tiny test cut on the side of the panel to check the depth.  This gives me an easy thing to put a ruler flush against and verify it’s the perfect depth.



I highly recommend doing this on some scrap wood before you attempt anything on your real wood for the project.
I marked up the wood CP with pencil on the bottom.  This was again way too hard to see with all the dust from the router during a cut, so I decided to try filling in all the areas I wanted to remove with a red sharpie.  This helped.



I tried my best to make straight cuts, but again, even with red sharpie helping, it still gets really dusty fast and is hard to see and move the router blade in a super straight manner standing in an awkward position to see things.  I imagine I could setup some sort of fencing around the area to push the router against to force more of a straight cut.  I guess this depends on what you care about since no one will ever see this but a person servicing the panel.  I like to do my best everywhere though… so I’ll probably revisit this.



Another issue I ran into with drilling holes was that these forstner bits don’t like to stay nice and centered.  They tend to wander quite a bit when you start a cut with them touching the wood.  To try to help force a straighter cut, I tried making a template with some ¾ MDF.  The theory being that if I just plug into it at full speed and make one perfect hole, all my other holes will be made with this template on top, which will keep the bit from wondering.  This seemed to help when I needed to go back to the other side and make a larger hole to hold my light rings.



I used a piece of paper over the template to give me a reference point for the depth.  I also wrapped some tape around the drill bit.  The idea being when the tape meets the paper, I’m at proper depth.  It sorta worked.

Here’s the result.  I used a sharpie to make the interior black for testing.



The biggest problem I ran into here was again keeping the drill perfectly straight.  That made some strange cuts and the surface area lopsided that the rings would rest on.  I freehanded the drill a little more to try to compensate and get it good enough for a test, but this is not acceptable for a final product.  I’m looking into some devices I saw at home depot to help keep drills straight.  There are some crazy expensive drill guides out there that I can’t justify.  Hoping this 30-40 dollar purchase will be good enough to get me straight holes.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milescraft-DrillMate-Portable-Multi-Angle-Drill-Guide-with-3-8-in-Chuck-1318/206520394?mtc=Shopping-B-F_D25T-G-D25T-25_9_PORTABLE_POWER-Multi-NA-Feed-PLA-NA-NA-PortablePower_PLA&cm_mmc=Shopping-B-F_D25T-G-D25T-25_9_PORTABLE_POWER-Multi-NA-Feed-PLA-NA-NA-PortablePower_PLA-71700000034127218-58700003933021540-92700053252310110&gclid=Cj0KCQjw3s_4BRDPARIsAJsyoLPBTB3ikj4LCAvGQMBr-prpu2E0wSYE7IM2fzUxmXR74s8PdOFZV4EaAj5nEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Anyone else have experience with these with recommendations?

Likewise when making my rings, there are some serious alignment issues with the process.  I think this is a mix of the drill not being straight, and also the hole saw bits just being cheap.  I can tell they have significant wobble to them watching them spin from the side.  Hoping my template will help with that a bit…. We will see.  If another 30 dollar purchase of some craftsman hole saw bits from Lowes will fix it, I may consider it.

Finally… here are the results of putting it all together in my MDF test control panel.




Overall I’m glad to have gotten this far.  This was a big accomplishment in the journey for me, but I’m not happy with the results yet.  Several things to improve on.

1.   The hole in my template to fit the rings is super tight, yet when I used it to drill the top of the CP, somehow the hole is slightly bigger??  This is unacceptable as the rings don’t fit properly and you see things in the light channel not meant to be seen.
2.   The rings are all unique in some way with lopsided centers.  I think if I use a forstner bit to do the center hold instead of the hole saw, this may improve the accuracy since the little bit has way more wobble than the bigger one.  Or maybe buy a giant 1 inch standard drill bit if that’s an option?
3.   If I decide I need a dust washer on the top of the panel (trying to avoid it since I have one underneath) then I can make a clear one with this same process.  The challenge though again is that the holesaw does not create a properly centered hole.  I made one test and it was off by way more than 1/8 in 2 directions.  I can’t figure out a way to fix this.  I think it’s just the cheap hole saw set I got from Harbor Freight.  Anyone know if a Craftsman set from Lowe's will perform better?
4.   I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to diffuse the light around the ring more evenly without much success.  I really want it to look like it’s a solidly lit ring without clear indication of a point light source.  I can improve it a little if I add even more LED's but that’s expensive, and requires a lot more controller hookup spots then I have.  If I can daisy chain them to a single hookup on the PacLED and not lose light intensity maybe that’s an option.  I also need a way to channel more of them under the joystick then.  Any ideas?
5.   I may end up ordering new joystick ball tops.  Originally I thought the simple white and red plastic look would fit well, but seeing it with the ring lights makes me want a more refined look.  So far though in looking at some options online I haven’t found anything I’m loving.  There seems to be a lack of white tops in anything other than a flat cheap plastic look.  Just imagine like a candy apple red with some texture / sparkle to it, and then the same concept in white.
6.   I’ve been noodling on how to do this with a spinner, which presents a lot of new challenges.  I need a way bigger ring than I can currently fabricate, and the mounting gets complex unless glue and lexan are strong enough to clamp it to without risk of a player pushing down too hard on it.
7.   The paint finish I put on the test CP is complete crap.  I didn’t put a lot of effort into it, but still.  I used some Rustoleum spray and gave it one coat.  Then I sanded it down with my power sander and 120 grit.  That removed most of what I did. (oops).  Then I coated it again.  Looks like crap.  I don’t yet have a grasp of how to get a good finish out of this process.  I did pickup some 220 grit which I hope solves some of the problem.  Does everyone use a power sander for this, or should I be doing this by hand?

Next steps for me I think will be more test CPs with just the joystick to figure out the lighting.  After that I’ll try making the ring light for the spinner.  Then the ring light for the Flight Stick.  Then onto the full CP.  All this serves as good practice for me too before getting into more expensive wood for the main cab.  It’s also working with materials I have for the most part.  Finding the rest of the wood and transporting it will be a whole new set of challenges when the time comes.

I’ve also decided that the cab name and general theme are up in the air.  I agree it needs a stronger identity.  The term Arcade really refers to the building it’s in with a collection of games.  I’ve got a list of over 30 name considerations now.  I’m open to ideas!  The general principal will remain the same though in that it’s celebrating the retro era of pixel gaming and will feature a mix of characters that all come together in a cohesive way.  To me that’s far more fitting than picking a favorite game theme when the cabinet is meant to play everything.  It's definitely proven to be an artistic challenge!

As always, all sage advice is welcome and greatly appreciated as I continue my journey.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2020, 08:10:17 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #92 on: July 20, 2020, 06:06:44 pm »
As you can see, I had some problems.  Oddly enough in this example I tried using a 2x4 as a fence with a jigsaw.  I had issues with the blade bending as I went after about half way through so I wasn’t getting a nice 90 degree edge.  I also may have been pushing too hard against the fence?  Somehow between that and perhaps a measurement that was somehow off, I noticed when I got to the end of the cut that I wasn’t lined up with my other tick mark.  I then tried cutting from the opposite direction to finish it off and avoid chipping at the ends, and this was the result.  Yuk!

I eventually got a better cut with the jigsaw just free handing it.  Still some wobble though.  My last attempt I switched to the skill saw and used that for my edge cut to get it down to the proper CP size.  That came out pretty straight freehand, and was probably the best of all cuts.  Still not what I was hoping for.  Definitely need more practice.

You can do a long straight cut with a jigsaw, but you will probably never get a perfect 90 degree angle because the blade will wobble. The thicker the board you cut, the more pronounced it gets.

To do the straight cuts, you can use a table saw + fence or you can use the jigsaw to cut the board a bit too big freehand, clamp a straight piece of wood over the pencil marks and use the router + flush trim bit to make the actual cut.


I decided to try fast tracking the measuring with a print out to see how well it would hold up if only taped tightly at the edges with some scotch tape.



Surprisingly it held up pretty well… but you wanna make sure you start drilling at a high speed or it can tear and pull pretty easily.

If you include the center points of the holes in the print, you can tape the print to the CP and use something with a sharp point (a nail or something) to punch a small hole though the center points. After that, you can remove the print and still know where to drill the holes.

I highly recommend doing this on some scrap wood before you attempt anything on your real wood for the project.
I marked up the wood CP with pencil on the bottom.  This was again way too hard to see with all the dust from the router during a cut, so I decided to try filling in all the areas I wanted to remove with a red sharpie.  This helped.



I tried my best to make straight cuts, but again, even with red sharpie helping, it still gets really dusty fast and is hard to see and move the router blade in a super straight manner standing in an awkward position to see things.  I imagine I could setup some sort of fencing around the area to push the router against to force more of a straight cut.  I guess this depends on what you care about since no one will ever see this but a person servicing the panel.  I like to do my best everywhere though… so I’ll probably revisit this.

You can use some battens, clamped/taped to the edges so that the router cannot wander off. Here's an example pic used in a recent build. javeryh's Nameless Cabaret Copy


Another issue I ran into with drilling holes was that these forstner bits don’t like to stay nice and centered.  They tend to wander quite a bit when you start a cut with them touching the wood.  To try to help force a straighter cut, I tried making a template with some ¾ MDF.  The theory being that if I just plug into it at full speed and make one perfect hole, all my other holes will be made with this template on top, which will keep the bit from wondering.  This seemed to help when I needed to go back to the other side and make a larger hole to hold my light rings.

Something to watch:
How to SAFELY use a forstner bit in a hand-held drill   

Easy Forstner Bit Drilling by OTB Thinker   
                  

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #93 on: July 26, 2020, 10:40:17 am »
Trying to cut straight (with a 90 degree edge as well) with a jigsaw is hard. Part of the issue with a fence is that if the blade does start to wander towards the fence then you can't push the jigsaw towards it to get it back straight. It's counter-intuitive and took a while to do it without thinking, but the natural temptation is to 'pull' a jigsaw when the blade wanders which is the opposite of what you should do.

For drilling button/joystick holes I find spade bits to be the best, with a small pilot hole. As with any other hole cutter you need to use a piece of scrap to ensure it doesn't rattle around at the bottom of the hole. Quite easy to get straight as well as you can align it when it starts hitting the wood.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #94 on: July 26, 2020, 11:49:52 pm »
I avoided paying money for good tools for a long time....I wish I wouldn’t have.  It was such a waste of time (and money).  Jigsaws are pretty much only good for ruff cutting.  If you want something you can be proud of, use either a router, or a good circular saw/table saw.  You can see the slow realization I came to in my build.  Since buying the track saw my life has gotten sooooo much better.

Long story short, you get what you pay for, and if you value your time invest in good tools, you won’t regret it.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #95 on: July 31, 2020, 02:13:45 pm »
If you include the center points of the holes in the print, you can tape the print to the CP and use something with a sharp point (a nail or something) to punch a small hole though the center points. After that, you can remove the print and still know where to drill the holes.

Good point :)  A center hole punch should work well.

You can use some battens, clamped/taped to the edges so that the router cannot wander off. Here's an example pic used in a recent build. javeryh's Nameless Cabaret Copy

I'll try this on the next iteration.

Something to watch:
How to SAFELY use a forstner bit in a hand-held drill   

Easy Forstner Bit Drilling by OTB Thinker   

Thanks for the tips!  Even with something as seemingly simple as drilling, there's clearly tricks of the trade that can make a big difference.


zestyphresh & Arroyo, thanks for the words of wisdom.  I have much to learn yet. :)   :cheers:

« Last Edit: July 31, 2020, 02:15:47 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #96 on: September 11, 2020, 12:50:04 pm »
In looking at options for the power inlet / cord extension outside the cab to plug into the wall, and then how a lot of people are connecting it internally to a power strip, I've run into some questions.

First question is around the inlet choice.  Looking on Amazon there appears to only really be one option available and it isn't UL rated.  It has a red power switch with it and a 5A fuse.  It's also the same one featured on the electrical section of the Wiki here.  Is that really it for choices?  Given even the wiki mentioned some reports of melting and corrosion possibilities with these, are there better alternatives?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NWO68JI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?smid=A2Y736KGZ14HTQ&psc=1

I'm also now debating if I really need 2 power switches.  One on the inlet, and then a separate one to turn on the PC, which also triggers the smart strip for the rest of the cab.  One idea was to set the bios on the PC to boot when it detects power presence, so I'd just have the one switch then.  The nostalgic side of me also wants to consider a metal toggle switch instead of the red LED rocker.  I only remember those on the backs / tops of cabs growing up.

The next question is the correct wiring gauges to be using to handle this direct power.  With outlets, to be up to code in high use areas (kitchen) you're suppose to use 12 AWG from what I've read.  14 is supposedly OK for something like a bedroom, but I've only ever used 12.  Yet when I look at some of these inlets that come with wires and quick disconnects, they appear to be using 14-16 gauge.  Then to further confuse me, the standard PC power cables all appear to be using 18AWG, which is what I intended on wiring the inlet to, and then connecting that to my power strip so I don't have to ruin the strip.

So given all that variance, what is the right gauge to not burn the house down?  If it's all converting down to 18AWG at the cable / power strip, is that all that's needed?  Why is that so different than outlet wiring gauges, and is that really acceptable given how much draw the full cab is likely to need?  :dizzy:




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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #97 on: September 11, 2020, 03:23:13 pm »
The reason outlets and strips have a lower gauge (thicker) is because they may have multiple devices powered at once.  Therefore the current draw may be more significant.  All you really need to do is figure out the power usage (watts) of each of your components at max usage then you will know the current draw at the outlet (P=V*I) so multiple each of your components Voltage * Amperage to get the max power used.  Add all the power of each of you components then divide that by the 120V that a standard US outlet outputs and you have your amperage at the inlet.

Here's a chart for stranded wire current ratings:

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #98 on: September 12, 2020, 12:37:26 am »
Given even the wiki mentioned some reports of melting and corrosion possibilities with these, are there better alternatives?
The melting and corrosion problems are almost certainly the result of user error.
i.e. Loose crimps, crimping mostly on the insulation instead of bare wire so only a few strands are making contact, high resistance connections, etc.

If you do the simple mechanical and electrical checks outlined in the wiki, you won't have a problem.   ;D

http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/Wiring#Inspecting_Power_Wiring

The nostalgic side of me also wants to consider a metal toggle switch instead of the red LED rocker.
I haven't seen any fused IEC inlets with that type of switch, but you could use an un-fused IEC inlet and fabricate a panel for the toggle switch.

Wire the switch in series with the hot/live/black wire -- the tab marked "L" in this photo.



One easy and clean way to mount the switch is to use a blank single gang cover.

 

You may also consider using an "old work" single gang electrical box or low voltage ring with the cover.

 

The pre-fab single toggle switch on a panel options I've seen are usually rated for 12v (car/motorcycle/boat applications), so you'll probably need to replace the switch if you get something like these.

 


Scott

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #99 on: September 12, 2020, 04:12:52 am »
FYI, my power inlet melted because I used an ancient pc power cable.  The connectors inside that end were probably worn out or corroded.  Buy a new cable.  I redid everything exactly the same with a new cable and have had no issues since.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #100 on: September 12, 2020, 07:15:18 pm »
Thanks for the quick responses guys.   :cheers:  I'll need to recalculate what the total draw will be now that I've got most everything except maybe all the lights.  Although if I can run all those through the PC with the PacLed64 then the total draw is the max of my PC PSU anyway.

Scott, (or anyone), what would be purpose or advantage to having an inlet with a fuse?  My brother in law though the house circuit breaker covered the need for that.  I'm guessing surge protection, but shouldn't that be covered with a smart strip?


He also pointed me to an inset inlet on amazon like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Journeyman-Pro-Flanged-Commercial-Straight-Cap/dp/B01E6N0XFI/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=inset+inlet+outlet&qid=1599951944&sr=8-1

It's quite a bit more expensive but is rated for up to 15 amps.

Thoughts?


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #101 on: September 12, 2020, 07:53:35 pm »
Quote
My brother in law though the house circuit breaker covered the need for that.

Don't ever take electrical advice from that guy...ever.

Ask him why they bother putting fuses in anything then.
« Last Edit: September 12, 2020, 07:56:24 pm by Mike A »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #102 on: September 12, 2020, 08:16:05 pm »
A fuse can protect your cab from catastrophic damage.

I picked up a Taito cab that someone was trying to convert to JAMMA. He said a power supply fuse kept blowing.

I got it home, disconnected the JAMMA board and replaced the fuse. The power supply works fine, and the board works fine in one of my JAMMA cabs.

The fuse protected the linear power supply and the JAMMA board from damage from a ---smurfy--- wiring job.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #103 on: September 13, 2020, 09:00:46 am »
what would be purpose or advantage to having an inlet with a fuse?  My brother in law though the house circuit breaker covered the need for that.  I'm guessing surge protection, but shouldn't that be covered with a smart strip?
The circuit breaker is there to protect the house from an electrical fire caused by too much current drawn through the wiring of that circuit.
- You can easily fry a system with far less current than it takes to trip the breaker.

The fuse is there to be a cheap sacrificial part to protect the rest of the system from situations like a cascading failure if one part of it breaks down.
- A cascading failure is where one part fails, which causes another part to fail, which causes another part to fail, . . .

A 10A table saw and a Raspberry Pi plug into the same type of wall outlet, but have very different levels of current draw and protection needs.

Generally speaking, select a fuse based on the current draw and blow time.
- If there's a lot of inrush current when you first apply power (CRT, table saw, etc.), use a slow-blow fuse.
- If it's a sensitive circuit with only a little inrush current when you first apply power, use a fast-blow fuse.
- If it's an average circuit, use a regular-blow fuse.

A surge protector isn't the same as a smart strip, but I would expect a smart strip to include some type of surge protector circuit.

He also pointed me to an inset inlet on amazon like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Journeyman-Pro-Flanged-Commercial-Straight-Cap/dp/B01E6N0XFI/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=inset+inlet+outlet&qid=1599951944&sr=8-1

It's quite a bit more expensive but is rated for up to 15 amps.
That would work OK if you want to use an extension cord instead of an IEC power cord.
- You won't draw anywhere near 15A.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #104 on: October 17, 2020, 09:03:12 am »
I placed another order for some more electrical accessories and a heat gun.  Time for some woodworking questions I haven't fully solved in my designs yet. 

I need all you drawer and cabinet maker experts advise.

The front coin door section is intended to have a drawer above it, and the lower half is a larger cabinet door for storage / easier access to accessories like steering wheels / pedals / pc access when I get there.

I've not yet figured out how to make these accessible without an exposed door handle, and not rely on magnets that will probably lose grab over time.  I'm trying to keep it feeling as much like a legit front of an arcade as possible.  The drawer above is to house the keyboard / mouse, which won't be used often, BUT it will also house USb controllers that will get used a lot... so it validates the need more in my eyes.

The idea I had for the main front door was to leave about a 1/2 inch lip at the bottom which would meet up with the base of the cabinet, so it can be colored the same to help hide it and given its on the ground it's less noticeable.  I thought MAYBE I could pull on that easily enough to open and close it with some sort of stiff pull hinges.  Needs to be somewhat kid friendly too.  I'd also like to figure out a locking mechanism so it doesn't flop open in transport

Similar deal with the top sliding drawer.  I have the slides already but am not sure how I can hide a handle.  I figure this drawer will get a lot more action then the bottom cabinet drawer so it should be built to last and kid friendly.  Also not sure how I can have some sort of lock to keep it in place during transport.

Any suggestions?

If you haven't addressed your drawer issue yet, the slides I am using in my build might suit your needs.  Push to open feature is built into the slides.  No magnets needed and they stay pretty securely closed until pushed in to release.  They seem to be working well so far.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,163631.0.html


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #105 on: October 18, 2020, 04:38:26 pm »

Quote
If you haven't addressed your drawer issue yet, the slides I am using in my build might suit your needs.  Push to open feature is built into the slides.

Thanks for the idea!  I'll have to check local stores and see whats available. 

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #106 on: October 25, 2020, 10:06:25 pm »
Time for a quick update on progress.  I've been getting advice on a variety of topics in other posts and PMs that I'm now trying to fold into the project.  BPerkins convinced me that Sande Plywood from Home Depot would be good enough and I wouldn't need Baltic Birch.  That saved me a longer trip to a lumber yard that sold apparently over priced baltic birch, and gave me a little more budget to put towards laminate.  I picked up all my wood a few weeks back.  Got an extra sheet of 1/2 inch just in case and splurged on select grade furring. Ordered and received a variety of additional parts including castors, leg levelers, some test LED strips, threaded inserts, laminate, roller pads, rubber cement, etc.  Talked shop with Arroyo for a bit today too, and after revisiting his thread again I think I'm going to go with a layered CP approach to allow me to get the joysticks closer to the surface and allow for a universal mount plate so I can more easily swap out sticks later on if desired.

I'm going to keep a lot of the cabinet held together with threaded inserts so I can easily disassemble it and get in into my basement without fear of killing myself, the incidental kid a the bottom of the steps it lands on, or destroying walls along the way. ;)  So that caused me to need to revise a few things on the design.  Once I have all the furring in place with sides cut, I'll probably end up using a black paint / primer mix on the interior just for general looks and some moister proofing, and the laminate and glue should be enough protection on the other sides.  This will hopefully hold up to the higher humidity swings my house tends to have thanks to our evaporative cooler.

I'm breaking things up into modular pieces so I can focus on each and try to get them to completion.  I need some simpler things to get my feet wet first and then something more challenging.  For the simpler part I thought building the base should be fairly straight forward but will involve plenty of cuts and routing for castors.

Next up I'm thinking of trying to take on my gun holsters.  These little things needed a lot more design work yet from my earlier posts and when done are seemingly every bit as challenging as the full cabinet from my perspective.



Here you can see a simple toon shaded view of the holster design on the side of the cab.  I intentionally removed all the graphics on the cab so I can stay focused on finishing the fundamental design and get building.  The theme has a ways to go yet.  The gun holsters will be covered with black laminate, feature a few addressable LED light shapes, and felt interiors.  Part of the challenge is figuring out how to channel things to run the wiring to the LEDs in a tight space and get a nice diffused shape.  I also needed 1 inch of space between the LEDs and the plexiglass to diffuse it properly, so I added some extrusions.  It adds to the tech look a little bit while not making the whole thing crazy thick.  Then I also needed to create a thin but strong paneling on the interior to hide all the wiring channels and protect them.  The best I could come up with right now is 1/8" tempered hardboard,  I'm trying to keep screws hidden but still easy enough to service with the right tools.  Ideally I don't want potential for the gun to come in contact with any screws.  The 2 rods in the front hole design I thought added a neat look and the idea was to have something smooth and sturdy to wrap the USB cable around to give it a stress catch to prevent accidentally yanking the plug out.

I'm also hoping with the design that the interior is deep enough to keep the cable shoved in the bottom with a little side space by the gun so it looks nice when not in use.  I figure I'll try to build one and validate everything works well.  To attach it to the cab, I'll need a hole to run all the wiring, and then threaded inserts on the back side of the holsters and holes through the side panels.  This way I can screw it in from inside the cabinet, which I think will be easier and not expose any screws outside.

Here you can see some of the updates to the overall cabinet design as well.  Again, toon shaded so we're only focusing on form.  I changed up the front edge design and added a t-molding design that I think is kinda futuristic.





Really hoping to start building some pieces of it this coming weekend.  :cheers:



« Last Edit: October 26, 2020, 03:46:09 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #107 on: October 26, 2020, 01:24:38 am »
vertexguy, nice build, keep up the good work! 
I'm assuming you won't be playing pinball very much? If so, disregard what I'm about to say as it will not apply.

But if you plan on playing pinball more than just a little, consider that pinball players will naturally put their palms on top of machine to rest some of their body weight on their arms for more comfort.  The way your control panel top panel wings out, this won't be possible. Hence the reason for the 4-player carrier control panel design. It serves a purpose.

(The average pinball machine is 29" wide.)
« Last Edit: October 26, 2020, 01:33:38 am by Katana Man »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #108 on: October 26, 2020, 01:53:18 am »
Quite the learning curve aint it...Like the way you get the right tools for the job at hand, It seems like it will never end, perhaps it won't, but quality tools last a lifetime and would consider that as an investment in ones future.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #109 on: October 30, 2020, 01:59:27 pm »
Hence the reason for the 4-player carrier control panel design. It serves a purpose.
(The average pinball machine is 29" wide.)

Thanks for the comments Katana.  This is a tough one.  Honestly the pinball add here I want functional enough to see if I really get into it or not.  So probably just lighter play right now.  I'll be surprised if my kids give it much attention.  If it turns addictive, I guess I'll have to build a dedicated pinball cab to support it properly. ;)

I wrestled with this quite a bit early on but then never really went back to focusing on the pinball buttons.  I understand why the carrier design benefits pinball but there were some other considerations.

1. If I simply made the top of the panel more carrier like without changing panel dimensions, you compromise the wrist wrest area for P1 and P2 in favor of pinball.
2. You can overcome the wrist area by making the panel even deeper, which I tried but ultimately didn't like how big it became.
3. You can also make the pinball controls come out a lot wider to not interfere with the P1/2 wrist area but that's quite a bit away from a typical pinball table width.  I remember a few tables that were much wider than normal, but they were not very common.  I was trying to keep things closer to regulation and smaller to be more kid friendly.
3. Play stance could be different on a cab like this because you're looking up at a monitor instead of down at a playfield.  I get that you still want some form of arm / wrist and perhaps overall body support though.

I'm hoping the concept of hooking your thumbs around the top edge along with a little lean in with your palms on the cab edge will help support your hands enough for some reasonable play times while promoting you to stand like you normally would at an arcade cab and look forward.  It might also be a situation where it's only decent to play if sitting on a stool.  :dunno

It would be interesting to see if anyone has pics of people playing pinball on their carrier design CPs from the side to see what their play stance is like.  Also knowing average play times would be a factor to consider.  I was never a pinball wizard so I think my average game time was less than 5 minutes a game.  Even just feedback from people who have played pinball on these cab designs would be great.

« Last Edit: October 30, 2020, 08:33:22 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #110 on: December 01, 2020, 07:50:54 pm »
It's finally time for another big update!




I'm playing catch up on posting so this should be fairly lengthy with lots of pics.  Back in September / October I finally went out and picked up all the major lumber I thought I would need.  After getting advice from a number of folks and debating between MDF vs Ply, I opted to go with Ply.  Then I researched where to get Baltic Birch in my area since that seemed to be the hot choice around here.  After speaking with others including bperkins on it, I was then convinced it wouldn't be necessary and he pointed me to a Sande Plywood stocked by Home Depot that was quite a bit cheaper than the 115+ a sheet I was seeing for 8x4 Baltic Birch.  This stuff was more like 39 a sheet which left me with more budget to try out laminate.



Unfortunately after spending just a few days in my garage I noticed some warping was occurring.  The top 1/2 inch sheet got it the worst with a wicked bend.  You can also see the pvc pipes I picked up for about 1.25 a piece that I'll be using later for laminating.



That's when I cleared a space in my basement storage area and brought all my lumber in doors.  Fortunately the top most warped piece was a spare so hopefully the other pieces are still decent enough to use.  We shall soon find out.

I ordered a bunch more parts over the past several months.  You never realize just how much there is to buy until you're deeper into this I guess.  Among these items were castors from Penn Elcom as recommended by Arroyo.  These weren't cheap and shipping was just as much as the castors!  However an important factor here is that they are rated to hold more than enough weight indefinitely.  Many castor varieties are intended for shorter term movement where these are intended to be like legs.



I also ordered leg levelers from eBay.  I had a hard time finding ratings on these to hold enough weight.  These were supposed to hold 250 per pair.  I'm hoping between those and the castors I should be more than fine.



One important thing to note with these however was that when I got them, I discovered one of the mounting plates was improperly welded.  It's just a simple nut welded onto a metal plate, and there was a big gap on one side of the weld resulting in the leg leveler not being anywhere close to level.  Kinda defeats the purpose!  So my backup was to run to home depot and grab T-Nuts instead.

I wanted to approach this project in manageable components / sections that challenge my building skills incrementally while also showing broad progress towards a complete cabinet.  As such I decided to start with the base.  It seems simple in concept but ultimately had me using most of my tools and presented all kinds of challenges.



I started by plotting every piece out in a layout in photoshop to give me a nice reference and help me find any potential measurement flaws in the 3d model.  There were plenty.  Turns out 3d Studio Max does some interesting rounding that could make for things being off by a 1/16th in some situations.  Once I averaged those things out and triple checked my work, I printed it off and with the help of my oldest son, measured and plotted everything on a scrap piece of 3/4 ply from my kitchen remodel.  I was going back and forth on the thickness of the base and ultimately went back to keeping it 3/4 for strength and needed thickness to support the castors and leg levelers.  Even with that, there were problems that you'll see in a bit.  One important lesson in this part... notice I marked all new edges for my base inside the wood scrap.  This is because I discovered that even factory edges can sometimes have flaws, and the other sides I had cut definitely had issues.  I even discovered the giant T square I got for dry wall has 1/16th of play in it so I ended up trusting my solid metal 48" ruler to get everything perfectly square.  Other reasons for this approach was that there were little tacks embedded in the edge of this piece that I couldn't easily get out, and the size of my base just barely fit to avoid all the flaws in the wood.


First I needed to setup shop in my cold garage with crap lighting.  This was my make shift solution to get more light where I needed it with a bonus of a little more heat from the lights.



I even found a way to get my boys to help out.  They measured some of the underlying structure and I let them do some cutting as well.

One tool I picked up to help with getting straight cuts was the Accu-Cut from Kreg.  I got this local at Home Depot and it is a fantastic tool!




Before doing anything serious with it I tested it out on some scrap MDF.


You simply set it down directly on your cut line and slowly move the saw across the track.  The results are an incredibly straight cut I could never achieve on my own.


There were some tricks I had to develop as I continued working with the Accu Cut.  In general, if your wood is flat, and dust free, the rubber under the track is plenty to keep it in place.  However if you're dealing with slightly warped plywood, it can cause for some issues where it spins on the high surface.  To counter this, I either used some speed clamps (Harbor Freight special for 3 bucks a pop...WELL worth it! Shown further down with my portable drill press)  and placed one on the far end well passed my stop point, or I walked my hand in front of the saw pushing down on the track as I went.  That plus the weight of the saw kept it straight.  I guess Kreg makes special clamps that attach underneath the track that I might look into, but so far my work arounds are sufficient.

With a good result in the tests, I moved on to the base.






Since I opted to use threaded inserts so I can take this thing apart to get it into my basement, I needed to revise several things with my initial design.  I also realized I had other detail work still remaining.  Turns out for me it's easier to make a 3d model that looks pretty but still miss details necessary for the actual build.  One of the changes was a way to thread the side panels onto the base without taking away additional space on the inside.  Along with this I needed to find a way to confidently drill perfectly.  The solution I arrived at was a 35 dollar portable drill press from Home Depot Online.



It's got a bit of play in it, but ultimately does a far better job than I could do by hand.  It also has a handy depth stopper which is necessary for this work.  Here I did a practice hole that needed to be inset to the right depth to work with the length of hex bolts I went with.







I decided to use black hex bolts (amazon) everywhere for ease of working with in tight spaces and being far less likely to ever strip.  I went with 2 different lengths at 1/4-20 x 1.5mm and 1/4-20x .75mm.  I also got a small kit of assorted lengths that I ended up using most of on my castors (they take 14 a piece and although that's likely overkill, I like the look better with all the holes full.)





Once I had the base cut out I sanded off the white veneer from the ply so I had a good wood on wood surface to glue and screw into.  It was a shiny veneer that was quite slippery and glue didn't take to it at all.

I picked up a little trick on the net for glue spreading.  Bought a threaded rod from Lowes for less than a buck and used it to quickly and evenly spread glue over large wood surfaces.



I went with locktite III for my glue and got some gorilla glue for backup.

All these 1 6/16" boards were the cheap stuff from HD.  In retrospect it would have been nicer to work with a slightly better quality wood but I figured it would suffice for this purpose.  In general it didn't splinter too badly when cutting, but it was really hard to find decent pieces in the store to begin with and all had flaws.  I also accidently grabbed star bit style screws when looking for exterior screws of a shorter length.  Maybe it was intentional subconsciously since I wanted to work with star bits... who knows.  Either way it should be plenty protected and solid.



This top piece required a bit of routing.


The castors have a lot of uniqueness to their shape with subtle 32nd extrusions and such that can cause some headache.  I used the jigsaw on most of these cuts (and my boys helped) as I figured ultimately it didn't matter to much if it was dead on or not.  I ended up breaking out a file and doing a bunch of sanding because it was ultimately too tight of a fit.

Here's the base fully assembled from the bottom with castors and leg levelers on.  I will probably go back and remove the remaining veneer and prime / paint it for extra protection... and to look nice for all the dust mites passing under it. ;)



I then sanded the top veneer off.  Here you can start to see the little problem I ran into.  My depth was somehow off on both my leg levelers.  I was supposed to have 1/8th left but I didn't account for the thickness of the veneer and it's possible the diagram I looked at for the bolt size was slightly off too.  Given my success at depth with the other threaded inserts coming out perfect, that's the best answer I can come up with.



Now I'm left wondering what I should do here.  My intention is to laminate the top with the same black laminate going all over the cabinet.  However I don't know if I should go over the top of the holes and risk it cracking over time if it's ever pressed on.  I also need to get some washers to prevent the leg lever from screwing up quite so high.  Another alternative would be to keep the holes and add holes in the new laminate so it can move up another 8th or so.  Generally speaking you shouldn't ever need to drop the front legs this much but I tried to give it equal movement up and down for versatility.

If I tried filling in the hole any I'm not sure of the best way to do it.  I'm guessing bondo but would it be enough to really matter for strength?



I checked that everything was level and walked and jumped on the base a few times to ensure it was sturdy.  It can be moved with the right motion but it also doesn't have much weight to it yet.  With the full cabinet I think it will be quite solid.



Here's the base trying out it's future home in my basement.


Next I was debating on attempting to laminate, but with the outstanding hole issue I decided I want to wait a while to tackle laminating and focus on building progress.  I was debating moving on to tackle my gun holsters next as a complex little project that starts to address some remaining LED lighting issues as well, but ultimately decided I wanted to feel like I'm making bigger progress on the cabinet.  To me the answer was clearly to continue with the sides.

Here I am plotting that out in the comfort of my basement.  This one I did myself and spent a good amount of time making sure everything was perfectly aligned.  Given the switch over to plywood I found my original designs needed some adjusting.  I had planned on MDF a year ago which meant slightly bigger sheets.  That meant I needed to bring each of my side panels in by about an 8th to have it fit and have a comfortable wiggle room space between them for a clean cut.  Once I got that all sorted out, here's the end plot.



For the cutting I wanted to use my accu cut as much as possible but couldn't use it as much given all the angles.  I ended up using a combo of a lot of jig saw cuts and then going over them again with the accu cut where possible.  The first side was a rougher go with more fine tuning needed.  For the second, I simply traced my first, then rough cut it with the jig saw, and then was able to use the accu cut in more places.  A fatal mistake as I went was the drill holes I used to turn the jig saw.  The fatter drill bits tend to jump a bit when starting, so if you start too close to your finish line, you end up screwing things up.  I had that happen in one area.  I'm hoping it's a small enough indent to not really matter and be hidden by the T-Molding.  Otherwise I'm guessing I have to use bondo and rebuild the corner.



I filed down areas where my jig saw didn't do a great job and used a small finishing sanding block on all of the edges.  Generally the chipping wasn't bad, but I do have some sections that I may need to use bondo on to clean up.  I guess that's one of the down sides to plywood.



This all ended up taking me a lot longer than I expected.  I'd enter the garage thinking I could knock something out in an hour and then look at the clock and 3 hours had gone by. Either way it's a fun process and I'm trying to keep myself tasked with something daily when possible so I can keep moving.



Can anyone tell me if I really have to round off every corner for t-molding to lay down correctly?  Right now I have a couple 90 degree angles on the sides.  Are there techniques to make this work?  If not, what's the minimum I have to round off by?

Thanks to all the great insights provided from the community that has helped get me this far.  As always all thoughts, advice, opinions, etc are very welcome.  Let me know how I'm doing so far and help keep me motivated to cross the finish line!  Next up are the major cross supports so I can get a standing cabinet.  There will be many challenges including a method to precisely drill the threaded insert holes in the side panels that perfectly align to the holes in the cross supports.  Any recommended techniques to help with that other than just really accurate measuring?
« Last Edit: December 01, 2020, 11:34:59 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #111 on: December 02, 2020, 12:13:32 pm »
Congrats on getting started.  Taking that first step on cutting is definitely the hardest. 

It looks like you are getting some good results with the tools, learning how to use them for the first time is tuff (well it was for me).  Your base looks very solid, and your castor cut outs looks like they were well executed.

I think you using the Accu Cut as much as much as possible is a good idea. If it were me I would break out the router to finish the edge and make it clean for anywhere you couldn't use it.  The jig saw is great for rough cutting, but personally I wouldn't use it as a final cut unless it was a tight 90 deg interior angle, and then just to finish it.

Curious why you choose the veneered Plywood, were you going to paint some areas and wanted a smoother surface, or perhaps you were going to laminate against it?  You should be fine to laminate it.  I'd try a practice piece and see how it comes out.

Keep it up!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #112 on: December 02, 2020, 02:21:51 pm »
Looking good so far.

I would second the router suggestion.  I don't know how much experience you have with one, but I know that I was intimidated by it before I got started on my project, since I had never really used it for anything other than simple round-overs, but it is an incredibly useful tool and this project is a great opportunity to learn how to use it.  In fact, that's probably been the best thing about it for me so far.  You are going to need it for the the t molding tracts and, I assume, trimming the laminate (i've never used laminate before), so might as well get familiar with it if you aren't already.  Also useful for cutting out coin door cutout, circles, dadoes, perfectly matching the sides, recesses, etc.  Lots of good videos out there.

It makes so much cleaner and straighter edges, which will be really important for your t molding to prevent small gaps.  With simple jigs, you can make nice, consistent, rounded corners with it also.  I feel like it is a huge time saver in the long run once you get used to it because you spend less time (i.e. none) filing, sanding, patching, and re-sanding the edges.

I can never get the blade to stay right at 90 degrees and make good straight cuts with my jig saw and the router cleans up the edges amazingly after a quick rough cut with the jigsaw.

This is my first project, so I cant speak much about the t molding, but I got a number of color samples and have been using them to practice cutting them for both round and 90 degree corners.  There seems to be a bit of a different trick to getting it to lay flat for both ways, so do some trial cuts first.  Also handy to have samples around when you make your t tract cuts to make sure you have your router bit depth right.  Make sure you check your actual plywood thickness.  My "3/4" is actually only 11/16.  They have a much smaller range of colors in the other sizes, unfortunately.

It can be tricky to get those inserts lined up precisely.  It's also very easy to insert them at a slight angle on accident if inserting them freehand, which makes a bigger difference than you might think.  A simple jig can help insert them straight.  I remember reading this post where he used inserts and had lots of pics, if you haven't seen it yet:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,156272.0.html

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #113 on: December 02, 2020, 11:58:30 pm »
Curious why you choose the veneered Plywood, were you going to paint some areas and wanted a smoother surface, or perhaps you were going to laminate against it?  You should be fine to laminate it.  I'd try a practice piece and see how it comes out.

Hey Arroyo,
I used it because I only bought 1 sheet of 3/4 Sande plywood and wouldn't have enough remaining for the base once the sides were cut.  No other special reason.  I might use more where needed.  The ply underneath seems nice to me.  I intend on removing the rest of the white veneer and then laminating it fresh with the black matte laminate you pointed me to for the inside surface.  The white veneer chips really easily on cutting so I thought it better to just remove it all rather than try to glue laminate to it.   I still have to figure out what to do about the accidental holes from the leg levelers...

I will need to do some research on how to use the router to clean up those edges.  I'm not well versed.  I THINK the edges are fairly decent after sanding but I'm sure a router would be more precise.  In my head right now all I can picture is having to somehow align a perfectly straight board underneath the cut side panel section which the flush trim bit bearing would ride on.  My bearing is on the end of the bit after the blades.  That way there's a flat surface on the top for the router to lay on while I trace the template underneath?  Seems like I'd have to reposition the straight piece for every cut.  Not sure if I need a fence up top too or what risk there is to screw it up.  Will definitely need to practice on some scrap first.   Trying to get my measurements notated for the cross pieces tomorrow and then on to the inserts to bring it upright.

« Last Edit: December 03, 2020, 07:12:53 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #114 on: December 03, 2020, 12:02:30 am »
This is my first project, so I cant speak much about the t molding, but I got a number of color samples and have been using them to practice cutting them for both round and 90 degree corners.  There seems to be a bit of a different trick to getting it to lay flat for both ways, so do some trial cuts first.

Thanks for the ideas.  I'll definitely test it out with some of my sample pieces.  You mentioned making it lay flat, but looking at the cross second on mine, the t molding doesn't look flat.  It's more like a squished letter C.  I assume it's suppose to only be flat at the edges and not the center when applied?

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #115 on: December 03, 2020, 09:49:32 am »
i was referring to the edges of the molding in relation to the side edge of the panel if there are any irregularities of the panel edge

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #116 on: December 09, 2020, 12:15:19 am »
Progress update:

Trying to get the cab upright is my main next goal.  I spent a bunch of time figuring out the key supports needed and tweaking their measurements, then spent several hours plotting with my oldest son helping out a little.

I tried to utilize my Accu Cut to make a sort of table saw / chop saw type rig to make really quick cuts but my efforts didn't work out.  For some reason I was getting issues where I was off by as much as 1/8.
 After several error cuts and lots of time wasted I opted to go back to the jig saw.  Honestly if it weren't for the potential of not getting a 90 degree cut I would favor this tool above the others.  I can cut extremely straight with it without a guide and actually SEE what I'm doing as I'm cutting.



All of these were quick and easy to do with the Jigsaw.  I sand all of the ends lightly when done.  There will be more of these later, but this should be enough to get the cab standing.

Then I started cutting out large sections with the accu cut for the back panels.  These all have a bunch of vent holes that I want to cut with the kinda classic Nintendo'esque cab speaker style with the pill shape cuts.  To start I measured everything out and then used a starter punch to help give the drill a better resting point.  That mixed with the portable drill guide proved to work really well on the first try. 






At first I had the board over open air taking my sons advice that it would be faster to get through them quickly.  Well... sorta, except I forgot about all the blow out that inevitably would occur underneath.
Here you can see that even when I tried adding painters tape, it didn't help much.  Ultimately I think I just needed a sacrificial board tightly clamped under it.



Outside of that, which I sanded down, so far so good.  Then came figuring out how to give my router some fence guides to try to make this perfectly straight.  I tried several different things.



It worked!  My first attempt was a pretty decent success.  So then I continued with a similar approach on the others.



For the most part the row came out pretty good with a couple areas where the end holes were getting a little bigger than I'd like.  I thought, ok, this isn't so bad and seems to be working, so I'm continue to the next set.... then the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- started hitting the fan.  :timebomb:



As I kept going things just kept getting worse and I couldn't understand why... and it's too late to really fix.  My best guess is that my fence just wasn't staying perfectly in place even with the way I had it clamped in 2 places (which was tough to stay out of the way of the router).  Also when I reached the end I think the bigger hole in the ends was a result of me trying to shut the router off, which is a bit of an awkward reach to hit the switch.

I thought maybe I could salvage it somehow and carefully lined up edges to try to correct it.... well, it's a fatter vent slot....


Ultimately I ended with this, which has a ton of mistakes and I'm not too happy about. 



I should have enough spare 1/2" ply to go back and make another, but I really need a new approach first.  This also makes me pause before continuing to do any vents on my back panels.


Next I decided to try to move on to speaker cut outs.  I don't have a circle router jig, and if I had more time I might have tried building my own....

First I predrilled holes for my jigsaw to ruff cut the shape.








Then I mounted the inner frame of the speaker mount to trace with the router.



Here's where I also discovered another problem.  I bought a new router bit that was a 1/2" shank with a bearing at the end.  This would have enabled me to flip the board over to have a smoother flat surface for the router to ride on which probably would have prevented the upcoming mistake....  Turns out I was mistaken and my router only supports 1/4" bits.  Fortunately I had a flush trim set I got over a year ago I could try, but the bearing is on the opposite end.

I put some cardboard under it to raise the edge up a little bit to try to get it more on the bearing and away I went.



Everything worked out pretty well until I got close to the end.  I must have accidently leaned into the circle a bit because I started hitting metal.


So I thought... great.  I came this close to a perfect circle and now I screwed up my frame and the circle.  Fortunately these are all inside and hidden, but still.... disappointing.

In the end the speakers look good mounted at least.




My next task was to cut the 3/16ths hardboard sheet I got in half so it is a little more manageable.  Once that's done I started measuring out a small section to try to make my own template for the vents.


I plan on using this stuff for some wire panel covers in various places of the cab and on my gun holsters, but I should have plenty of extra.

My hope is that by leaving a 3" margin around the entire template, I will have just enough flat space for the router to ride on.  Then I just have to make 1 perfect vent, and can then hopefully use the flush trim bits to mirror that perfect shape without a chance for error.  Now obviously if the router tips somehow its going to screw up my template just like my speaker mount...but I don't think that will be nearly as likely when always on a flat surface.  I also need to come up with the best way of holding it down.  I know a few of you have relied on a double stick tape method, although I'm not sure of the exact type.  I was thinking of going to HD to get some to test.  If it holds well enough and doesn't strip away my wood surface it would be a lot easier than finding a way to clamp it down from multiple sides.

More on this attempt soon...
« Last Edit: December 09, 2020, 12:16:58 am by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #117 on: December 14, 2020, 01:45:19 pm »
After spending a bunch more time trying to understand why my first attempt at the vents failed so badly, I believe I finally have it figured out!

Welcome to the quest for the perfect pill shaped hole! ;)




It turns out my first attempt was doomed to fail for a variety of reasons I didn't realize at the time.  Rather than using a full template approach, my first attempt was using a moving fence.  Seems like this should work, but there were several factors I didn't consider that resulted in this not working right.  First, it was difficult to figure out ways to clamp both the vertical and horizontal fences in place and then have the vertical fence be easily movable so I could jump from hole to hole.  This resulted in a lot of tear down and setup between each hole, and adjustments on everything which left a margin for alignment error.

The next culprit was the holes I was drilling.  Getting those to be absolutely precise down to a 64th or less even with the drill guide is very challenging, and some of my holes were not lined up correctly.  This is in part why if you look back you'll notice a tendancy for the top or bottom of the hole where it's round to be slightly bulging out on one side.  When the holes are off but the fence is straight, it makes a bulge.

Then the real kicker....  it turns out my router base is not actually a circle.  After banging my head on the wall for hours trying to understand how I could get such horrible slippage with a fence, I figured out that the likely culprit was in part my technique, and a result of the router not being round.  Sure enough, as I was making these lines I wasn't keeping the router lined up exactly the same way on each attempt and reversed my approach on the second set of holes  (that came out far worse) to accommodate my clamped setup.  The side measurement from the blades edge is 1/8th less than the measurement from the blade to the front of the router.  So as I was going if I didn't keep the router aligned (which I wasn't) that would cause a big variance.  Pretty sure the back was a unique measurement as well.  So WTF craftsman?!  Why on earth wouldn't a round looking router base actually be perfectly round?

So after figuring all this out, I decided to try making a template instead to hopefully get more consistent results and speed up the process.



To make these, I tried using my drill with a 1/2" bit to make the ends, being extremely careful to get them as perfectly aligned center as possible.  Then I used my jig saw and hand cut out the rest of the shape.  This of course was not C&C grade by any stretch and left me sanding down inner bumps trying to get a more perfect edge.  Using this method I really should have used a fence to help get a more perfect straight cut.  The end result on the template looked OK, but I could still tell it wasn't perfect.  Regardless, I tried it out on some scrap.

The next challenge in using this was holding down the template.  I did some digging and saw that some folks recommended using a brand of double sided carpet tape.  (Shuretape) I went out to Lowes and found a roll for about 6 bucks.



This stuff is interesting in that it's a somewhat thick fiber texture as it goes on.  It does stick fairly well on the first try, but I quickly learned some set backs with it as well.  The hardboard I'm using to make the templates has a lot of fiber like texture to it on the back, which likes to stay stuck to the tape and makes it hard to reuse it for multiple cuts.  Also it's a heat activated tape and I'm working in my garage with the temperature outside averaging about 18 degrees this week.  That combination doesn't work well and makes it where the tape doesn't stick at all.  I figured out a work around to this which was to hit the tape strips with my heat gun once it was applied just for a few seconds.  This rejuvenated it and I was able to use the same tape to complete several cuts.

Here you can see the results of testing this template out on some scrap.


Not bad.... way better than my first attempt.... but also not perfect.  You can see some of the ends bulging from where I drilled and things not being perfectly aligned, along with a subtle waveyness in the straight section.

This is the point where my wife thinks I've lost my mind trying to make this even better for a vent that no one see's sitting against a wall.  I figure that's not the point.  I want to learn how to do the best job I can regardless the part, and getting things right here means I should be better equipped when doing parts that are more front and center.  Plus this process of making one at a time is still fairly slow.  My design has a lot of these vents. 6 sets of 7 in this style, and 2 more sets of 3 in a slightly longer horizontal variety.



My 5" vent came out slightly better, but still has some hand done qualities to it.


Instead of attempting to make the rounded ends with the drill bit I decided to let the router make as much of everything as possible.  Here I realized all I needed was a straight edge to ride with stops on either end.  For this I used a jigsaw against a fence to get a perfectly straight edge.  I then measured out the 7 vent holes I needed for a set and with this simple little half cut template, lined the edges up to perfectly match the lines.  For the holes I still used my 1/2" router bit and painstakingly made perfect starter holes for it with a center punch that I aligned and hand pressed first, then hammered a little bigger.  The top of the hardboard is really slick so it makes the center punch want to slide around really easily. 




To the right you can see 2 failed attempts at making a single slot template.  These were a combination of measurement error and drill bit alignment.

After all this.... here's the first test result.  Finally... a perfect vent!


Now the next question is, can I replicate it consistently?



It would appear I have success!



Here I lined up the old cuts in my top panel next to the brand new template cuts.... it's night and day. :)  I showed my wife this and she saw the improvement, but still didn't think it mattered given it was against the wall.  Yet I know if she bought something and saw it looked like the vent on the left, she wouldn't be happy with it either. ;)

Next up was to test the template and make sure everything worked well before I risk ruining another large panel.



For these I decided to use a slightly smaller drill bit so there would be less risk of accidently damaging the template, but also making sure the starting holes are always inside the template as opposed to drilling them with measurements before putting down the template and risking something being slightly off.

The trade off here is that it's just a little snug for the router bit.  It makes it where the router can't start spinning initially, but with some subtle wiggling it eventually is able to kick in.  The trouble with the kick in part is that I'm near positive this is causing the pitted marks you'll see in the middle areas of each vent slot. (see how it's lighter in the middle.)  I just couldn't figure out a better way to quickly give the router bit a large enough starting area to spin freely but not risk damaging the template or having to do ultra precise measurement and predrilling.



With the second test coming out nicely, it's time to test it out on a real panel.  Below you'll see I'm using a plastic (I think drywall) scraper as kind of a spudger tool to gently get underneath the template with a few taps from the rubber mallet.  The tape can stick really well and make it quite difficult to pull it off by hand, so this technique made it much faster and didn't damage the template.






Below you can see the little pits that the router blade seems to be making on startup.  It has to be the kickback force of the blade struggling to start.  I really didn't want to have to do a bunch of fine detail work on vent holes, but I'll probably attempt to fill these in with some light bondo somewhere down the line...  If anyone has ideas to further improve my process, please share!





Overall I'm happy with the results I got now.  WAY better than my first botched attempt.  I managed to knock out 2 of the back panels yesterday.  I still haven't decided if I will make another template set for the horizontal longer vents, or just utilize this template and slide it over once the holes are made to get them to the correct length.

Another side note.... I noticed there seems to be a bit of a difference in my noob opinion between the 3/4" and 1/2" ply I'm using despite it supposedly being the same type.  The grain on the 3/4" has more red in it and just looks nicer IMO.  The 1/2, especially when cut down to smaller pieces just feels more like a balsa wood for lack of a better description.  It's still got some strength...but I feel much more confident in the 3/4.  The 1/2 inch also seems to want to have more bow in it just across a 30" strip.  I'm doubling up the 1/2 now for some of my designs, particularly on the lower front where I have a drawer and cabinet to make the frame a lot stronger, and hopefully correct some of the bow.  If I can't get good enough results I may have to start all over with 3/4" everywhere.  However I will note that even the 3/4 has some bow in it depending on the cut.  From what I've read this seems to be common in ply and is one of the advantages of working with MDF.  That said, I'm hoping it's not significant enough to matter, and hoping that when pieces are put together they will straighten out a bit more.  I also realized that the glue I'm using doesn't work so well in 18 degree weather.  I'm going to have to migrate pieces to and from my basement it seems to solve that issue....


« Last Edit: December 14, 2020, 01:47:55 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #118 on: December 15, 2020, 11:01:13 am »
If anyone has ideas to further improve my process, please share!



If you want to give it another try, here's a link on how to do it. How to Route a Nintendo Speaker Grill
                  

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #119 on: December 18, 2020, 11:51:04 pm »
Thanks for the reference Yamatetsu.  :cheers:  It seems like I'm doing pretty much the same thing outlined in that post, but the main difference is that I don't have a plunge router, and I'm attempting to blow thru all of the depth in one go vs shallow passes.  I might try a shorter bit to see if it helps, but then of course it takes a lot more time to swap out bits and change up depths.... but it might make the difference.  These cuts are good enough for this panel, but I will end up touching them up with some filler.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #120 on: December 18, 2020, 11:57:46 pm »
Anyone have any idea how I might go about mounting this network pass thru jack in wood paneling?  I bought this from one of the arcade shops (forget which one) and expected it to be a little more mount friendly then this.  Seems like it was only meant for a 1/32 or less thick metal sheet to fit under the plastic black screw down face plate.  I'm going to have to improvise somehow, and I haven't come up with any great ideas yet.   :banghead:  Worst case I could wedge it in a tight hole and use glue to keep it in place but I'm hoping for something a little more elegant and serviceable.

Any thoughts?



« Last Edit: December 19, 2020, 02:16:29 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #121 on: December 19, 2020, 10:35:00 am »
Small metal sheet :) Probably get away with a 2 inch by 2 inch or something.  If you have an old computer cut a piece from the side panel (As long as it is metal) Then Rout out and inset into wood, couple of small screws and should be good to go.  Or save a lot of hassle and get one of these https://www.thomann.de/gb/seetronic_se8fdyh_61_b_ns_rj45.htm



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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #122 on: December 19, 2020, 11:50:51 am »
Anyone have any idea how I might go about mounting this network pass thru jack in wood paneling?
As Drnick suggests, you can use a piece of sheet metal or you can 3d print something similar to an arcade button-hole plug, but larger and with the three mount holes.

Mounting hole pattern.  (click for full-size)


I bought this from one of the arcade shops (forget which one)
Probably Focus Attack.
https://focusattack.com/neutrik-ne8fdp-rj45-feed-through-black/

Here's a video showing how to mount this feedthru on a plastic panel. (2:15 - 5:25)




Scott

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #123 on: December 20, 2020, 08:23:37 am »
In my Magneto cab I mounted multiple Ethernet/USB/HMDI Neutrik passthroughs in 12mm (1/2") MDF.
Just drill a proper sized hole, and predrill for the two screws. As there is not a lot of clearance between these screws and the hole, you need to be precise/careful.
Anyway, I would suggest to try it out on a piece of scrap first.



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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #124 on: December 20, 2020, 10:21:34 pm »
I think that I am going to try a modular furniture faceplate. They are used for adding ports on desks. I don't have one in hand yet but as far as I understand, you just snap them into your cutout and attach your keystones. I thnk I am going with just hdmi and rj45 for any future updates.

https://www.amazon.com/Leviton-49910-SE2-QuickPort-Furniture-Faceplate/dp/B002FYOL2M/
« Last Edit: December 20, 2020, 11:12:41 pm by PL1 »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #125 on: December 21, 2020, 01:03:09 am »
Thanks for all the ideas and quick feedback!  As edekoning pointed out, he successfully mounted it in 1/2" mdf on his Magneto build, so this should be possible.  Upon closer examination of the part, I'm now wondering what the purpose of the PUSH metal tab / button really is on this pass thru.  As far as I can tell it doesn't do anything with the little plastic tabs on the cat 5 cable so if I don't need to worry about using the push tab I can mount it deeper in about a 1/4 or slightly thicker piece of ply and be fine.  If needed I can find some slightly longer screws so it threads enough into the base.  Unless I find critical purpose to the push tab I should be good.

I'm really hoping to make some massive progress this week before Christmas is here.  The weather looks decent all week.  I did a bunch more detail work in 3d leading up to this week that should help me too.  I still have a few things to figure out but nothing that should keep me from getting this thing upright.  I now have WAY too many hex bolts and threaded inserts of different sizes because I was originally planning on using a lot thicker framing and 3/4" ply everywhere.  Those plans changed over the past year or so, and uh... I guess maybe that confused me. ;D  It could easily have been me misreading something too but either way I ordered 100 bolts that were too long (1 1/2" instead of 1 1/4").  I just got the correct size bolts in today.  On the plus side I was able to find some small M5 hex bolts and threaded inserts that should be perfect for all my smaller service panel areas inside the cabinet and in my gun holster designs.  :)  I also picked up a gallon of satin black paint and Kilz #2 dark primer for all the non laminated surfaces.  Wish me luck...







« Last Edit: December 21, 2020, 03:27:19 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #126 on: December 25, 2020, 03:42:32 pm »
Merry Christmas everyone!   :cheers:

My Uncle in law got me a really cool ornament this year that I thought everyone would get a kick out of.



It lights up the screen and marquee and plays a bunch of sounds from the game when you push the start button on the CP.

Turns out there's only a couple different collectable cabinets out there so far.   I might have to collect em all. :)


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #127 on: December 29, 2020, 10:22:14 pm »
Time for an end of year update!

I can't believe how this past year flew by while at same time dragging on as if trapped in an endless loop of covid hell.  Another words no where near as productive as I had hoped. That said, I have managed to make some good progress in the past few weeks.  If I had maybe another day or so, I think I would have met my goal of having this thing standing up, but between Christmas and running into new challenges and required design changes, here we are.

I've ordered new parts in the last couple weeks, I've built a number of things in 3d, revised designs, and done a fair amount of wood working and assembly.  Let's start from the top...

I hadn't really fully fleshed out the back design yet to full detail.  I needed to figure out how I was going to mount my power inlet, momentary power switch, and (eventually) a network cable pass thru.  I also decided to play around with the visual style of the back a little bit.

Here's the power inlet area.  I decided to recess them so that it's less obvious and hides the cable end a bit more.  It should also be more versatile for maintenance because if the part or the wood it's mounted too ever has an issue, those are easier to replace than the full back panel.



Here you can see how it vertically mounts to the large board I have across the back of the base.



I also experimented a bit with an accent edge color for all my vents and inset areas on the back.  From straight on everything is black, but the more you angle your view the more you see edge color.  This would match the blue T-Molding I plan on using.  Thought this might add an interesting special touch.



Here you see the full back arrangement straight on, so it's all black.  I wanted to make sure I had plenty of vents to keep a good airflow going through the cabinet to not require any fans.  I also wanted to make sure you can't see into the cabinet, so each vent has a 3/4" spacer behind it with a piece of hardboard attached, so it's impossible to see in from any angle while still promoting good airflow.



Lastly, here's some of the new details worked out for the main electrical wall.  I plan on covering all the connection points with hardboard to keep young hands away and still need to design a cover for the back area of the mounted power supply.  I will probably be good with a standard outlet box to cover the back of the main power inlet.



On the right side of the above pic you can see the inner details of the inset side design I added to the front.  There's a long thin strip of hardboard over it in the back to cover the long channel of lights you will see in the front.  I also am playing around with turn locks that I think I may go with that keep the main lower front cabinet door closed.  You can access it through the coin door with the key.  That keeps the front looking more like a traditional arcade with no extra handles and gives me a way to seal it up if I don't want people accessing the inside.  I'm also toying around with a slide out coin catch drawer kinda similar to what Arroyo had in his designs.  Still working out details for that.  I also doubled up most of the wood on the front cabinet area to make it almost 1 inch thick just to reinforce the door areas and some otherwise rather thin long strips (1.5x30) that felt too flimsy and bowed to me if left at only 1/2 inch thick.



Now as far as wood working and assembly goes, I started by reviewing the base.  Turns out there were a few mistakes I needed to correct before I could move on.  The first was on the large board across the back.  I had intended there to be a nice tight joint where long cleets from the side panels would sit into this board.  I clearly was not careful enough on this section because my measurement was off and the cuts were kinda sloppy from the jigsaw.  Pretty sure I let my boys help with some of these cuts...so I'll just blame it on that. ;)  Either way, the holes on both sides needed shifting, so I broke out the chisel set I got a while back and did what I could to widen them out.  It's not that pretty, and is too wide now due to how it was originally cut, but it should be corrected and still has board in front on either side.  If I care enough I might try to pretty it up somehow later on with some covering.

Next up I took my time and carefully mapped out the bottom 4 holes for threaded inserts in my side panels.  These are meant to connect to the base.





These came out ok.  The only major setback was that I couldn't get the inserts to thread in enough to be completely flush with the board.  Not a big deal though because they compress into the pine boards on the base and become flush.  The first side I tested came out great.  Everything actually lined up well and with some subtle adjusting I was able to get the side to stick below the base by exactly 1/16th.  Then I went to test out the other side, and trouble struck hard.



I can't explain this misstep at all.  Clearly I have a line marked where the center of the holes SHOULD be....but this is no where near.  I thought maybe I marked the other side and flipped the board wrong when I attached it, but in looking back at my design, it was suppose to centered, so it wouldn't have made a difference.  Either way, I now had a problem to solve.  Since this was for a part never seen and I didn't want to attempt to rip off that piece of the base and lose a bunch of time redoing it, I decided to try altering the holes manually with a free hand drill approach.



Turning the small hole into a capsule shape wasn't too tough and that would get it where it needed to be.  The harder part was lowering the large inset circle on the other side that the washer and bolt rest on at a specific depth.



This wasn't pretty but through a bunch of side drilling / cutting with different bits I was able to get it just wide enough without messing up the depth much.  Finally I tried assembling it again and was able to get it in the correct position.



The next part is a ton of manual plotting.  This took a lot longer than I had hoped, but it's imperative that everything be as accurate as possible...especially with threaded inserts.  In retrospect I think I would approach this process different next time.  Given the shear number of things to position correctly and total number of inserts, it might be worth printing out a large black and white print and using that to align all the holes quickly.  A step further would be to do this on a piece of hardboard.  Then you would have a nice template to get perfect results on the actual wood you intend on using, and it makes it easier to reproduce the whole cabinet in the future if that's your goal.  Anyway.... in this process I discovered a few mistakes with the sides that I needed to adjust my designs to and roll with.

The first thing with the inserts was plotting out the main side cleats that run up the back of the side panels.  These hold on all of the back, add stability, and hopefully give the side panel a little more protection against warping.  When drilling these and putting in inserts, I discovered it was best if I clamped several boards together on all sides to help keep it from accidently splitting during the process.  This also provided a wider area to rest my drill guide on.






The screws are quick temporary holders while gluing on the side cleats.  I may leave them in or I might just pull em out and fill the holes.

This next section is all the fun and pain I've run into dealing with threaded inserts and accuracy. :)

First a little tip I learned from bperkins.  I used a standard toilet bowl wax ring and lightly rolled the insert on it prior to insertion.  It turns out a little bit goes a long ways, and it definitely helps it go in faster and easier.  It's even easy to remove and reinsert again if needed. ;)



It turns out there's a lot more to these than meets the eye.  Getting them to be the exact depth and perfectly straight is no easy task.  First I measured out where my fully inserted drill bit hit the ground surface I'm drilling into and mark that with the stopper on my drill guide.  Then I use a tiny measuring stick with mm on it and measure down from that point to the depth I need.  In this case I'm using 15mm 1/4-20 inserts.  On the first side panel, I got lucky and apparently went just deep enough to not run into an upcoming issue.  On the second side panel though, I quickly noticed that each insert I added was also adding a noticeable bulge on the other side of the panel.   The real breaking point was when I got to this section by the corner where the CP rests.



This is the repair shot.  It ended up pulling the plywood apart!  The crack wasn't very wide so I tried putting wood glue on some paper and was able to slide it in and try to wipe as much glue in there as possible, and then clamped it over night.  At that point I made the decision that something was clearly wrong and I needed to figure out how to fix all these bulges, so I pulled out all the inserts on the panel.


Here you can see the regular depth required of an insert sitting against 3/4" ply.



There's only about 1/8th left which happens to be the final bottom ply and perhaps a thin veneer coating.  This really doesn't leave much room for error, but it also doesn't explain the bulging and split wood just yet.

Next I used my scrap 3/4" ply to test more holes and try to understand what was really happening here.  With what I thought was the proper depth hole, here's the insert threaded in to sit flush.


Now you can see the resulting bulge I was talking about on the other side, along with lots of cracking between the ply layers.

Here I made it a little bit deeper of a hole first, and in a cleaner section of the wood, and again you can see the bulge and cracking.


Eventually I drilled deep enough where it started cutting thru the other side.


After putting in the insert, here's the result.



So... now we have a new set of problems.  This tiny hole shouldn't be an issue worth attempting to patch given that I'm laminating and it's the size of a pin head, but it's frustrating and if I were painting, this is not acceptable.  It's also not acceptable to be this close to the surface if I'm thinking about inserts on my CP.  I then backed it up by a hair and tested it again.




Finally.  This is more acceptable (although still way too close to the surface....any sanding and a hole would likely surface).

I might have a couple different options to help this situation out.  If I went with the next size down (10mm) threaded inserts that I got for 1/2" sections, and a shorter bolt, it would probably be fine with a shallower hole.  However, then what will I do for the 1/2" areas I need inserts on?



Turns out the drill bit selection I was using will definitely make a difference.  I caught this early on but still don't have the best possible drill bit for the situation.  Notice these 2 bits have different end points.  The left one would cut a good 1/8th away before it starts to get to the actual diameter of the bit.  The one on the right is what I used in all these examples.  Still not ideal.  What I really need is a flat ended bit so I can buy back 1/8th of depth.  After a quick search I found some steel bits that kinda look more like what I need, but I'm not sure how it will handle wood.



You also run into situations where you need to find ways to make level surfaces to drill on.  This wasn't even the worst one.  The top section had 2 holes right next to a cleat so I had to measure the thickness of the cleat plus the hole depth and get it just right where millimeters count.

After I found the depth that didn't make a hole all the way thru, I went back over every hole on the panel and drilled each one more time.  That was just enough and took out all the bulging, and left no holes (although it's still mighty thin).



So here we have 2 completed side panels with all the inserts in place.  There are quite a few...72 in all.  This is as far as I was able to get.  At this point I probably won't be able to get back to the project until the new year.  This feels like a lot of the complex parts though.  A lot of the remaining pieces are rectangles and attaching cleats to those with drill holes for the bolts to pass thru into the inserts on the side panels.  I already have all the primary panels cut to stand it up so it's really just attaching cleats.  Hand drawing all this detail out on the sides revealed some flaws in my measuring, flaws in my cutting, and even flaws in the digital design,  So it's been a back and forth process and I'm trying to roll with the punches as best I can to keep it moving forward.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #128 on: December 30, 2020, 05:08:26 pm »
Good thread and congrats on your progress!  I'm just getting started on my own 4 player system.  Learned a few things from your thread that I want to do... and a few mistakes I want to avoid after reading your trial and error.  I think I might just go with some plastic vents instead of routing parallel slots in multiple places. 

I'll definitely do a cardboard CP layout.... have it drawn out on paper right now.  Mounting everything to cardboard or even thin plywood is a good idea.  Want to "try" and get all of the buttons and joysticks in the best locations.

Looking forward to following along wither progress.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #129 on: January 03, 2021, 11:54:52 pm »
Thanks Shookie.  Its good to hear the thread actually is helping someone rather than just capturing all of my blunders for all time.    ;D. I saw the start of your thread and will be following along.  Prototyping definetly helps!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #130 on: January 14, 2021, 08:43:10 pm »
Here's a little progress update!  There's lots more detail to share on this that will come in a later post.  For now, after a lot of challenges, it finally stands!





« Last Edit: January 14, 2021, 08:56:03 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #131 on: January 16, 2021, 10:45:30 pm »
Congrats on getting her standing.  When you haven’t done any wood working it’s hard to understand what an accomplishment this is.  I know this is your first foray into the hobby so kudos for sticking with it.  Keep going, I’m curious to see where this takes you

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #132 on: January 21, 2021, 01:46:03 pm »
@Arroyo  Thanks man!  It really does inspire to get it standing and be able to focus more on adding pieces to it.  Now that you're getting back to your build I have more inspiration to look forward to as well.  :cheers:


Here's a bit of a backtrack to cover everything leading up to my last update, and beyond.

Getting this thing upright meant I needed to get a LOT of cleats in place.  Rather than do all this precision drilling outside in my cold garage, I try to setup shop in my basement whenever possible.  Here you can see I used a few existing cleats to wedge the one I'm working on into the middle with some speed clamps.  I also had some scrap MDF underneath to drill into so the back of the hole didn't blow out as I drilled.



I got pretty good at being very precise with my hole making having to create so many of these.  The downside to this is that ultimately I learned you still need a little more flexibility in some places then planned.  In a few places I needed to widen these holes by up to 1/8th or so to achieve correct alignment.  Ultimately this is the best way to have that flexibility since the insert itself isn't going anywhere.

Of course this process made a lot of sawdust with each hole, so I made sure I had my old basement vacuum next to me to suck it all up after each hole.  This kept the basement clean and maintained a happy wife.  :)



Once I had all the cleats made, I attached them all to the sides to test them out.  Since I had plotted everything on the side panels, it was really easy to see where the cross sections should align to the cleets.



After all this I was excited to start piecing stuff together and see it stand.  Here's where I made a very simple but critical mistake...



I accidentally grabbed the wrong bolts box.  Originally I ordered bolts that were too long (1.5 inches) and what I really ended up needing for most of the cab was 1.25.  For some reason I though I still needed the longer bolts to attach my base to the sides.  This was unfortunately NOT the case....  I didn't realize this was happening until I was able to flip the base to attach the other size, so it was too little too late.  I quickly removed the bolts at this point and put clamps over the damaged area to smooth it back out.  This seemed to work OK, and given that I'm laminating, I'm hoping that addition will be enough to cover these flaws and keep the hole area flat.

After this mess, I moved those 1.5" bolts to a different location to help prevent me from accidentally grabbing them again, and labeled my 1.25 bolt boxes more distinctly.

I also did more work on the back panels before I could stand it up.  It turned out that my insert placement on one side was off and instead of checking first on the real deal, I went by the computer measurements.  This was another big mistake as I ended up drilling large holes around the edges of the panels that didn't align to anything.  My hope here is that I can patch these up with wood filler, marking where the holes really should be, and then re-drill them once the filler hardens, and sand it down to match the wood.

Somehow I also made a mistake on the placement of the vents on my top panel.  Instead of redoing everything over this mistake, I decided to modify my layout and keep those vents where they were.  There also seems to be some subtle alignment issues with the panels that I still need to address where it isn't completely square.  This is why the back middle section panel is still not attached.  I went to put it on and realized it wasn't fitting properly.  I also need some gap to be able to easily remove my service panels, but I don't like that it creates obvious cracks in back.  This will be an issue to contend with in several places of the cabinet, so I need to figure something out.  Right now my idea was to either use some thick felt, or perhaps hardboard and create a lip on the inside of the panels to cover the gaps.

Moving along I also added the holes for the "handles" on the back that several machines seemed to be adding as a convenience for moving them around.  The search for these things showed there were very limited options on where you can buy them.  I also had some strange naming results as the place I ended up getting them from on eBay was calling them "handle bars".



I found some really small hex bolts on amazon that I intend on using in several places around the cab.  I had to make the hole ever so slightly bigger to fit, but it worked well and keeps a consistent look.


I also went searching for black carriage bolts at local stores and that proved to be a wild goose chase.  I went out of my way to a far Home Depot that showed it had some in stock only to find out they really didn't.  At that point I decided to just grab regular bolts and spray paint them.



I will likely hit them with another coat to really get the edges better, but considering my coin door has wear and tear in places, this should blend right in.  My main concern is if it ends up scratching off easily.  Hopefully not... my only alternative seems to be ordering online in much higher quantities.

Along the way of working on stuff I started getting more familiar with the router and some techniques to help get perfectly straight edges.



Here I'm using the factory straight edges on each of the hardboard templates I had made to form the edges of the rectangle I wanted to cut out for the power inlet on the back panel.  With a flush trim bit this was dirt simple with the double stick tape and resulted in the rounded edge corner I was after to tie in with the capsule shaped vent holes.  Once I got comfortable with this I started using the router to make perfectly straight cuts along the edges of every board I was making.  This is time consuming to setup, but the end result is perfect.  I bought a few boards and even some cheap floor tiles to act as quick templates I can setup and use for faster setup and better edges.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 02:01:18 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #133 on: January 21, 2021, 01:51:14 pm »
Next up I decided to take on the light box that holds the marquee up top.  I went out and bought some tin duct repair tape to line the inside to help bounce the light around.   I was hoping to find something even more reflective as this seems to be no better than aluminum wrap you would use in the kitchen.  For now I'm hoping it's sufficient and actually helps, as I plan on using it in several places on the cabinet to help diffuse the lighting.

My light box design required a few cuts with the router beyond just making nice straight edges. 



First I lined up where I needed to make my cut, which when finished will basically be a rabbet joint.  This channel is needed to make a space for my black metal corner molding pieces that hold the marquee in place.  It's only about 1/16th tall and I think roughly 3/4" deep.  I started by testing the depth of the router on some scrap wood.  I like this method vs just relying on a measurement alone.  It avoids unwelcome surprises!



Next I simply ran the router along my fence (just a factory cut board with a perfect edge) and made the start of the channel.  Since I'm using 1/2" bits, I then needed to move the board closer to the fence to finish the channel.



Just for fun once the cut was complete I then measured to verify my depth was correct again.



I then had to make another channel on the opposite side of the board to create the groove that will hold the plexi glass / marquee once the metal corner molding is attached.  This was a 3/16" square cut if memory serves.  Here you can see the end result with the finished edge for the bottom piece of the light box.



The top panel has a similar channeling but I opted not to channel out the top where the metal sits just to save a little time.  I think I'm OK with a subtle lip facing backwards on the top of the cabinet, and the laminate will end up adding height so that lip will be something like 1/32".  If when I get to that point I change my mind, it shouldn't be hard to route it out and make it flush.

Here it is all assembled on the cabinet.



Another cool thing was that my parents were visiting for the first time in about a year.  I was able to convince my dad to make a few cuts with the router.  He wasn't willing to try anything that wasn't a guided cut.  Still, now I can truly say he helped in building this cabinet.  :)  He used to make a lot of things when I was growing up, including building a giant workshop / shed in our back yard, and making me a massive tree house with a giant staircase.  He definitely has woodworking skills, but it's been so long he's forgotten a lot too.  He said he's never tried doing something this precise before.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 02:45:52 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #134 on: January 21, 2021, 01:52:39 pm »
One new thing I had to get right to complete this was how to make precise angle cuts.  I'll have a bunch more of these all over the cab, especially in the CP side walls, so it's important I figure it out.  I also don't have a miter saw so I need a solution with the skill saw I have.  The other problem I ran into is that for whatever reason, I just can't get the protractor tool in 3d Studio Max to work correctly.  After spending way too much time wrestling with it, I opted to find these angles another way.  What I ended up doing was taking measurements of the 2 angled edges on the board, and the depth of the board.  Then I carefully measured that out and drew it on some scrap wood.

I then extended the angled line so I could make a nice wedge block from the wood.



I used the router to make the cut along the line so it would be as perfectly straight as possible.  I also needed to make sure I had a factory edge to square it up against on my scrap wood.



This created a nice jig that I can set right up against the bottom of the saw and move the angle of the blade until it rests perfectly against it.



I never did figure out what the exact degree was for this cut, but it wasn't anything that was easily set on the saw.  Maybe there's a better way to figure this out or force more standard angle cuts to be used, but this is where I landed.

Next I aligned the saw on the board I was cutting to put the top of the blade right on my cut line.  I then marked where the edge of the saw base / sled was at and made a fence for it to follow.  I measured and made sure both ends aligned perfectly.  I also noted that different angle cuts will have different distances to the fence.  I'm guessing this is just because of where the pivot point is on my saw.



After setting the saw against the fence, I did a short cut in to double check things looked ok before ruining my entire board.  All checked out, so away I went.



The result is a perfect match to the angle I needed.  This particular angle cut goes on the top back panel for the lightbox that will meet up with another angled panel with vents.  This was the panel I first tried making my vents on and messed up, so I still need to remake it.  This time, I'm going to do the angle cuts FIRST and make sure everything fits properly before I do the detailed vent cuts.  At least now with my templates, the vents come out consistent.

The next angle cut was a little more standard at 45 degrees.  My speaker panel needs these to line up correctly.  So again I used the same technique but didn't bother with a jig since the saw has a 45 degree line on it.



This panel required something a little more tricky beyond the 45 angle cuts though.  This next part didn't turn out quite the way I had hoped, so I will be revisiting it at a later point to try to fix it.  The bottom section of my speaker panel needs a specific angle cut in it at a specific depth to serve as the top notch to hold my bezel in place.  I wanted to make it serviceable and not have any visible screws.  The idea is that by opening the control panel top, it allows the bezel to slide out if desired.  With the control panel shut it can't move.  This way I can clean the inside of the glass on the bezel and / or the TV when needed.  I remembered reading older posts a long time ago where people had complained that they didn't make their bezel easily removed so cleaning was an issue.

Anyway, my idea for this channel kind of worked but had some problems to address.



I used the same method to find the angle and create a jig to go against the saw blade.  Then I made the first cut.  This was the first mistake.  I should have done this channel before making the edge 45 cuts.  Then maybe it would have faired a little better with more support?  As you can see, the top edge chipped away in several places along the cut.  This screws up the tiny channel to hold the bezel.  At least it's on the back side that isn't seen, so now I'm left with coming up with a way to fix it.  My current thought is to cut a strip of hardboard and glue it along the 45 edge to extend it up to the correct height.  That will at least create a tiny solid edge the bezel can rest against.  If anyone has better ideas, I'm always open to input!

Then I continued along making the same angle cut but at the other end.



This part seemed easy enough.  Then I would just offset my fence in 1/8th increments to remove the middle.  This part didn't work out as smoothly as I had hoped though.  Somehow I got off in a few places.  The top cut near the speaker hole edge now has a lumpy break in it that I need to fix.  Fortunately I caught it early on instead of going over the entire board.  I think I must have lifted the saw a little to make this happen.   



I cleaned up the channel with a chisel.  This worked fairly well and I wonder if I would have been better off just making a single cut down the middle and chiseling out the channel from there.  I am also debating taking a router to it given that it's exactly 1/4" wide.  I can't get the angles, but I can clean out the center area perfectly that way.  I'm hoping some wood filler will rebuild that upper edge and with the laminate over the top it will look fine.

Here's the speaker panel mounted.


All these cleat connections with threaded inserts add time to the process as well.  For each one I have to carefully map where it goes on the board it holds.  For this process,  rather than relying on the computer measurements, I'm using the real cabinet, holding the piece up where it should go, and making pencil marks to align the cleats.  This way I account for any mistakes I may have made along the way that would impact alignment.  Again I also find that I'm having to go back and adjust the holes on the cleats slightly to buy maybe 1/16th wiggle room to get things sitting exactly where they should be.  This is why having washers with these bolts is key to allow you some flexibility for adjustment.  I then have to glue and clamp them on and wait 24 hours before stressing the joint any based on everything I've read.  These are just weak butt joints, so I don't really want to risk them becoming any weaker by shortcutting.

As I go I'm trying to build out the front as much as possible.  Next areas of focus are below the CP, which has a ton of complexity.  I need to build the drawer which is probably my next piece, and then move on to the coin door, larger cabinet door, and side light panels.  I've already run into challenges with the front cabinet because of the hinges.  I didn't realize just how big and deep these things are and I'm not sure they will work well with a 1/4" cabinet door.  At the same time I haven't fully figured out how to mount them correctly and what door thickness the hinges require.  Apparently this is a factor I hadn't considered in my original designs.  The cup depth on the inset euro hinges is extremely close to 1/4".  Maybe even slightly over.  Thus the hinges are kind of dictating how thick the door panel must be.  It all seems to be pushing me back to 3/4", which I was originally avoiding to lighten the cab a bit. :(  Now that all my cleats are in place, I also have to work with where those sit.  So it's a bit of a design conundrum.  I'm not sure if I can only add depth to the door where the cup hole goes and still have it open correctly, or what to do yet...  Given my design I figured I needed inset face frame hinges, so that's what I have.  Given the weight of the door with the coin door attached and coin box full of coins, I need at least 3 hinges.  I have 4 so we're good there.  I've been digging through stuff on the Blum hinge site and looking at a few videos but so far no specific answers   :dunno 

Until I figure out the hinges, I'm stuck from moving forward on the front.  I can move on the drawer though, so I'll probably do that in the mean time.  I'm also nervous about the light panels because they are all glued to the front section.  If I mess that up it will be difficult to remove it and start again.  So I will probably have to cut those and get them perfect before I can actually complete the front section.  I was aiming for the light panels (plastic) being flush with the wood, so that means precision cutting the holes and the plexi that goes in them.  Not sure how I'm gonna do that yet...
« Last Edit: January 21, 2021, 01:58:07 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #135 on: January 26, 2021, 12:39:27 pm »
Got a smaller update today.  A while back I got a tip from someone about drawer slides that were push to open.  I decided to order some off amazon as this seemed like the best solution to avoid having handles on the front of the cabinet.

Here's what I ended up getting.  32 bucks at the time.


Lately I've been relying more and more on my router to finish up edges and get them as flawless and 90 degrees as possible.  The trade off is it takes a lot of setup time for every cut.  I ruff cut everything out with the jig saw very quickly and that left a 16th or so of ruff edge on every cut to clean up with the router.



Here you can see I've got some of the drawer sides cut and am lining them up to create the rabbet joints to hold this all together.  I'm using double sided tape on both the piece I want to cut and on the straight edge piece the router will trace with the flush trim bit.



This is the result after adjusting my router depth with some scrap and making sure it was exactly 3/16 deep.



After all pieces were cut, I laid them out to check fittings.  Unfortunately here I found a mistake.  One of these pieces is not like the other....
Can you find it?  Second from the left.  Somehow I was off by almost 2/8ths at the top end, so it's not even close to square.  Guess I have to remake this in the morning.... doh!



Here's all the pieces with the mistake corrected, and a shot of the bottom of the drawer.


Next I hand fit each one and made sure they aligned properly.  For the most part it came together fairly well.  I did some sanding on a few joints to really get it flush.  I think part of my issue at this step was that the wood I was using has some decent warp / bow to it, and that was making this process a lot harder than it should be.  I was hoping that when it was all tightly together that would take most of the warp out.

Next up I had to figure out a way to assemble the box frame.  This was the most difficult part of everything and I quickly learned I suck at driving tiny nails in straight.



  I needed something to hold it together though since I don't have clamps big enough to get around the drawer on all sides to rely on glue alone.  I also didn't want to have to go buy another tool just for this one drawer.  The trade off however was that I've got some flaws now with alignment on the drawer due to the nails not being straight.  In a couple areas the nails broke through the sides.  I'm attempting to hide this / fix it by bashing the nail in sideways with the hammer more and relying on the drawer face board to cover it up.  I'd like to learn an easier way to assemble this reliably, but short of something like a pneumatic brad nail gun I'm not sure what else would work.  Certainly balancing the long drawer upwards like I did to hammer it in wasn't a great position.  I've seen some videos of guys laying it out on a table and using a nail gun to quickly assemble it.  Must be nice!  Another problem with fixing anything was that once the nail was in, I had no way of getting it back out to try to correct it.




Once I had everything fitting fairly well I added glue (a bit too much) everywhere and used my clamps as best I could to anchor things down.  I also used a heavy bucket and other odd things for additional weight on the bottom of the drawer to keep it down while gluing.

Here's where I wish I were a little more careful.  a couple of the pieces shifted slightly during the nailing process and / or there was a slight flaw in the joints. 



Either way in this photo you can see a few things.  The lower part of the front of the drawer (right side of the pic) is angled slightly, coming out about 1/16th at the bottom.  I'm now going to have to come up with a way to smooth this out before I attach the face of the drawer to it.  My current idea is to use my orbital sander to try to get it more flush.  It's not a big deal that this piece in the drawer is slightly off as long as the face of it can be corrected to line up flush with the front of the cab.

Outside of that flaw, and some bowed boards on the back face that was less important, I moved on and marked where the drawer slides should go.  This part was pretty challenging too.  As far as I can tell there's no fine tuning these things.  I get one shot to get them on in exactly the right spot.  I decided to give myself 2/8ths of space in the front for some wiggle room and to create a straight line to help line things up to. I also have some washers under the screw here as a test.  The screws are just a little too long for 1/2" ply.  Unfortunately there isn't enough clearance in the slide mechanism to use the washer without it getting stuck though.  So I ended up screwing it in without.  The screws poke through less than 1/16th on the other side.  I think this will still be OK.  I'll maybe try using a file on them if needed, but I intend on lining the interior with thin cardboard and felt that may be enough to make it a non issue.



Next up I needed to add some spacer blocks inside the cabinet for the drawer to mount to.  This was intentional so that I have gaps on either side of the cabinet walls for running wires and such.  The only down side here was that I realized after I got these in place that I needed just a tiny bit more space for the drawer.  Turns out the slides need .51" space on either side to move.  I had figured .5 with my measurements.  So next I broke out the orbital sander to attempt to thin out these blocks a little bit to make up the difference.  Turns out 80 grit eats through these pretty quick, and I also suck at keeping the sander level.  So my first block became more of a triangle wedge.  The blocks in back were too hard to hit with the sander, so I had to use a hand rasp to try to thin them down a bit.  After maybe 10 minutes or so of that, I finally got the drawer working properly.





One of the slides is stickier than the other without the drawer attached.  I may try to figure out how to make that smoother, but in general it does what it is suppose to do.  The drawer pops open with a push of about 1/8th in.  It opens up maybe 4 or so inches on it's own, which should be enough to enable grabbing the drawer front to pull it open the rest of the way.  Next steps are figuring out how to square up the front mistake and get the drawer face and outer frame lined up and as tightly positioned together as possible.  One thing I'm realizing is that all these little gaps for doors is creating potential for light leaks and seeing into the cab.  I'll need to go back once it's all assembled and try to figure out a way to prevent that.

After finishing up the drawer area I'm probably on to the lower cabinet door.  For that I'll do some tests with scrap wood first to try to help me understand exactly how it all works with the hinges.  I may end up needing to modify my designs again to accommodate the hinges.  Not sure...  They definitely aren't meant for 1/2" ply though given that the cup on the hinge is that deep.  I have some ideas on how I will achieve the light designs I want too.  As long as I can cut the laminate easily and precisely with a hobby knife I'll use that as a cover to make the exact shapes I need and eliminate having to perfectly fit cut plastic pieces into precision cut holes.

« Last Edit: January 26, 2021, 04:57:46 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #136 on: January 26, 2021, 03:47:17 pm »
Looks really good.  Very clean lines and fitting all of that together must have been a pain.  Rabbets make some nice joints.  Are you going to fill the little area between the speaker panel and the bottom of the marquee or is that just a shadow?  I can't tell.  Clever idea on cutting that angle. 

I think you can sand down your imperfections on the drawer or even shim the top slightly so the drawer sits perpendicular - no one will notice at all either way because the drawer face will cover everything.

 :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #137 on: January 26, 2021, 06:54:02 pm »
Thanks Javeryh!

Are you going to fill the little area between the speaker panel and the bottom of the marquee or is that just a shadow?  I can't tell.

It's a combination of shadow and an intentional gap.  The gap should hold the bottom aluminum L bracket for the marquee.  Both the bottom and top brackets will be glued and only the top comes off along with the panel its glued to.  When I add the laminate, I'm hoping there isn't a gap anymore.  If there is it should hopefully be less than 1/16th.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #138 on: January 28, 2021, 12:50:45 pm »
I figured I should post this 3d measurement consideration that can cause errors for accuracy.  I spoke a little on this in earlier posts but hadn't yet fully understood what was happening.  I now believe I fully understand it and can explain what traps to watch out for.

This must not be an issue in apps like sketchup or others have just been smarter about it than me to not run into this. :)

Basically 3d Studio Max will do all of its transform operations (move, scale, rotate, etc) in it's own generic units regardless what unit scale you have setup.  Or at least that's the best explanation I have at the moment.  When you create a 3d box and type in specific measurements, that part is accurate.  However if you use the arrows next to the text input to increment or decrement things, you can wind up with weird in between values that get rounded.  Similar issues arise when you're actually modeling and not just punching in numbers for everything.  If you grab a vertex and move it with the mouse, you're moving in max units.   I had never attempted to do something that translated to real world like this before so I guess my method of modeling never cared enough about this accuracy.  The only work around I've found so far is to setup a grid at increments that you want to keep everything fixed to (like 1/16th) and then snap to the grid.  That will ensure there can't be any odd in between values.  Without that approach, here's an illustration of just how quickly you can get things way off when translating to the real world.


In the below example, I have 4 boards stacked 2x2.  All report the same thickness of 7/16th, but visually you can tell right away there's a big difference.  The green boards should line up with the yellow.



If I were working in metric instead, or decimal imperial (which is just weird), this problem would have been easier to catch and understand.  Now I don't feel quite so bad that I've had to shift and correct some things in the real world. ;)


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #139 on: January 28, 2021, 01:06:02 pm »
That was an issue for me as well in Inkscape.  When I was designing my CPO I would input specific sizes for shapes and spacing but then I noticed over time when I'd go back, the program rounded the numbers and things were off by just a bit.  I worked around this by only inputting round numbers to start with so the computer wouldn't have to guess.  It was driving me crazy until I figured it out.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #140 on: January 31, 2021, 09:48:50 pm »
I wanted to post a quick update to reflect my progress this weekend.  It's amazing how much effort it can take just to produce some rectangles. :)

This weekend was also my daughters birthday.  She had a small party and it was fun to hear her as she took her friends into the basement and immediately showed them the cabinet in the corner and said "This is my arcade that my dad is building."  The excitement is brewing!  :applaud:

This weekend I focused on the lower front of the cab and this design mixed with the wood I bought calls for double pieces in many sections.  If I would have originally stayed with 3/4 inch, I think this could have been avoided.  The 1/2 inch just tends to bow too much on its own across 30 inch spans and doesn't feel strong enough to me.  That ultimately meant double the work. :(  I have plenty of detail pics in this process that I'll post another time.

Basically I plotted all this....



Then after coming up with as efficient a system as I could, I ruff cut it all out with the jigsaw and polish cut every single edge with the hand router to produce all these pieces.



I'm pretty sure this is everything I need to complete the lower front of the cabinet.  I also did some tests on scrap with my cabinet hinges and think I have a basic understanding of how to mount them correctly now. (at least I hope!).  I also learned that apparently Blum inset hinges don't naturally close at 90 degrees, so I needed to add some physical stops to my design to keep the door closed at the correct angle.

I'm now starting to glue some of it together.  That process will probably take a few days as I don't have enough clamps to cover it all.  We will see.  I may be able to use temporary screws for some of it.  Hoping to get the drawer front pieces on first and then work my way further down piece by piece so I can tightly control the seams where drawers and doors move. 

My other hesitation is where I want to put my LED light designs on the lower sides.  It's going to be really hard to work on it once I put this all in place, so I need to make some additional decisions now about how I'm going to go about it.  I'm pretty sure I'm just going to route a rectangle down the side panels and then a wider inset around them that is 1/8th deep.  That should hopefully give me plenty of thickness for the plexi that needs to sit inside of it.  I will then need to shim it and glue it in place so the plexi is perfectly flush with the wood.  Then I'm going to rely on cutting out my shape designs in the laminate to achieve the final look.  I'm hoping the laminate glue sticks well to plexi, or I may have to try super glue or some other type of adhesive.




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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #141 on: January 31, 2021, 10:03:41 pm »
I know how hard that is, you are me from 1.5 yrs ago.  I know it sounds like a lot of money but a track saw or the like will save you a TON of time on making those 90 deg cuts.  And they are more accurate. 

You are clearly committed I’m sure you will finish, which is more than a lot of folks in here. 

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #142 on: February 01, 2021, 01:43:46 pm »
I make rectangles the same way... it sucks.  I would also say to invest in a track saw but I haven't (yet) so what do I know.  You are making good progress - keep it up!   :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #143 on: February 08, 2021, 08:27:55 pm »
When you experimented with p3 and p4 controls, did you angle the joystick to the player or keep it the at the same angle as p1 and p2?

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #144 on: February 08, 2021, 09:05:48 pm »
When you experimented with p3 and p4 controls, did you angle the joystick to the player or keep it the at the same angle as p1 and p2?
Since vertexguy is a cool dude and obviously not a heathen I’m going to guess he’s not angling the sticks.  Also, if you look at his mock-up pics, the mounting screws are in the correct position for straight sticks.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #145 on: February 09, 2021, 08:40:53 am »
 Haha, thats what I figured, I'm wondering if it feels strange standing at an angle but using a joystick with a slightly different orientation. It's been a while since I've played a 4 player cab. I'm hoping to experiment with my own controls soon, just trying to get some insight. Thanks

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #146 on: February 09, 2021, 09:02:06 am »
Haha, thats what I figured, I'm wondering if it feels strange standing at an angle but using a joystick with a slightly different orientation. It's been a while since I've played a 4 player cab. I'm hoping to experiment with my own controls soon, just trying to get some insight. Thanks

The angle of your body doesn't matter at all.  The joystick should match the action on the screen.  If that were the case, you could just stand at a 45 degree angle and play Q*bert no problem, which is obviously ridiculous.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #147 on: February 09, 2021, 09:53:32 am »
Haha, thats what I figured, I'm wondering if it feels strange standing at an angle but using a joystick with a slightly different orientation. It's been a while since I've played a 4 player cab. I'm hoping to experiment with my own controls soon, just trying to get some insight. Thanks

Quick test.
If your sat at your PC mouse in hand,it doesnt matter where the monitor is, your hand will always push the mouse vertical and the cursor moves vertical.
Try it with the mouse rotated under your hand,and you get an idea of the problem.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #148 on: February 09, 2021, 10:23:27 am »
Makes sense Thanks!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #149 on: February 09, 2021, 12:48:58 pm »
@arroyo  & @javeryh Thanks guys.  I've no intention of quitting anything even if it takes a weekend to make a few rectangles.  I know there is expensive equipment that can make this work easier, but realistically that's just not in the cards for me right now.  If I end up doing a lot more outside of this arcade project, and I build a workshop in my backyard, then I might be able to make an argument for it one day. ;)

@dragon36 & @javeryh  Oh man.... I almost feel like this joystick mounting direction question is a setup for a classic war around these parts. ;)  Javeryh's observation is correct in that my current design calls for sticks oriented straight up, not angled.  Now, to be completely fair, no I haven't actually tried playing angled yet, per dragons question.  I simply mimicked playing with a game demo running.  To have a proper and thorough test, I probably will try playing angled for the experience.  I can already anticipate what will happen though, which is why they are oriented straight.  More on that in a bit.

The initial tests I did were more focused on position, orientation, screen viewing angles, distance from screen, general comfort, and distance from other players with all input movements considered.  As I noted earlier in the cardboard tests, I didn't have an easy way to actually hook things up to do play testing with that setup (other than the trackball).  I don't think I had even attempted a QD crimp yet at that point.  Now I probably have enough spare wire and possibly enough quick disconnects where I could hook up one stick and test it.  The easiest way would be to use the little portable wooden test CP I made earlier to try out a lighting idea.  I might just do that for a laugh.  I think people will benefit and learn best when they can really grasp the WHY behind it.  Here's my attempt at explaining it cleanly in a simple visual.

(Click on it to see it full size)



So hopefully this explains the why behind it Dragon36.  This also reminds me, I need to catch up on details for my thread!


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #150 on: February 09, 2021, 01:07:53 pm »
That's a great explanation.  There is a video on YouTube by MAMEFAN where he provides a walkthrough of his commercial 4P cabinet.  He goes over everything (it's 3 hours) and his one complaint/regret was that P3 and P4 sticks came installed at an angle from the manufacturer.  He demos the problem showing how his hand/joystick movement is at odds with the action on the screen.  He spent a few thousand dollars on the cabinet so you would expect for that much it would be built properly.

@vetexguy, it's probably not even worth demoing since you know what the answer is...  Now back to the project!   :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #151 on: February 09, 2021, 03:43:04 pm »
wow, very nice explanation. Thanks  :applaud:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #152 on: February 09, 2021, 04:17:26 pm »
Ok, so backtracking a bit, here's the details on what I previously did, and a few progress points.

Here was my process for ruff cutting out all the rectangle pieces mentioned previously.  After having plotted them out, and ruff cutting the large sheet into 2 smaller sections, I anchored the section down, sticking out just a bit more than half way from my table.



Then I rotate the board around 180 degrees and overlap it slightly more than half again.  This time I used another board as a top anchor to clamp down on everything.
I left maybe an inch connecting each board.  Then I started in the middle and cut one, and moved outward so the clamps would help keep things in place as I separated them.



Then we move on to the lengthy process of making all the ruff cut edges perfectly 90 degrees and perfectly straight.  Despite having some decent results with the track I bought for my skill saw earlier, there were still some noted issues
and I noted that after having the saw sit around for weeks and then attempting to use it again, things were getting further out of alignment.  This caused me to abandon attempting to use it for these kind of cuts and rely on the router.
I might try it again if there are any major cuts left.  If it worked flawlessly and was faster to setup, it probably would be a better choice than this method.

First I add double stick carpet tape to the ends and middle of the board.


Then I stick it underneath my table, lining up the pencil line perfectly with the edge of the 3/4" table factory cut board.



Important note here... to help prevent tape failure and speed up the process, I threw 3 speed clamps over the taped spots and let it sit 10+ seconds.  Friction is required to get it to stick well.  I also put pencil lines on the top of the table so I could easily see where the tape was going to remain on the table for future pieces.

Then I adjusted the bit on the router to make sure the bearing is cleanly riding my table / template board.




Then with a steady smooth run over the board with the router, we have a perfect edge.


Rinse and repeat this for every edge on the boards.  For the shorter edge, I added pieces of tape down the middle of the table and at a later point added clamps to the front to hold the front in place better due to a screw up on a complex piece.






The tape can be reused a few times if reheated with a head gun, but what I learned is that it gets risky because you don't know exactly when it will fail.



This made me sad... as it had to happen on one of the most complex pieces I made.  On the plus side I hadn't made the rabbet joint on it yet.

For a few smaller pieces I needed angle cuts.  These were too small to work with and use a power saw, so I pulled out a handy plastic cutting template and a hand saw to make these.

Sanity tip... the plastic squeaks like crazy and is annoying, so add WD-40 to the saw blade and it magically goes away!



This worked really well with clean results.


Next up I had some issues with my drawer that I needed to address.



The front didn't get aligned perfectly for some reason, and as you can see angles out by about 1/16h.  To fix this, I opted to use a hand sand block instead of the orbital sander.
I find it rather hard to use the orbital sander and get a nice flat surface without overdoing it at an angle somewhere.  With a hand block, I took long even strokes and checked things after a few.

This took maybe 5 to 10 minutes of sanding with 80 grit paper, but I got it pretty smooth and flat.



Since I was sanding I also went back over everything on the drawer to eliminate glue bumps and really get all the edges flush.

Then I moved on to the drawer face.  It took me a while to decide on a process to mount the face.  I figured I only got one shot.


I decided to do a bunch of measuring and calculated what should stick out on each side and marked it.  Then I used double stick carpet tape to temporarily hold it in place.
Then I mounted it back in my cabinet to make sure the alignment was correct before fully commiting.  Once I verified this, I marked out an even distribution of screws, and added more in the middle to help combat some of the warp between the box front and the drawer face.



Here's the result by itself.



... snd mounted back in the cabinet.



It came out pretty good.  What you can't see is that there are still some tweaks to be made.  The pieces above and below the drawer are just pressure fitted there in this pic.  The result is that they bow a little from being squished.
I also discovered that by removing just a tiny bit more off my drawer slide blocks in the back I could eliminate more of the stickyness and it improved the overall alignment of the front face.  That was just more sanding with a hand block.

Then I got antsy and raced out to make the cabinet door.  Here's where not having plans printed out in front of me caused a mistake.  Somehow in the measuring process I screwed up and I guess assumed my coin door was a square when in reality, it isn't.


I made pilot holes and cut it out with a jigsaw figuring that would be good enough for this application.  In retrospect, I needed to slow down a bit.  I can make straighter cuts than I ended up doing with the jigsaw if I'm careful, and I shouldn't have plotted the bolt holes before hand.  Because my measuring of the entire door was wrong, so are most of the bolt holes.

Next up I assembled the frame for the lower cabinet door.  This was way more complicated than desired, mainly due to wanting it to be more solid and not bending at all when you push on it.



I used a square to make sure everything was aligned proper, glued and clamped it for 24 hours, then came back to assemble.

Here you can see more of the front being assembled.  These are all just sitting in place with pressure at the moment.


Once I reached this point, I found several small things I needed to fix.  This has envolved a lot of remeasuring and sanding of areas to try to get things as perfectly aligned as possible.

For now I'm not going to completely disassemble the cabinet for a fix but I need to sand down the sides of my base a tiny bit more to buy back about 1/16th in some areas.

The door also doesn't sit 100% perfect.  There's about 1/8th of variance between the top and bottom.  I think I have most of the kinks worked out now, but in the process of screwing up the door, I also realized I screwed up the length of the main side panels that will hold my lights.
I blame my eyes on this one as its really hard to read the super small fonts in 3d studio max sometimes.  Instead of 15/16ths I wrote down 5/16ths, so that screwed up the length alignment.

Another fun thing about those messed up boards is that I noticed there are giant channels of missing plywood running through them.  I figure this will cause problems when I go to route my light channels, so maybe it's for the best that I remake them.  This is an annoying part of working with plywood.  Voids can be an issue.  Short of buying a syringe and attempting to fill it all up with wood filler, I'm not sure what else I can do to fix those.

This week is crazy cold as well so it's keeping me out of the garage.  Hoping to sneak in some time to get these parts remade though.
« Last Edit: November 28, 2022, 04:25:54 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #153 on: February 10, 2021, 01:15:18 am »
vertexguy, don't listen to anyone when it comes to the angle direction of joystick #3 and #4.  There are a loud few here that have made it their agenda to convince you their way is right.

My advice?  Use UltraStik 360 joysticks and the problem is solved permanently because you can change the "up" orientation to anything you want.   On the fly.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #154 on: February 10, 2021, 09:07:11 am »
Cab is coming along nicely.  I also use double sided tape to route straight lines but I buy the cheap stuff so one use only.  Your drawer looks tight.  How are you going to open it?  If there is a way to press in to release it that would be cool - this way no hardware on the drawer face.

It's also funny you cut a rectangle for your coin door - I did the exact same thing the first time I cut a hole for one.  I couldn't save the panel, unfrtunately so I cut a new one.  You only make that mistake once!

Are you painting soon?  It's also super cold by me and I have so much snow on the ground I can't even get to my garage where my tools are.   :angry:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #155 on: February 11, 2021, 05:23:49 pm »
Your drawer looks tight.  How are you going to open it?  If there is a way to press in to release it that would be cool - this way no hardware on the drawer face.

Yep.  It's using a push to open drawer slide.  Takes about 1/8th push inward to release it.  The cabinet door will not have any handles either.  Per MikeA's thought, that will open from opening the coin door and turning latches hidden on the inside.  That gives me the option of keeping it unlocked where the spring loaded door hinges alone will probably hold it shut fairly well, while grabbing part of the coin door and pulling should open it.  I can also lock it from the inside if I don't want anyone in there.


@Katana Man  Thanks, but did you miss what I just posted above your comment?  I guess I'd like to hear your counter argument to the explanation / rationale I posted.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #156 on: February 11, 2021, 06:04:50 pm »
@Katana Man  Thanks, but did you miss what I just posted above your comment?  I guess I'd like to hear your counter argument to the explanation / rationale I posted.

My point is, you don't have to worry if you get an Ultra 360 joystick for player #3 and #4.  Plenty of time to decide later your default "up" direction and additionally, you can set up options to switch on the fly if someone has a different preference than your default. The loud few here on this forum that have an agenda to convince you ad nauseam that if you don't do it their way, that it's a sin, are wrong to push so hard for a few reasons.  Many times they don't ask how close the monitor is (if someone is building a pedestal for example), they have zero tolerance for personal preference, and they don't seem to know that the Ultra 360 solves the issue. Permanently.

In my experience, when configuring it straight (like your option #2), I've noticed that players 3 and 4 will turn their bodies more (towards player #1 and #2) making for less room between the players. So on my 4 player machines, my default "up" direction is angled which gives people more room, but I can easily change the direction on the fly for any game so I don't have to worry.  Oddly, I think the human mind adapts to the angled setup easier than the straight setup. I can't explain why so many people shift their bodies with the straight setup.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #157 on: February 11, 2021, 07:28:01 pm »
My point is, you don't have to worry if you get an Ultra 360 joystick for player #3 and #4.  Plenty of time to decide later your default "up" direction and additionally, you can set up options to switch on the fly if someone has a different preference than your default. The loud few here on this forum that have an agenda to convince you ad nauseam that if you don't do it their way, that it's a sin, are wrong to push so hard for a few reasons.  Many times they don't ask how close the monitor is (if someone is building a pedestal for example), they have zero tolerance for personal preference, and they don't seem to know that the Ultra 360 solves the issue. Permanently.

In my experience, when configuring it straight (like your option #2), I've noticed that players 3 and 4 will turn their bodies more (towards player #1 and #2) making for less room between the players. So on my 4 player machines, my default "up" direction is angled which gives people more room, but I can easily change the direction on the fly for any game so I don't have to worry.  Oddly, I think the human mind adapts to the angled setup easier than the straight setup. I can't explain why so many people shift their bodies with the straight setup.

I'm not going to knock the U360 - I have a couple of them and they are fine joysticks.  They feel slightly off even with a restrictor plate installed (to me).  No tactile feel at all.  It is certainly a viable solution though.  But angling the joysticks is incorrect - it's not an "agenda", which is ridiculous.  Everyone here is trying to help and drawing on years and years of experience in order to provide advice.  I don't care at all if vertexguy or anyone else installs their joysticks at a 90 degree angle or a 24.8 degree angle or upside-down.  But if he wants it to be generally playable for guests and family members, etc. then up should be towards the screen.  There are tons of examples in this thread alone explaining why.  I'm sure people can get used to all sorts of configurations but that's the right way to do it.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #158 on: February 11, 2021, 07:58:54 pm »
With 3D printing services so readily available, it's easy to have custom restrictor plates made for the U360. I made some custom ones for myself.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #159 on: February 28, 2021, 10:15:28 pm »
It's been a while and there are a number of small things I can update on, but I've hit a snag with my front cabinet door design and wanted to get the communities thoughts.   :banghead:

First the good news.  I rebuilt my cabinet door after my first failed attempt due to a bad measurement on the coin door.  It now fits pressure tight and the door has all of its framing in the back, which was mostly needed due to the required depth of the cups on the blum hinges I bought, but it also adds a little more stability and will hopefully help combat any sag over time.

The door weighs in at about 14 pounds with the coin door on.  I figure once I add the quarter box and plan for around 20 bucks in quarters, it will push me over 15 pounds.  That would put it at or over the recommended weight for 2 hinges by the documentation, so I upped it to 3. (I bought 4)




Now the bad news.  After I got the hinges installed and went to put on the door, I realized my design had a flaw in it. 

I was struggling to characterize the type of hinge I would need for this.  I think my door is a mix of an inset and an overlay.  I ultimately went with inset euro hinges.  The problem is that there isn't enough room for the lower hinge to allow the door to open fully.  I haven't yet added the bottom cleets to anchor the door frame down to the base, so you can really see how much room is needed in these pics.





So far the options I can think of are:

1. I cut off the bottom of the door just above the base so the entire door becomes "inset" and thus should allow enough room to open properly.  I then add back the bottom door piece to the lower front of the base.
2. I cut about a 1/2 inch notch into the base below the lower hinge so the door has the room it needs to turn into the base area and fully open.
3. Burn the entire thing to the ground and start over by purchasing a 1up arcade and calling it good. ;)

I've messed with the adjustments on the hinges but don't think that's part of the answer for this.  Even if I push the door out away from the cab with the hinge adjustments, it can't go far enough out, and it isn't the desired look as it would then be extruded instead of flush with the frame.

Any suggestions on how best to fix it?  :dizzy:
« Last Edit: March 01, 2021, 12:55:42 pm by vertexguy »

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The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #160 on: March 01, 2021, 07:20:10 am »
I built a cabinet years ago with the coin door swinging open like you are doing and it was so hard to get the door just right that I decided to not try it again.  Hinge adjustments didn’t help or if they did then they created gaps where I didn’t want a gap. 

Anyway, I actually thought a lot how to solve this because it was annoying me and I think if I had to do it over I would make the entire front panel a large drawer face.  So I’d have a panel on the bottom to put the PC on attached to the base of the coin door panel with a frame made out of 1.5”x.75” wood strips and FOUR sets of soft close drawer hardware (two on the top and two on the bottom) so the entire thing could slide forward.  Easier to get to the PC, front panel rock solid and no loose wiring. 

Think of it like a cube made out of the wood strips with the coin door panel attached to the front that slides in and out of your cabinet on the hinges.  The cube has no sides, back or top but has a bottom to put the PC on and the front is your coin door panel.  You can reinforce as needed with plywood so the drawer slides have a place to sit.  Put a magnetic catch on the front that you have to press in to make it pop out.

Also, add a thin frame around the opening or at least on the sides so that when the “drawer” is closed there are no gaps on either side (the face of the drawer would close up against the frame).

I hope I’m making sense.


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« Last Edit: March 01, 2021, 07:25:01 am by javeryh »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #161 on: March 03, 2021, 12:54:38 am »
@javery Thanks for the ideas.  :cheers:  I think I follow what you are saying but that's a bit of a large departure from where I'm currently heading with the design. ;) 
Now if I chose my 3rd option to torch it, then I guess it's a possibility.   :blowup:

No other suggestions came in to consider so I ended up going with option 1 and just removing the lower overhang from the door.



Now it works like it's suppose to as a full inset.  I also added on the locks to the back side to help counter act the warp.  It's frustrating but I'm going to have to try using an iron on it with a damp towel and see if I can counter act the warp once I'm ready to laminate.  Given the double wood layers I'm not sure how well it will work.

I think I can make the gaps mostly disappear this way when it's closed.  The gaps all need adjustment yet and change a bit when I move the side frame boards into their proper resting place.  I'm optimistic I can get a decent even gap around all of it.  It's still a bit less than 1/8th of a gap by the hinge which I'm not crazy about but the door is too thick to make the reveal gap any smaller.  I plan on messing around with weather stripping to try to plug up all the gaps around the cabinet in general.  Hoping that does the trick and it won't be so obvious when the cabinet is laminated and has graphics applied.

Next up I need to commit to this lower half design and add another set of threaded inserts to anchor it to the base.  To fix the missing wood panel below the door, once I have everything anchored down and adjusted for optimal gaps, I'll measure that section and cut a new piece that either attaches directly to the base with glue, or I may attempt a half lap joint to connect it to the door frame.  Then I gotta attempt my side lighting panel designs,  Those will be a challenge. Gotta do some tests with plastics and possibly order some too.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2021, 01:07:24 am by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #162 on: March 03, 2021, 05:24:35 pm »
Im sorry its a bit late to be chiming in on your problem,but did you research these sort of surface mount hinges?



You get a sort of slide out of the door before the swing occurs.Maybe could create the clearance from the frame you needed at the bottom.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #163 on: March 05, 2021, 07:49:37 am »
I can tell you are learning a lot on the wood working front from both your write up and seeing your results.  Edges are looking cleaner and pieces are fitting together tighter.  Keep going.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #164 on: March 09, 2021, 04:09:35 pm »
@Lomoverde Thanks for the suggestion.  This is a cool hinge style I didn't know existed.  Looks a bit bigger than euro hinges but it's nice that it doesn't require a cup hole drilled.  Not sure this would have really made much difference with my door style though.  I kinda merged 2 styles and now understand why that didn't work so well.

@Arroyo  :cheers: Thanks bro.  Your build continues to inspire, and that clock is tickin to finish it off ;)


OK so time for a catch up post with a ton of pics.  February here had some pretty cold dips, getting down to around negative 9 a few days.  As such I wasn't willing to try getting much done in my garage so I had to come up with ways to make progress indoors.

This is one advantage to me building this portable and piece by piece in my house.  All the fine detail work and cleanup I can do in the comfort of my basement.

So going back in time a ways, when I first threw on the back panels, there were some alignment issues with the holes I made verses where the threaded inserts were. I basically butchered some holes more than others trying to guess at how to adjust them.  This was also before I bought a round rasp which is much easier to make precise adjustments with than a power drill.

I went out and got a bunch of DAP plastic wood filler for these fixes and turned problems like this:


... turned into putty blobs like this with a nice smooth hole.  I used a drill bit shank to press the hole shapes lightly and held it up against the inserts they needed to align to so the holes would be pretty precise without needing to do a bunch of measuring and redrilling.




Then after some light sanding with 220, it's all better!


Each panel has vents and all of them had issues from the way I made them.  This part ended up being WAY more work than I imagined.  While I never tried it, the only major difference in how I was going about it verses others I've seen on the forum was that I wasn't doing multiple light passes, and I don't have a plunge router to start the holes.
However, I'm now thinking that even though it would have taken a lot longer to adjust the router and do multiple passes with a short bit, it would have been less time and headache than all the sanding and multiple applications of wood filler required.

So we started with small holes made primarily from getting the router started in the hole.


Filled them up and waited a day.


Then sanded them down with sandpaper wrapped around a drill bit shank that I could barely fit in the slots.



The absolute worst of it came when I remade my top panel cover that I screwed up originally.  I hurried and forgot to use a backer board when drilling all my pilot holes.  That added a lot of tear out on the back.
However the worst was a stupid void in the wood that took out a big section in between 2 vent slots.



This one required multiple passes with wood filler but I managed to get it back up to snuff.

Prior to me cutting these final slots, I did learn a bit from my past mistakes and first cut the basic top panel piece with no other details.
Then I took that to the cabinet and made sure it fit proper.  After that I did angle cuts on both sides.  I used the before mentioned method to match the angle on one side that wasn't anything standard (like 19 degrees).  The other was a 45.

Once I made those cuts, I took it back to the cabinet and again made sure everything aligned properly first.  After a bit of sanding and wiggling, I got a pretty good seam.





The last step on those was to mark exactly where the cleets needed to attach once the panel was aligned.  Doing it this way helped insure a proper fit once they were glued on.


Next up I wanted to fix the back middle panel.  This wasn't sitting quite right and again had the challenge of lining up the cleets once I got it where it needed to be.
This panel also will have a hole cut in it with the jig saw and router that will reveal the power button and network jack.  I tried using some small ceramic floor tiles I picked up for less than a buck a piece as small router template edges, and it worked OK, but the double sided tape didn't stick to the surface as well, and they were a bit too easy to accidently crack.




Here's everything re-assembled.  Finally a completed back side and top!  These 12 hex screws for the service panels in the back are the only screws you will see anywhere outside on the cabinet.  If I need to access the marquee area for some reason, simply removing the top panel provides access to 2 more internal screws to easily pop off the top panel over the marquee, or the speaker area.  That's a benefit to using threaded inserts.



I still need to do some work on the base area to smooth it out more and decide if I'm going to try laminating that section or just paint it.


Then I revisited my drawer.  It was having issues rubbing against the bottom frame because of how I built it.  Turns out it's probably a good idea to always leave a gap between the drawer face and the actual drawer bottom.

Even though I could sand it some and get it to not rub, because the drawer isn't sitting absolutely perfect, it can rub in various spots.  Then if you add weight into the drawer, that will cause the bottom to bow ever so slightly and rub more.

Here I added I think 3/16ths of a lip to the bottom.  It's a good thing I decided to use screws to hold on the drawer face!



This adjustment required me to move the slides.  I also swapped holes and instead of using the capsule holes, I just used the circles.  This was because the screws would not grip the thing tight enough to prevent slippage over time.  Using the circle holes made it so even if the screw wasn't super tight, the drawer wouldn't drop any lower.


Once I got that lined up and working nice, then I decided to try using wood filler to fix some of the edge gaps.  This started out looking promising...



To sand these back perfectly straight, I used a square resting on the bottom of the drawer and a hand sand block that ran against the side of the square.


This seemed to work well and I actually got a nice straight edge rebuilt on my door face.



However, when I went to put the door back on the slides, it sticks and requires a bit of force to push it all the back to be fully closed before the slides work properly.  In this process it wasn't perfectly aligned and just enough of the edge I just repaired caught the side panel and broke clean off.



I had mixed results with this dap plastic wood filler.  It seems to want to stick to everything EXCEPT the wood.  Later on I added small drops of water and mixed it up a bit and that seemed to help it stick a little better but then was harder to build up.

Since I was doing all this wood filling, I tried to cover the full cabinet to fix small blemishes.

I covered stuff like the small indent the router made on the speaker holes.


Fixing the blade slip on my bezel cut on the bottom of the speaker panel area.


I also went back with a chisel and cleaned out the channel better than I originally had and sanded it a bit.

I debated molding back the bottom edge that chipped away but ultimately stopped since the wood filler wasn't sticking or forming that well.  Also after the drawer edge result I figured it would break off too easily.
That part I'm going to fix by gluing a piece of hardboard to it.  It will be hidden inside, behind the bezel, so should work fine.


I did pick up bondo as well but was hesitant to try using it for a few reasons.  One was that for situations where humidity swings a lot like outdoors, or my house, I read a big post where someone showed that the bondo doesn't move with the wood, so it eventually can break free.  Wood filler was suppose to flex better with the wood.  No idea how true this is, but bondo also looked a little harder to work with.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2021, 07:28:28 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #165 on: March 09, 2021, 04:54:38 pm »
Eventually we had some warmer days where it was at least more in the 30's so I got back in the garage and rebuilt the coin door after my first screw up.




This, with a little sanding came out to be a pressure tight fit. 

I also noticed the door has a stamp on it.  Kinda cool, showing it's authentic age at 1981.


I added all the side bracing to the back of the door after cutting the coin door hole, making sure it all fit proper before gluing and screwing.  This bracing was necessary mainly because I used 1/2 inch ply on the door and the hinges require more depth for the cups to sit in.  I also though it might help straighten the bow of the door a bit more and help keep it from sagging over time.

Then, after reviewing the Rockler documents for the Blum hinges I got, I measured and used a forstner bit with my portable drill guide to make the holes for the cups on the euro hinges.
It was tricky to get an even surface so I pulled off the rubber feet on the guide.  This made it easier to keep it flush to the ground but made it more prone to slipping.  I used one hand to anchor it down as best I could while drilling.



Here I have the door mounted, with the bottom cut off per my earlier posts so the door is completely inset and closes properly.  I also added on the inside locks.  They are half turn locks so they are very easy to use without seeing them directly.


Lastly I committed to the design for the lower front panel area and added threaded inserts to the base at the front.  These anchor the whole lower half of the panel to help hold it in place and add stability.


For these and my power inlet threaded inserts shown a bit later, I opted to just free hand drill (with taped drill bits for depth gauges) and hand screwed in the insert.  It worked out fine, and was really my only option on the power inlet due to tight spacing.

Below I've got the lower front frame and door anchored to the base, and I also glued on the side angle boards to the front frame making it much stronger.  Then I added the right lower light panel that's just pressure fit as a test.




Next up I redid my power inlet area.  I had a measurement error the first time around so this time I wanted to make sure it came out nice and centered.



Next I needed to add on a cleet so I could anchor this down to the base.  I wanted to keep it removable but still have enough strength so the inlet doesn't move at all when plugging in or pulling out a power cord.


This took some creative clamping to make sure the wood block didn't split as I made the holes.  I used my drill guide on these.

Then I used my jig saw to cut the "T" shape out of it.  This was necessary to make it the right height for the threaded inserts I have, and still have the center point a bit higher for additional support.



Here it is installed.



I still plan on putting an electrical box around it for extra protection since the lower half is an open cabinet area for storage.  Don't want any kiddos getting zapped.

Lastly I polled in some other threads and searched high and low for different mesh options for vents.  The best I could find was an expensive aluminum option with circle holes dye cut out of it.  However based on rough calculations I would have spent around 100 bucks plus shipping to cover all my vents.

That wasn't really worth it to me, but I still wanted an option that would look more complete than an open hole and possibly help keep critters and spiders out.  Jennifer warned me about rabbits....although not sure those are likely to enter my home. ;)  Still I want to pretend this could be a commercial cabinet setting outside or in a big arcade.

What I came up with should work well enough and is FAR more economical.  10 bucks at Lowes in nearly the perfect size and I get 100 feet!


Then I needed to cut a bunch of spacers for the inside covers I'm putting on all the vents.  These have little threaded inserts in them so I can easily remove the inside panel and wipe it down if needed.



Here's what it will kinda look like from inside the cabinet (but picture the hardboard over it).  I'm likely going to use staples to hold down the mesh, and the spacers will be glued on, but I'm debating on waiting to assemble so I can laminate the main board on both sides first.


The hardboard piece will also be laminated on both sides, holes added, and it screws onto those spacers over the vents.  The end result is that you can't see into the machine at all from any angle in the back.  It should also hopefully help collect any dust there instead of getting into the cabinet.

I also did some additional work on logo concepts for the new name and theme for the cabinet.  Not sold on it yet, and trying not to get lost back in art until the cabinet is built, but it served as something I could do when it's too cold out.


That's all for now... hoping to start doing tests on the front light panel areas soon.
« Last Edit: April 07, 2021, 12:51:06 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #166 on: March 09, 2021, 05:22:19 pm »
Wow - lots of details.  That has to be one of the most complex coin doors I've ever seen!  Why didn't you just mount the electrical socket on the back panel instead of inset like you did.  It looks great but seems like a lot of work!   :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #167 on: March 12, 2021, 06:04:01 pm »
That has to be one of the most complex coin doors I've ever seen! 

LOL.  Sweet!  I achieved something! ;)  Are you referencing the actual coin door or the door holding the coin door, or the mix of it all?

Why didn't you just mount the electrical socket on the back panel instead of inset like you did.

Glutton for punishment? ;D  I'm doing the same thing with the power switch in the middle area.  I wanted to keep them inset to hide them a little more, and in the case of the power inlet it helps keep the cord end from sticking out a lot and possibly being damaged if shoved too close to a wall.  It also kinda goes with the vent style.  I'm planning on accenting the inner edges of each inset with a blue paint that matches my T-Molding.  I had a concept render of that a little ways back in the thread.  :cheers:
« Last Edit: March 14, 2021, 06:04:30 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #168 on: March 12, 2021, 06:38:35 pm »
What I like most about this project thread is your detailed account of your research and your build.  Plenty of pix and a real willingness to keep an open mind.  The lit CP rings, that's something I'm about to re-visit with my RoToron build.  In a world of CNC and 3D printing I love that you are doing these things by hand.  Just a really enjoyable journey here.   :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #169 on: March 15, 2021, 03:14:08 pm »
What I like most about this project thread is your detailed account of your research and your build.  Plenty of pix and a real willingness to keep an open mind.  The lit CP rings, that's something I'm about to re-visit with my RoToron build.  In a world of CNC and 3D printing I love that you are doing these things by hand.  Just a really enjoyable journey here.   :cheers:

Thanks,  I really appreciate that!  Wish I had more of your building skills to help me through this project!  Glad to see you're back at your project again too!  :cheers:
 

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #170 on: March 30, 2021, 02:30:25 pm »
Time for a quick update before the months end.  8)

I struggled a bit these past few weeks to make progress.  Some of it is just figuring out the next best step to even take.
 
Then I find I need to refine design detail before I can start cutting wood.  Alignment of things in a precise manner is a big challenge and with some of these details it's becoming more evident that I can't just rely on digital measurements.

I've gone back and forth now with the cabinet to try to figure out how I'm going to align my bezel correctly with the monitor and used cardboard to try to help test things out.  Right away I can see there are differences between the computer and reality for various reasons.
As such I'm having to continue to adapt some things on the fly.

The next step I figured I should take was getting my monitor mounted.  This needs to be in place so I have something real world to align my bezel to and make sure it aligns properly.
For the monitor I wanted to come up with my own mounting design that wouldn't require me buying a TV mount and would make good use of the wood and threaded inserts I have on hand from the project.

One of the benefits I observed to most TV mounts is that they come in 2 parts.  One that connects to the TV, and one that connects to the wall, and then you simply walk the TV to the wall and the 2 parts latch onto each other from the top.
The down side I see is that most of these designs are relying on gravity to keep the TV in place and if your wall were to turn on it's side, the TV would fall off.  That's no good for an arcade machine cabinet where it could be on it's side being moved or worked on.
So I borrowed some of these concepts and created a wooden version that benefits from the 2 part easy install hook concept, but then bolts into place easily from behind so it can't move.

First I designed it all on the computer, printed out my designs, and then made some simple cuts and drilled a few holes.


I just used my jigsaw for these interior cuts.  It turns out that what I thought would be a "standard vesa" hole alignment didn't quite line up to my TV.  I think I messed up and went with inches instead of MM so that didn't help.
I also bought a universal mounting screw kit because I wasn't sure exactly what screw I needed for my TV.  Online research yielded varying results.  Turns out I only got one set included that fit my TV, and the bolts were way longer than I expected.

In an effort to find the right size spacers to make these work, I discovered that my 15mm threaded inserts would work well here.  Those, flipped upside down, and with a washer, turned out to be a perfect solid spacer.  Here's the full thing assembled on the back of the TV.


Now you simply hold the TV from the top and bottom, and walk it straight into the cabinet.  The mounts on the sides below are your target, and you want to be slightly above them so it rests on them.


Once inside the cabinet, the top square blocks on the back of the TV mount sit on top of the cleets on the sides walls of the cabinet, holding the TV in place and allowing you to go around back and make fine tune adjustments.


From the back you add 2 bolts to each side cleet to firmly hold the TV in place.  Now the cabinet should be able to move around any direction as needed without fear of the TV moving.


After doing this I checked the alignment, only to discover a little problem.  Here you can see the top and bottom are not the same distance to the side edge of the cabinet.



It turns out there were a couple things working against me.  First, the mounting spots on the back of the TV were not firm.  The plastic has a little flex to it.  Secondly, the back of the TV wasn't square as I originally thought.
So now I needed to modify my mount to allow for a little more adjustment.  I first thought I might be able to do it from the center plate area, but that idea was flawed.  Then I discovered that the corners of the back center square mount on the TV had the best stability and didn't bow.
I measured to those edges, drilled some holes, and added threaded inserts at each corner.  The idea being that now I simply thread the bolts in as much as needed to push the lower half of the TV back out.  It only needed maybe 1/8th or less adjustment to correct the angle.



Here you can see it mounted from a top down view with focus on one of the new bolts pressing against the bottom corner of the tv mount area to hold it firm and correct the angle.


Problem solved!


Now the hope is if I need to fine tune anything, I have enough adjustment with this design to do it.  If my TV ever changes, I should be able to use this mount, or worst case, just replace the center board.



I've been working on bezel design tweaks after this and realized I should probably get the back of my CP in place first as this is a critical piece to align to.  When finished, I should be able to slide the bezel out when the CP is opened up.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #171 on: August 26, 2021, 06:25:36 pm »
How sad.  I went to reply to my thread for an update and it alerted me that there have been no replies in over 120 days and I should consider starting a new thread.
Has it really been that long?!  Sadly for as much work as I've gotten done the progress isn't feeling nearly as significant as of late.

I've run into new challenges on the wood working front and had to figure out some ways to do repairs and compensate for things.  Did I mention don't use 1/2 inch ply on your project?  Gotta stress that again.  I feel like so many of the issues I ran into would be better if the entire thing was 3/4 " and a high quality wood to minimize chip. 

I've also been banging my head against the wall for many months trying to get a solution that works well for the ring lights around the joysticks and spinner.
That still has me stumped unfortunately.  I can't find a thin enough lighting solution that can also make the shape and be evenly lit and bright.  I also haven't found any other projects that attempted it around a spinner.
 
A big consideration to the solutions I knew from the beginning was how far down each stick is mounted.  I wanted to try to minimize this because I feel that adding a shaft extension will just completely hose the intended feel of the stick, and that's more important to me than a light effect.
This is especially true now that I got my MS Pacman 25th anniversary stick for the 4 ways games and discovered its shaft is even shorter than my other sticks.

Another big factor is I wanted to come up with a universal mount that would allow me to use any stick on the market, is easily changeable, doesn't show bolts, and doesn't effect the top art.  Oh and somehow allows ring lights to work too.

I'm also wondering just how necessary dust covers are with joysticks.  Do they really get gummed up that easily?  If so that still needs to be worked into the equation.

On the plus side I have a bunch of the CP built out now.


However I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.  Let's rewind back to where I left off in my last update and talk through some of the journey.

I was working on bezel alignment details and needed to get at least the back of the control panel in place for me to feel comfortable knowing where to line things up.  So I decided it was time to build out the full CP.



I used a combination of approaches to cut this out.  First rough cutting everything with the jig saw.  Then I used tape to stick pieces under my table edge to make the final smooth cut with the router.


In some cases it was easier to go from the top with a straight template board to trace.



For the inside short angles I used a strip of hardboard with the factory edge for the router to trace.  I marked them with arrows to make it really obvious which side to use.  In retrospect I wish I made them a little wider.
You'll see later that I ended up putting another loose hardboard strip next to these so the router could self balance.  Otherwise it was easier to accidently have some small wobble and mess up the cut.  Fortunately this only happened in one cursed corner.



Here's the mistake.



Fortunately this is easy to fix with wood filler.  Only consideration I can think of here is that if this were an exposed edge, I wouldn't trust the wood filler to keep it intact long if it were a high touch area.  In this case it will be sandwiched between side wall boards so I think it will be OK.



For tight inside 90 degree corners I had to get out my chisel to remove the rounded part the router inevitably leaves.


And I always check everything as much as possible to make sure it's lined up.  Nice and square now.



Here's an example of using an extra piece of hardboard to balance the router on the template.  Doing this for the rest kept me from any additional mistakes.


When done we have the bottom crazy shape for my control panel design.



The next task was figuring out how to make nice clean miter cuts (angled end cuts) so all the side walls lined up flush and securely.  The catch is I need to use the tools I have available.  Around this time I happened to travel back to my home state of South Dakota to visit my Grandpa.
He had a few tools of my dads in his garage that he wanted to get rid of.  I saw this old hand miter saw and decided it was worth keeping.




I remembered using it with my Dad when I was little to make different things.  My hope was that this would make it really easy to get super precise miter cuts and bust out these walls in minutes.

Unfortunately the saw only allows a board a little more than 3 inches tall under it, and all my side walls are taller then that.
So plan B was to use it to make a precision template that I can use against my skill saw like I tried earlier in the project.



I think I had 3 different angles I needed to cut, so I made a few of these. (22.5, 27, 45)


I decided to use some scrap first and see how precise the results were before going all in.  First I had to figure out where to put a fence for the skill saw to ride against to help make a nice straight yet simultaneously angled cut.
This started with me measuring a rough average and taping down a factory cut board for the fence.  Then I adjusted how far out the piece I was cutting needed to sit based on where the blade was hitting.  After a few test cuts I dialed it in and wrote it all down.




There's an important lesson I learned a bit later in this.  When the angle of the cut changes, so does where the blade makes contact!  These 2 pieces of scrap below clearly aren't the same height, but that's not what I cared about.  This was a pretty good test with barely any noticeable seam where the angles meet up.



This is a pile of side pieces to my CP from some time after.  I first ruff cut each piece with the jigsaw, then hit the non angled edges with a straight router template.  It's a lotta work to make a stupid rectangle!


In retrospect I kind of wish I had done all 4 sides.  This may have prevented some measuring mistakes later on.  Who knows...

Next I decided to attach the bottom of the CP to the main cab to make sure all was good there.  This also allowed me to put the back cp wall in place temporarily to see where it was at relative to the bezel.



When installing the inserts for this, I ran into a big problem.  Apparently despite having what I thought was a big enough bit, the top lip on these inserts seems to require a bit more space.  I used an allen wrench and slowly turned them all in, but as you can see, one of the lips completely broke.
This annoyed me to no end as I can't get an allen in there to take it out and replace it now.  I'm also not sure how to keep a new one from breaking.  On the plus side it's internal and never really seen, but I like to make everything correct when I can.

Here it is fully installed.


I ordered a bunch of different plastic from TAP Plastic online.  Ended up spending way too much just for some tests.  Several of the pieces I got were just for lighting tests.  I will say they pack their plastic extremely well for shipping.


On the far right, the white roll is a special LED diffusion plastic wrap.  It was only like 15 bucks so I threw that in the mix.  I tested different distances from the LED and adding multiple layers to get different results.

The rest is a bit hard to see since its still wrapped up but I got a flat black plastic to use in a few spots on the cab.  The big black piece is a new special LED plastic they advertised where the plastic is black but it shows the LEDs really well.
What I found with this is that it's cool if you're going for a look that clearly shows each diode.  Then you don't have to have white plastic to get a bright LED showing through in different colors.  However, the further I pulled the LEDs from it, the diffusion properties didn't seem too great.  I think it's more designed to bring contrast to the emission points.
The strength of the light diminished incredibly fast with only about an inch of distance.  It was possible to get more of a milky wash of color, but it was super dim.

The next 2 big sheets I have are different flavors of their white plastic for lit up signs.  One is more of a cream while the other is a bright white.  Each has a different rating for how much light gets through.

Lastly on the far left is the clear plexi to go over the monitor and bezel area.  Generally speaking they seem to have cut it very precisely.



I test fit it and it's extremely snug.  Maybe a bit too much on the sides as its bowing slightly.  I'm not sure how I will be able to shave a hair from it.  Hoping the router will do a decent job without melting the plastic.  Mine doesn't have a speed control and I don't know if I need a special bit for plexi.

The length I left slightly longer than the design called for.  I'm not sure if I'll need to reduce it any or not.  Right now you can see it's hitting above the back wall of the CP, which is exactly where I want it.  The CP top adds another 3/4" to that and is what will hold it in place on the bottom until you open the CP.  There will be some small edge pieces added to support the plastic from behind as well.

I also picked up an expensive LED ring set off amazon (which are hard to come by for a decent price and time frame with stuff from Ali Express taking months to ship).


I only needed one right now to experiment with and see if it would work for lighting up a circle shape around the joysticks,  Turns out there are more considerations on this solution as well.  The thickness is a hair over 1/8th and then the contacts on it are also on the bottom, which can easily add more than 1/16th to fit wires.
Then with no space to diffuse any of the light before hitting plastic, it's back to compromising a lot of depth on the stick mount for lights.

Now going back to the CP, I needed to come up with a way to connect the side walls.  The design was that the walls hide the bottom edge of the CP so it's one flat surface.  The trouble with this is that means I only have 1/2" of end grain to try to glue walls on.
Everything I've learned so far indicates that ply end grain isn't very strong and you shouldn't screw into it or rely on it for a strong joint.  So that meant I needed to create more internal structure to mount against.

I still had some furring strips and already had bought 1" screws a while back, so I wanted my solution to use these.  Trouble is I needed a way to cut the strips in half length wise and I don't have a table saw.
First I invented this highly sophisticated mount by combining a few clamps to hold the strip.



The idea here is that I'm going to quickly cut them in half using my jig saw.  The cut edge doesn't need to be perfect since that edge will be facing inside the CP.


For shorter pieces I had to get creative with adding support blocks to be able to clamp down on them.


The last step was to pre drill holes for the screws.  I found a counter sink bit and used that on each to compensate for the giant angled head on the screws I have.  It was a good thing too because they all would have split on me if I didn't once I tightened the screws.


By mounting these angled I was able to drill the holes on all the needed sides in one swoop.


A pile of these later and I'm ready to start applying them.  I have to be thoughtful of where these go to give decent support but also not potentially get in the way of the components.  My original design didn't account for any of these supports being needed.

Before I start putting on the supports I measured everything again and found a slight mistake in the CP base.  Somehow I lost an 8th on one of my edges.  So I now needed to come up with a way to fix this blunder.

My first thought was that maybe I could just use wood filler to build up the edge more.  Trouble is, it doesn't have near the strength and there already isn't a lot of support for the CP walls.  I needed strength, so I figured adding wood is the best answer.
After all, the glue supposedly makes a bond stronger than the wood itself.

First I found some scrap that's close to the size I need and I plotted an 8th strip off of it.



Then I needed a way to cut this ultra precisely.  I decided that I would use the skill saw for this to ensure a 90 degree cut.  Using similar methods to making the earlier miter cuts, I adjusted the board I'm cutting under the table until it met up correctly with the blade.
A word of caution with this method though.  It's really easy to be off by a couple hairs from one end to the other, and it can be tricky to make adjustments once things are taped down.
In this case I got lucky and was able to keep it perfectly parallel to the table and make a clean straight cut.




After making the outside cut, I had to readjust everything again to make the inside cut.



The last step required a chisel so I could cut down the length to an exact fit.


Here you can see the added filler piece glued down and clamped.


vertexguy

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #172 on: August 26, 2021, 06:26:13 pm »
OK so problem solved!  After a day of drying that new piece is on their tight and shouldn't break off with any reasonable efforts.  Now we can get back to the side supports.



Each support is glued down and clamped for a few minutes to help make sure it doesn't shift at all when I add the screws.  Once everything is in place, now I have long wood grain surfaces to glue and screw each wall into, in addition to whatever support the end grain of the CP base might provide.

Next up I need to add my pinball button holes before the walls go up.  For these I wanted to make sure the holes were big enough to accommodate multiple brands of buttons.  The eclipse style buttons I got can fit in smaller holes just fine, but the classic black Happ buttons I got require more space.
So looking back in time I remembered I bought a 1 1/8th paddle bit years ago when I started messing with buttons.  I decided to try using that for these.

What I found was that it didn't seem to do a very clean cut no matter what I tried.  One of the challenges of using the bit is that it has a center point with threads so it screws itself in as it goes.
I thought that might be a good thing but it felt like I was just being forced through each cut and didn't have the adjustment control I had with Forstner bits.  You can't stop and re-approach the cut for instance.  At least not without backing it out entirely.

I think some of these results are driven by the 1/2" ply as well.  My very first use of this bit years back was into MDF to compare different button types and all of those cuts were smooth.



Here you can see the first cuts with a backing board.  The top of the cuts has a lot of chipping.  The back side is just as bad if not worse even with a backing board.

My next idea was to add painters tape to both sides, leaving room for the starting hole it needs.



This maybe helped the top of the cut slightly, but I think it actually made the back side even worse.  The bit stopped cutting when it reached the back tape and took some effort to get to cut through resulting in this.




So now I have a bunch of repair work to do... but it doesn't end here.



First thing I noticed as I started looking at the wall pieces coming together was that for some reason both sides with my pinball buttons weren't fitting quite right.  I remeasured them again and found out that the angle cuts I made on one side of each were wondering off of square.
For this I decided to use a sanding block and slowly work them down to where they needed to be.  This of course creates some other slight imperfections in the surface, but at this point it didn't matter so much since I'll be filling all the corners with wood filler anyway.  So much for my alternate career path installing crown molding in kitchens. ;)



For a lot of the connection points for the walls it was a very tight fit so I needed to use a special angled screw driver bit to get them tightened down.

What started off looking good from the top ends up having a slight issue as it nears the bottom with alignment.


This could be a number of factors from just a bad angle cut, which happened before, to a slight warp or bend in the wood (which I also ran into in a few places).  This resigned me to the fact that I needed to wood fill everywhere.



Above was another blunder.  Apparently one of my side walls was cut about 1/8th too short.  In retrospect I think I should have fixed this before continuing.  Now I have a new repair challenge ahead of me.  Instead I kept going and left it with an 1/8th gap.

Putting all these on required all of my clamps, along with some creative additional blocking to enable it to grab the small braces and hold perfectly in place while I screwed them in.  Once they were screwed, I could remove the clamps, but I opted to keep them on for about an hour for extra strength.



The next problem I had to fix was on the back wall of the CP.  This particular board had some twist in it that I didn't catch right away.  It's very important it lines up perfectly with the back of the cabinet for many reasons, including bezel support, so I needed to correct this warping.

Here you can see it's off square by over 1/8th at the bottom.  This changes depending on where you're at along the board.


By adding thick supports in the back I was able to bend the board back to be square, using clamps and glue on the supports.


Here you can see the supports along the back that now keep the back wall perfectly square.  You can also see a bunch of wood filler all over the place that I need to start sanding down.


The results after sanding on some corners are great.


The button holes are more challenging to keep perfectly round.  I used the wooden end of a rubber mallet and duck taped some fine grit sand paper on it, then slowly worked around the circle shape, checking it by eye frequently to make sure I wasn't getting too much in one spot.




I discovered a new issue on on the right corner.  If I put a little weight on it, the bottom board of the CP bends a bit, and it was enough to crack the joint apart.  I'm not sure why this particular joint is so weak as the opposite side seems strong.  It's almost like maybe I forgot to glue it.  Either way, I need to sand out the joint and re-glue it.
Then I've decided I will need to add some small support pieces to each corner up top as well to ensure they don't split apart over time with people leaning on the CP.  This is where I feel like the 3/4" ply would have helped prevent this, as that really doesn't bend at all.



Lastly we have my cursed problem corner area to solve.  I ended up butchering the small wall for that corner trying to use the power sander on it when it didn't fit right.  So I need to remake that, and figure out how I'm going to patch this 1/8th gap in the corner.
My current thinking is I'll make a 1/8th piece the right height but keep its depth longer so it extends out on both sides to give me some extra to counter the angle it's attaching to.  I'll lube it up with glue and get it so it's just under pressure tight to tap into place.
Then I'll try using a chisel and sanding down the excess sticking out on either end.  The last touch will be wood filler.

So a lot of things done over this period of time, but it doesn't feel like there's a ton of visual progress.  Once I have the remaining sides fixed, I'm going to print out the CP top and make a template for it out of hardboard.  This way if I screw up, I can get new hardboard much cheaper than new 3/4" ply.  Once the template is in place, I should be able to duplicate it with the router pretty quickly.
This will make sure I don't make any human errors trying to plot out the controls as I experienced with my cardboard prototypes, and makes sure that the graphics I make for the top can align perfectly.

I still have a number of things to solve design wise for the CP top as well.  I have hinges that I hope will do the trick, assuming I picked the right type.  But then I need to design a latch system to keep it tightly closed that can be easily unlatched from inside the cab.

Before I put the top on I might use the base to hold up a prototype so I can test out my mount design and maybe come to some sort of epiphany for a way to get my ring lights to work in the setup without compromising significantly on joystick shaft length.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #173 on: August 28, 2021, 06:11:06 pm »
This is a great build thread! I like that you're posting your woodworking missteps and the moves you make to fix them - one of my favourite parts of any woodworking project :)

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #174 on: September 09, 2021, 12:22:46 am »
This is a great build thread! I like that you're posting your woodworking missteps and the moves you make to fix them - one of my favourite parts of any woodworking project :)

Thanks BeastlyBoy!  There's never a shortage of missteps it seems.  :duckhunt

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #175 on: September 09, 2021, 01:32:01 pm »
So I've been racking my brain on joystick mounting and light ring solutions for quite some time now.  I played with several ideas in 3d, but I really need to play with lighting in the real world to figure it out... so it's time for some more physical prototypes!

I was extremely close to giving up on this idea as there seemed to be no great solution without significant compromises.
This is where we left off on this over a year ago.



It wasn't a bad start, but it wasn't what I was hoping for, and there were a lot of compromises with it.

1. I wanted an evenly lit ring with no obvious light sources. (fail)
2. I didn't want to have to compromise significantly on how deep the stick is mounted for a lighting effect. (this compromises shaft length and can make it not feel right.) (fail)
3. I absolutely did not want to use a shaft extender as this will completely change the intended feel of the stick and greatly increase the throw distance. (pass if JLF)
4. I wanted my solution to be able to work with ANY commercially available stick in a universal way. (fail...this was very Sanwa JLF specific)
5. You must be able to change joysticks without ever impacting the CP top / artwork. (pass)
6. No bolts of any kind showing on the surface of the CP. (pass)
7. Ideally no dust washers on the surface of the CP (pass)


First I wanted to test my original idea of simply needing more than 2 LEDs to get around the ring.  If more lights didn't help, then I might as well stop here.
The new plan called for hollowing out a very large section to include room for my new mount design.  First to simulate this, I just cut some scrap 1/2 ply to the correct sizes to make 4 walls.
Then I cut an LED strip to about the right length (was a actually a pixel or two short) and taped it in place with duct tape as a temporary solution.
I put some washers together with tape to simulate the targeted mounting height and set a MS Pacman Mounting Plate on top of it. 
The key here is that the mounting plate has to sit just under the center of the pixels so it doesn't block the light beams.





Then I took a highly sophisticated piece of cardboard, cut a whole through it quickly with a forstner bit, and painted a black area around it with a marker.  I put a black washer in the middle to simulate the ring look I'm after.


This proved to light things much more evenly, and from a distance that works with all the commercial sticks, so it was worth continuing to rack my brain on it.

For fun I put one of my LED ring lights under it instead just to see what it would look like.  This is cool if you like the definitive look of the LEDs.  The plastic diffuses the shape of the LED a little, but it's still a very obvious light source.
There's just no way to get the depth needed to hide the light sources without drastically extending the stick shaft lengths.  Also keep in mind I'm going for an RGB look, so I can't rely on hiding the sources more by color matching the light with the plastic.




Now before we go further I want to stress how hard it is to get a photo of light sources like this to look accurate.  Generally speaking most phone cameras just won't cut it.  There's absolutely no adjustment even in pro settings that I can make to get it to look like it does to the naked eye.

Cameras typically overexpose light sources which makes everything seem like it glows really strong, when in reality it doesn't.  There are also colors (like yellow) that the camera can't even pick up natively.  So as a simple example, my camera shows this looking rather evenly lit.



But this shot is a bit closer to reality after a ton of setting tweaks.  Even here the blue is accented stronger than it really is.  You get stronger / definitive edge highlights in the real world though.




Most of the shots in all this testing are all in a day lit room with lights on.  If it looks decent in that setting, it looks really good in a dimly lit environment and could even be a touch on the bright side.

So knowing there was some promise to this working a bit better, I continued on and fabricated some new washers from the different plastics I bought.

Here's a very important discovery.  For this entire project so far I've relied on a portable drill guide to help me get things more accurate.  However, no matter how hard I tried,
at different points in the project I found things were never lined up quite the way I was expecting.  Sometimes it was great, others not so much.  Turns out that's because there's noticeable play in the drill guide that I can't figure out a way to fix.
The play happens while you try to force the spring down the shaft to make your hole.  There's so much play that you can move the bit a good 8th or more in any direction.

Here we have an attempt to enlarge the center hole to be the right size for larger joystick shafts.  Notice how far off center this came out after all kinds of careful alignment and even a starter puncture hole through tape over the top.



Not gonna cut it.  So next I decided to just eyeball it and go at it free hand.



This came out a lot better than the drill guide, but still isn't quite right and is prone to error.  I also had to start the drill resting on the plastic which caused some noticeable chipping on the inner edge.

Finally I decided to try to make my own simple jig to see if a more accurate cut was possible.  Turns out it was.


I made a huge crosshair on the bottom scrap MDF.  Then I used a 1.5" x 1.5" piece of framing lumber and used the drill guide to make a hole on it's center (which was marked).
Then I erased those marks because the drill guide was off as expected.  Once the hole was made, I created a new cross hair mark centered around the hole I just made.
Then I wrapped it all the way around the board.  This way the lines on the base MDF sheet can touch with these lines for easy alignment.  Lastly I put the plastic piece I wanted to cut visually aligned dead center on
the crosshair lines on the MDF sheet.  Then I stacked the 1.5x1.5 hole guide on top of it and aligned the cross hairs wrapping around that to the cross hairs on the MDF.
I clamped it down on both ends evenly.  I marked a rough depth guide on the drill bit with tape.  Then I stuck the drill in the hole on the top and drilled to the proper depth by hand.



...and the result, so much better!  In retrospect I'm going to put tape over the top of these to hopefully further help reduce edge chipping, and make sure the drill is up to full speed before making contact.



So now I have a method to be far more accurate for precision drilling.

Next I assembled my new mount design into my test control panel. 



I wanted to be able to play with the height a bit on where the metal mounting plate sits under the wood, so to do this I added a bunch of washers directly under it.
Some of this is to compensate for this MDF panel being exactly 3/4" where the plywood panel it will be on will be 1/16th shorter.  This would all be fine except that the bolts I wanted to use for it then became too short.  The final version of this will have the outer bolts running out the other side of the wood with a washer and nut on the end.


That said, just with the bolts tightly screwed into the wood, it was solid.  You can see the same #8 bolts used to mount the joystick to the metal mounting plate. (MS Pacman sized).
The stick I'm using is the MS Pacman stick which I found has a shorter shaft than all the others I've looked at.  I figure if I can make this work good, then everything else will be great.

Here's the underside of the CP it's mounting into. 


I made a dumb mistake by plotting my threaded inserts too far out.   :banghead: Those inserts are only 10mm deep btw.  I didn't want to have to remake everything so I compensated by cutting slots into the wood on the joystick mount.
This meant the hold would be significantly weaker, but it should be good enough for testing.  You can also see I duct taped the LED strip in place and covered the mounting area just to help the reflectivity a bit. 
In the final version I'll probably paint it white or use the same reflective metal tape I plan on using in the marquee area.

Here it is mounted and put together.


You can see the hex bolts and washers on the end just barely having enough surface to grab.  Surprisingly even with all these mistakes compromising its strength, it was still solid with little more than finger tightness everywhere. 
There's zero play in it, so I figure when done correctly it should stay solid over time.

Here it is flipped over and mounted with a couple clamps onto the corner of my actual control panel.


You can see I have 2 different plastic round dust washers under the joystick. 


Right now the concept keeps the black washer close to level with the surface of the rest of the control panel.
I will probably try to make a version that makes the black plastic sit inside the white dust washer so they are all level as well.  This is all dependent on having the perfect sized forstner bit and making a jig that's precise enough.

For now this isn't bad though and I could live with this.  It gives it the white ring look I'm after.  In the next version I'm going to increase the size of the white dust washer a bit so you don't see into the hole at all even when the joystick is pushed full in a direction.
The black plastic is the special black LED plastic I got from tap.  Figured I might as well find a use for it.  It has a nice shiny side to it that looks nice and reflective.



Here I'm playing with a number of things.  The left side is exposed enough where I can reach under it and manipulate the LEDs.  The tape isn't holding them snug enough to the top, and I found if I pushed it up tight I could pretty much double the brightness on the ring.
Another factor is that the right side of the ring doesn't have as many LEDs and is missing 2 right in the center where it's needed most.  That will all be corrected when I split up the strip and deliberately mount LEDs in key spots.

Next I have a couple dark room shots where I'm playing with dropping the mount even lower to try to get the LED centers better aligned.  The more center aligned I can get them with the joystick dust washer, the better the results.  Look at the left side again.


Here where you see a hot spot of light on the left edge it's actually not that white.  It's very brightly colored.  Then it quickly falls off (but not completely).  So even with this over exposed photo you can get the sense that it's basically illuminating about half the thickness of the ring consistently.



Here I adjusted a few more things and changed the color.  Now you can see on the left it's spreading much better, compared to the right that's totally out of alignment (tape failed).


So that's where I've left off so far.  I believe this setup has potential and I can achieve a decent look with it.  Let's check the criteria list again.

1. I wanted an evenly lit ring with no obvious light sources. (pass)
2. I didn't want to have to compromise significantly on how deep the stick is mounted for a lighting effect. (this compromises shaft length and can make it not feel right.) (pass)
3. I absolutely did not want to use a shaft extender as this will completely change the intended feel of the stick and greatly increase the throw distance. (pass)
4. I wanted my solution to be able to work with ANY commercially available stick in a universal way. (pass)
5. You must be able to change joysticks without ever impacting the CP top / artwork. (pass)
6. No bolts of any kind showing on the surface of the CP. (pass)
7. Ideally no dust washers on the surface of the CP (pass)

Overall we're looking good here!  If you wanted to remove the entire stick and swap it with another, you can do it with 8 screws and don't have to touch the E clip on the joystick.  The only exception would be something like a flight stick.
If you wanted to, you could keep all your sticks on my mounting bracket design and get the hot swap down to 4 screws.  All the wires would just need to run to a Dupont or JST connector for quick swapping.
For me I don't anticipate the need for quick swaps.  I just wanted a versatile design so I can try out all the stick types over time and choose my favorites without compromising the CP.

I think this could even work for a servo stick.  It just depends on if it's possible to get LEDs around the servo extension area, and you would need to adjust the routing under the CP in that area.


The remaining challenge is keeping the LEDS exactly where I need them, but ideally not gluing them in place.  I would like the strips to be able to be removed easily for maintenance.
Worst case if I glue it, I need an easy way to break it off without damaging the CP.  The tape on these strips tends to vary in quality and even the 3M stuff has plenty of complaints with it not holding well.
My current thinking was to try to make some sort of pressure pin out of thin metal (like wood staples) to try to hold it in place.  Not sure that will work though.
I might try to make some kind of wooden support brackets that get wedge in there somehow.  Who knows.... love to hear ideas!  My current "LED gutters" are 2/8ths wide by 9/16ths tall.

If I can get it high enough up at the perfect angle, then I'm only compromising about 2/8ths of the joystick shaft, which in my testing on the MS Pacman seems fine.

I believe 1/8th which is a full layer on the ply should be strong enough to not worry about it breaking with the little more than 1/8th gap under the wood before the metal plate.
If it becomes a concern I may add some tiny supports outside the dust washer area and in between where the mounting holes are.

Also if anyone can think of a stick that might not be supported by this mounting bracket let me know!  As far as I can tell it should cover all the common sticks I found to purchase so far.

The last challenge to this is making it all fit in my existing CP layout.  This mount requires a lot more space than I originally designed for.  Most areas will be OK but there are a couple that will present challenges to solve ((player 3 for instance).
Some of this is solved by adjusting the size of the wooden L shaped brackets that attach to the metal plate for specific areas.

Given this solution I am even starting to see a version of this that should work to get the ring light around my spinner.  That will be the next challenge after this one is complete.


 :) Hopefully someone is finding all this information useful.  Let me know if it's helping you in your project!  :)
« Last Edit: October 05, 2021, 12:23:10 am by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #176 on: September 26, 2021, 10:32:46 pm »
For the past several weeks now I've been trying to solve how I'm going to light up my spinner.  I want it to be in the same style as my joysticks where it visually looks like a ring (circle) shape around it that lights up evenly.

One of the biggest challenges I've been facing is accuracy in making the plastic ring I'm trying to light up.  As I showed in an earlier post, I was able to get the joystick rings drilled out fairly accurately with a jig that I built, but it's not perfect and takes a long time to do.
I tried a similar approach with making the bigger ring needed to go around the spinner.  The challenge here was mainly that I couldn't use a drill bit for the center hole. 

For the spinner it needs a 1 1/8th center hole, so a standard drill bit isn't an option for me.



Try as I might, I kept making lopsided rings.  I tried using a spade bit that had a center point that's like a drill bit.  That didn't work at all.  It just shattered the rings in two every time no matter the speed.
Getting the plastic cores out of the hole saws were becoming increasingly challenging too.  I tried adding WD-40 and wax on the inside rim but it didn't seem to help any.

Finally I decided I needed to get SOMETHING I could work with just to prove out the concept for my spinner mount.  I decided to try making a square instead of a circle, and after a couple tries I got much closer to center.




For some reason keeping a forstner bit dead center is really hard for me, even with jigs.  I have a ton of pictures that can show all the different ideas I tried.  I even filled the center hole in the plastic from the initial hole saw cut with wood filler thinking if the center point has more to grab it will work better.  However no matter the various techniques I tried, it just doesn't come out dead accurate or easy enough to reproduce multiple times.

The good news is there may be hope.  I reached out to Mike A and we are figuring out some options to possibly use his CNC to cut the plastic rings and circles.  That should allow for amazing precision and a look I couldn't achieve on my own.  Then I may be able to bring the rings flush with the surface, which buys 1/8th of additional space for LED diffusion.


With all that out of the way, on to the big reveal! ;)  The concept to mount this seems pretty sound, and my first test actually worked.

Here's the final result of the proof of concept for the lit spinner.






Here's what the mount looks like at the moment.





Similar to my joystick mounts, I made my own bracket to attach it to and used 1 inch hex bolts I have on hand with 10mm threaded inserts going into the top panel.  I originally had a version of this that had the inside inset hole a bit bigger, so I made a custom LED strip that perfectly fit the space.  Rather than remake another I just cut it short and crammed it in to test things out.

The general idea with the mount is that the plastic sits flush against the top panel hole.  I tried doubling the thickness of the plastic so more of the light would be captured off the LED.  It did help some.
I later found that adding a gap and reflecting off a bottom layer may work even a bit better.  I also got reflector tape and tried that on the bottom later and it maybe helped slightly, but nothing significant.

If I don't want any obvious LED hot spots, I can lower the height of where the LEDs are.  The trade off is you get a lot less brightness of color, but more of a milky wash of color across it without hot spots.  I also tried putting a LED ring under it that shines directly up.  Similar result.

If it's right up against the surface, you clearly see each LED hot spot.  The further away you get, it starts to even out.  This is something I can do with a spinner because there's nothing below it in the way.
Joysticks on the other hand are a different challenge.

For a cleaner mount on the spinner, I discovered that 1" PVC pipe fits nicely around it.  So instead of the hardboard piece by the plastic and the cardboard by the nut, I will cut the exact size needed for a tight fit out of PVC.  The whole idea is that you're just lowering the pinch point where the spinner connects to a solid surface.




About the only thing I can think of left to try is fabric layers to try to diffuse the LEDs better.  Otherwise I think this may be as good as I can get it.  That's all for now!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #177 on: October 01, 2021, 03:35:35 am »
Wow, this thing will survive a storm of apocalyptic proportions. Keep on keeping on! I'm following along with your progress. I'm guessing at this very moment, it's already heavy as it woulda been had you chosen MDF. I'm a CNC programmer, with my own full size CNC machine, and I can give you these tips about MDF. MDF may be heavy, yes. And some have said it won't hold screws well, or you have to buy special screws. MDF doesn't in fact hold screws very well, but it's VERY thirsty, and will soak up ALOT of glue which will have a bond way stronger than a screw could ever produce. When I'm building repro cabs, I glue the parts together, then staple. I've got a 12 year old Space Ace cabinet, that could fall off the back of a truck going down the highway and survive. Not a single screw in it. Only glue and staples. Plus, it mills, and pockets beautifully.

Also, probably 90% of the originals, used MDF on the sides and front, for the smoothness, and low effort to 'finish'. Using ply for the bottoms, back pieces and top, for rigidity.

Anyway, long time lurker, saw your project, and gotta say I'm impressed. I've been watching because you said you had zero skills with cabinetry and your original render was on a very advanced level for a novice. But you're doing it man, so keep it up! By the time you're done with this, you'll be confident in building anything!

 :cheers:
« Last Edit: October 01, 2021, 07:10:51 am by 601 Arcades »
Ms Pacman (All Original)
Galaga (All Original)
Dragon's Lair (Original Hardware/Reproduction Cabinet By Me)
WIP Centipede Cabaret (Original Hardware/Reproduction Cabinet By Me)
WIP Robotron Mini (Original Hardware/Reproduction Cabinet By Me)
WIP Multi-Williams

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #178 on: October 04, 2021, 12:25:21 pm »
I'm guessing at this very moment, it's already heavy as it woulda been had you chosen MDF.

It's actually pretty light.  Very easy to move around at the moment.  When I'm totally done I might try to weight it on a scale and see what it clocks in at.

Anyway, long time lurker, saw your project, and gotta say I'm impressed. I've been watching because you said you had zero skills with cabinetry and your original render was on a very advanced level for a novice. But you're doing it man, so keep it up! By the time you're done with this, you'll be confident in building anything!

Hey thanks man.  I really appreciate it!  It's slow going and as I'm sure you've seen, a lot of mistakes get made, but it's all part of the journey.   :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #179 on: October 09, 2021, 04:32:26 pm »
Just a quick update for now.

I've been playing around more with the joystick lighting concepts and to help me figure out some final touches on sizes and spacing and such I went back to 3d space.  To achieve the precision needed I'm going to get these laser cut from the acrylic I have with the kind help of Mike A.  I needed to get final measurements on everything for the exact look I want and needed to make sure they will have the flexibility to work with different joystick types.

The basic concept is only slightly modified from my real world test examples.




Now I've added a clear piece of acrylic to be flush with the CP surface and give your hand something to rest on if you're right up close.  The idea is that I will glue these top plastic pieces flush with the CP.  The other pieces are the white and black plastics that come together flush to make the dust washer that sits underneath and illuminates.

I also decided I need a little more help with the light spread on the LEDs to hopefully achieve something close to this.  I should be getting enough strips in today to cover all the controls necessary.  They are 100 pixels per meter instead of the 60 I had been using.  You can go higher, up to 144 or even 150, however I found that the 100 was the only option that kept the width of the strip at 10mm.  Everything else gets wider, and that unfortunately won't work without dropping everything further from the top of the CP.

Now I have to count and measure all the plastic parts I need and do some quick ruff cuts to get it into small sizes to mail off for laser cutting.

« Last Edit: October 11, 2021, 05:17:00 pm by vertexguy »

javeryh

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #180 on: October 09, 2021, 07:07:15 pm »
Awesome stuff.  Glad to see folks finally figuring out the LEDs and not making their cabinet look like a Christmas tree.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #181 on: October 11, 2021, 10:12:30 am »
As a woodworker I am enjoying reading some of your learning process, appreciate you sharing! 

As for joystick mounting I haven't read the entire thread but have you seen paradise arcades universal S joystick adapter plates?
https://paradisearcadeshop.com/collections/paradise-exclusive-products/products/universal-s-adapter-plate
Those allow you to have a lot of mounting flexibility while still retaining original throw length on joysticks, see here for examples:
https://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/mounting_layering.html

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #182 on: October 17, 2021, 04:24:38 pm »
OK I may need some community opinions to help get me moving on this.  I've been messing around more with size options and introduced bat tops since I now have 2.

There is likely more to consider here than just aesthetics but you can vote just based on that if ya like.



Big Ring (left) or Small Ring(right)

Besides the aesthetic, given where the lights are at relative to the plastic ring they illuminate, I am anticipating different results.  I may attempt to make a physical test just to confirm my theory but right now I think that given that the larger the ring is, the closer it is to the actual light source, it should be brighter, and may have a little more energy to push through the plastic.  Further away will definitely add even more diffusion to the mix, but will likely not be as bright, and there's a question of whether or not the light will fall off too quickly and not illuminate the full plastic shape enough.  Keep in mind I now have more dense LED strips so I should get better diffusion already.

It's a questions of how quickly the light might fall off going through the air, and how much plastic it then tries to go through that may impact how well it illuminates the two options.

What do you guys think?
« Last Edit: October 18, 2021, 11:27:06 am by vertexguy »

javeryh

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #183 on: October 17, 2021, 04:44:06 pm »
Small ring and ball top is my pick.  I just think ball tops look way better but I’m not a big fighting game fan.

You are crazy by the way… in a good way.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #184 on: October 17, 2021, 06:01:07 pm »
Just noticed your approach to light up rings!  Similar to my own Rotoron CP and of course Arroyo's 'The Grid' CP.  I'm using a kind of PVC material in my CP because of its opacity/diffusion qualities.  The more diffusion, the better to get a nice soft even light.  Great work!  Watching.


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #185 on: November 16, 2021, 06:08:42 pm »
Javery: LOL, thanks.  That can be a double edged sword though. ;)

OND:  I've seen that panel before, and it's incredible looking.  I hope mine comes close to that level of clean execution when finished.  I really look forward to seeing your illumination solution for it.

I'm getting closer on these lights!  Time for another quick update.  I've been obsessing over figuring out how to get the lighting just right in the real world, and some of that is helping me make my choice on the size of my light rings around the joysticks.

I was able to achieve exactly what I was looking for with my spinner first.  I can't get an accurate photo of it for the life of me though.  What appears very over exposed in this photo is a perfect bright solid blue (the joystick has a better example below).  This blue is exactly the same as the purest blue looking at a bare LED. There are absolutely no hints of the white acrylic surface it's illuminating, and this is in a lit room with natural light coming in.  In the dark it looks the same.  No indication of a change in saturation, tone, or intensity.  Note that on most of these photos where it seems darker for a lit room, that's from the adjustments I made on my phone camera to try to keep it from blowing out so much.




However my joysticks are a trickier problem to solve for some reason.  I first assumed it was just due to the lack of space to work with vs the spinner, but it turns out there are a few factors to consider.

When the joystick is all put together, it's really not possible to see what's going on from an internal view.  You only see the result.  So I've spent hours playing around with different ideas and techniques and figuring out what makes things worse and what improves the outcome. Then to offer another perspective on things, I wanted to see if I could make a cut-a-way lightbox to allow me to see what was going on and do additional tests easier, like changing the angle the LED's are sitting for example.




This also helped me figure out where the fall off of the LEDs actually is (as light travels in the atmosphere it loses intensity and eventually disappears.)  These of course are overexposed photos but its still fairly obvious where the intense light ends and how quickly it starts falling off from there. The vibrant bluish purple light towards the ends is actually closer to the solid vibrant blue of what the real life spinner light looks like.

Now one thing you can tell even from the overexposed photo is that the spinner is emitting a brighter output than the joysticks.  This makes sense because the light sources are considerably closer to the hole and plastic they are illuminating. The next major factor was what specifically the light was hitting or not hitting inside and how it would bounce off surfaces or get absorbed. In my initial spinner example if you scroll up a bit you'll see that it's overexposed, but there are clear hot spots in the top down view of where the LEDs were at.  It was also not as rich and vibrant colored as it is now (can't see that in the photo).

What made a good difference was not just thinking about what the light was directly hitting, but also how it might reflect, and how many bounces it takes to hit the area I want to be lit up.
One thing I quickly figured out was that I was not going to be able to directly shine a LED through the side of the white acrylic and get it to light up evenly. It just doesn't work like that.  Once it enters the plastic, a lot of energy reflects while some refracts inside the object but loses its intensity quickly. This sign plastic was also not designed with that in mind.  It's really meant to have reflective light bouncing around hitting it from behind.  Now I do suspect that if I used perfectly clear acrylic and laser etched the top of the dust washer to have ultra fine bumps so it appears more solid white to the naked eye, that it would probably light up like a nice solid shape too similar to etched logos and designs you see on signs, with a more grainy fine texture perhaps.  However that's also a bit different of a look than what I was trying for, would likely cost more to create, and I don't have a laser etcher handy.

All this complexity can be boiled down to adding a white reflector (LED diffusion plastic, shiny side up) with a PVC pipe for a middle spacer instead of the double layer of white acrylic and brown hardboard I had in my first attempt.

What this does is creates a gap where the light beam shines in so it can reach the center with minimal energy loss.  From there, it hits the white PVC, which has a nice bright white curved surface, causing it to reflect in a tight almost straight up angle, hitting the surface shape I'm trying to illuminate.

This center white PVC ring seemed to make the biggest difference overall on my experiments. Without that I could only maybe get half of the shape to light, mostly on the outer edges.  Not all PVC is the same either.  I tried getting a bit smaller tube for the joysticks and it has a much higher specular highlight on it and doesn't distribute the light quite as well.  I would imagine there's some kind of ratio of the size of the object I'm lighting to the size of the reflective PVC underneath.

I'm going back to Home Depot today again to try to find alternative options to test in a smaller size. (found out that 3/4" fit perfectly)

To help get the spacer rings cut to be exactly the size needed, I tried a few approaches.  My second prototype on the spinner used a tube I cut out with my jigsaw.  That was tricky and didn't come out perfect.  The blades bend too much. My best result came from using a simple plastic miter box and a hack saw.  Then I was able to get fairly clean 90 degree cuts.  The only down side is that it leaves a lot of fibers on the ends that I had to file down by hand.



I made several spacers of different heights to do further tests.  For the joysticks, ideally I don't want more than 1/8th space dedicated to this.  Here you can see the reflector plastic and pvc ring sandwiched up to a test square of the white sign acrylic with a black LED acrylic sitting flush in the center of that.



...and here's the result I'm getting so far...





Couple things to note here, most visible in the close up.  The coloration is of course not right, but you should be able to tell the intensity isn't the same as the spinner.  That's kinda to be expected because there's no way to get the light source closer from the side. You can also just faintly see a darker ring on the outside of the black center area.  This is the shadow created from the inside PVC ring.  This is where it's important to try to find a tube size that sits just inside the black area to eliminate that. The photo has a 1 inch PVC ring.  I later discovered 3/4" works perfect for this design. Besides that though, you should be able to tell it's perfectly evenly lit with no sign of a LED light source.  It's an illuminated shape which is the desired effect.  I'm still not sure if I'll stick with the black LED plastic, which shows a little light bleeding on the edges through it (because it's meant to allow light to pass through), or try a different solid black plastic to keep a sharper edge.

Overall I think I'm favoring the original sized hole I have vs the smaller one I experimented with in 3d.  I think it better balances with the larger circles around the flight stick and spinner, variations in ball top / bat top sizes, and stays more distinctive next to what will be a brightly lit array of player buttons. About the only thing my physical prototype is missing from the plan is the top level of clear acrylic to make it flush with the top of the CP.  I can't recreate that with enough accuracy (although I may try one more time just for the prototype) and I'm still planning on having the final versions laser cut.  Also keep in mind, this is just an ugly mini test panel I made over a year ago.  The hole for the joystick is messed up from a failed attempt at enlarging it properly to fit my light rings.  The paint job was a fast rattle can effort with 2 coats, a foolish attempt to use a power sander on it in between coats, and overall it turned out terrible.  I'm hoping for much cleaner results on the final product, and I'm laminating everything I possibly can instead of painting.  This is just my test bed mainly focused on figuring out the lighting and mounting at this point.

I'm going to see if I can find a closer center tube size match at the store (and made with more of a satin finish for better diffusion), but then also moving on to prototypes for other lit up areas on the cab.  The light gun holders in particular are similar to the joysticks in that there is very little space to work with.  However, given my result with the joysticks, I think there's hope.

The last touch I'm going to do on all of these is paint the interiors with BEHR Ultra Pure White.  I picked up a sample size to test with, and will maybe even have enough to finish the areas that need it on the cab in the long run.

I also need to refine the joystick bracket bottom to have a way to contain all the spilled light.  The spinner was easy to do this on because it's only accommodating one size spinner.  The joysticks can vary so I'm thinking some kind of cloth attachment might be the answer.

Anyway. that's all for now.  I'm really hoping to have all this lighting solved soon so I can get back to the main build and actually get it done yet this year.  I'm nearly at the 1 year mark from when I first started physically building, although there have been a lot of big breaks in between.  Still... :cry:

« Last Edit: November 28, 2022, 06:23:24 pm by vertexguy »

javeryh

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #186 on: November 18, 2021, 09:58:22 am »
Wow - max effort here to get the desired result, which looks really great.  I think very subtle lighting is a nice touch to the control panel.  I like this new(ish) trend of tasteful LEDs that you, Arroyo and others have started to implement.  A few years ago people were decorating their cabinets like Christmas trees and this is much much much better.

Is your joystick hole cutout not circular?  The closeup makes it look like you freehanded the hole or something... did you use a forstner bit?

Can't want for more updates - keep going!!   :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #187 on: November 18, 2021, 11:04:39 am »
Soooo... When you signed up for an account here, how long did you think it would take to build a cab? :D

(I thought it would be a weekend project, but realized that I needed to lurk and learn for a long, long time before even beginning.)

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #188 on: November 18, 2021, 01:19:38 pm »
I joined in Sep 12 and I am now just getting to building my first cabinet.  Will hopefully have enough to share shortly.

Jim

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #189 on: November 18, 2021, 09:07:37 pm »
@Javery: Thanks, and yes it's not just your eyes, it's an odd shaped joystick hole.  :)  It was a hole expansion gone wrong from a year ago.  I just added detail in the post about that.  The actual CP should be a single smooth cut once I get this all figured out, so hopefully much cleaner.

@Badmouth:  Ha!  Truth be told I can remember telling my wife I thought I'd be able to knock it out over a couple weekends before I had a clue.  I shouldn't have said anything!  :dizzy:

@Jim Welcome to the forums.  Good luck with your build!



« Last Edit: November 21, 2021, 02:21:45 am by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #190 on: November 18, 2021, 09:39:37 pm »
Great work vertexguy!  Good lighting makes all the difference!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #191 on: November 19, 2021, 03:25:05 pm »
The amount of detail you're going into with the woodworking on this is amazing.  I really like the work you're doing on the lighting effects around the joysticks and spinner too - that's inspired, and I hadn't considered going that direction with using the plastic underlay as a diffuser, but I'm definitely 'stealing' that as something else to add to a future build of mine someday, because it looks SLICK.   Well done.   :applaud:
-z-

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #192 on: November 21, 2021, 10:28:03 pm »
Thanks guys  :cheers:, I really appreciate the kind words.  It's a much needed boost now when I'm trying to buckle down and make serious headway over Thanksgiving break,

Just finished putting together a new prototype for the lighting on my gun holders and elsewhere on the cab.  This is my first ever attempt at an inlay!  It's maybe got some promise.  This is a small version with components of the light pattern I was planning on running down the lower front of the cabinet (where there are giant long boards missing along side the coin door area in the earlier photos).

The real trick is the precision.  I tried printing out templates and double stick taping them down before cutting them out.  This worked ok with the plastic as I was mainly going around it on the outer edge. It didn't work well when I tried the same technique to drill and cut out the shape with my jigsaw.  I ended up using a coping saw and files to finish most of it, and if I try this approach again, I think I'll start with that and skip the power tools.  I also cut out the plastic shapes first, and then cut the wood holes based on the template, not the plastic.  Next time I'll leave myself a little more filing around all the edges and test fit early to avoid the gaps.

The edges have tiny little imperfections (maybe 1/64th or less) but when you turn the lights on, it really accents them.  I'm thinking if I can get a glue mixture of some kind that's strong like super glue but something I can mix with a paint to make it black, then I could fill in the edges of the plastic with that to seal the gaps up tight.

The other big problem still is the required depth for the LED strips.  I feel like I need 1/8th of wood to cover the light channels and have good surface for the acrylic to glue to.  That means by the height of these LED strips, I have to add thickness to my design or there's just not enough space on 1/2" ply.


I'm trying with the 60 led per meter strips because I'm hoping I can get away with it.  That means 2 LEDs at each point of the big squares in the design.  I soldered a little test strip together for this prototype.  It's not bad, but the thinner center line in the design doesn't get enough light.

I actually got a decent shot somehow that's not far off from reality. Lots of blue in a lit room.


Here you can see the test inlay fitting before I put marker on the top and the same subtle holes around the plastic edges seen here are what is accented when the LEDs are on.  I used a sheet of off white sign acrylic that has both a different color and light transmission rate than the brighter white I used on the joystick and spinner.  I intend on using the brighter white on the final version.



Anyway, that's it for now.  Spent a bunch of my last 2 days getting Christmas lights on the house.  Now with that out of the way, I'm hoping to have a lot of focus this coming week.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2021, 04:17:46 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #193 on: December 05, 2021, 09:59:16 pm »
I decided to try another approach to the lower front light panels.  This time it meant I had to start working with laminate, which I've been a little intimidated by.  Time to get over it and make some progress!  8)

I got most of my supplies over a year ago for the lamination.  Bought a pro 5 pack of Wilson Art Black Matte Finish 4 ft. x 8 ft. Vertical Grade Laminate Sheets, a 3M respirator mask (the fumes on the glue are extremely strong and very bad for you!) that is hopefully the right kind, and a J-Roller for applying the laminate.


The glue was also Wilson Art and it arrived all dented up.  I had to order it on Amazon because none of the box stores seemed to carry it.  As soon as I opened the can I could smell hints of it even through the respirator.  For this quick test I just cut off a small 4" or so piece of laminate using a tin snip.  This easily cut through it but it did cause a little chipping on an edge.  Supposedly you can cut it just with sharp scissors.



I used a cheap brush to apply it, and that seemed to work OK.  Only trouble is I have no idea how to clean the brush for reuse.  Google suggested acitone, which I used to have a big can of, but apparently it's gone missing, so I used a little soapy water, which didn't seem to do much, and then just set the brush outside because the glue was stinking up everywhere I went.



The glued area seen up top solidifies fairly fast.  This is maybe 15 minutes in.  It's also a good example of what happens if a particle of something (a tiny wood chip) somehow lands in the glue.  I used the brush to pull it out and that just made a glue hole that never filled back up.

Here's the back of the laminate with glue on it.


You can see in the highlights that there are several pools of glue vs a nice even coat.  I wasn't sure I could fix it at this stage, and I'm not sure if it really mattered that I didn't.

I waited a little over 30 minutes for the glue to set up properly.  According to the net, I should be able to touch it with my knuckle and feel it sticking, but easily pull my knuckle out without leaving any residue on my knuckle.  Next I got out the J-Roller and after positioning the laminate piece by eye on the test board, I rolled it with some decent pressure.



I tried out a few different options for marking the laminate for cuts.  A regular pencil didn't show that well unless the light hit it at just the right angle.  I tried a few of my daughters colored pencils and got it to pop fairly well with white and a neon light green.


Then I drilled 2 pilot holes and fed the coping saw through the holes to manually remove as much of the interior space as I could.  You can see on the right square I got a little too close to the line.



At this point I tried several different steel files to see what would fit in there and work best to quickly but precisely remove the material up to the lines.  I started out on the right side square and tried to eye ball it until the line was removed.
It only took a few full strokes with the steel files to get it close to the line.  This kind of worked, but wasn't accurate enough for my liking.  I needed to find something I could use as a template that wouldn't instantly file away like the wood and laminate does.
Since eye balling it wasn't producing the precision I then moved on to the left square.  I discovered that the handle part of my cheap file set from Harbor Freight had a large straight steel piece that I wouldn't mind if it got a little scuffed up but should hold its shape against a file.



This actually worked pretty well.  I could feel and hear when I was right up to the edge.  The end result is a nice clean filed line,  thought as I noticed a little later, still not perfectly straight.  I tried to only file downward to help prevent accidentally chipping the laminate.



Above you can see the top rectangle hole edges are looking a lot straighter than the bottom.  I haven't done the center line or tidied up the bottom with the template yet.  Below you can see the scratches produced on the edge of the file handle I was using as a template.



Here's a lit up test with about a 1/8th or so inset.


Here it is unlit.  Notice the shadows in the thinner part in between the squares.  I didn't like that being shaded, so I end up reducing the inset later on.


... and here with the light off at an angle, you see a lot of the depth of the inset and none of the middle line.


So then I decided to hit it with the router again and get it down to 1/16th wood inset + the laminate thickness.



I like this look a little better.  It's not too inset to hide too much of it at angles, but still feels inset, and I think that just makes it feel a little more like a detailed accent vs the flush inlay attempt next to it that could come across as a decal.  It's also a lot less work and precision since I don't have to also cut out plastic to perfectly fit the holes.

I really like the finish of the laminate too.  Such a nice perfectly even black that I don't think I could ever achieve with paint.  Look at the crappy marker next to it.... don't try to paint your cab with marker. ;)

A finer detail you can catch in all of them are the edges on the laminate and wood.  If I go this route, I'm gonna want to go back over them with something to smooth them out.  I might try to use a really fine grit sand paper, but the wood itself can have some pits and gaps, so I'd like to somehow smooth those out without changing the shape of the hole.  Anyone have ideas?

I might try making some sawdust mixed with wood glue and see if that can make a smooth seal.  I hit the edges and back side with spray paint in the photos, and then I still had tiny spots to touch up that I tried using sharpie on.  I'm not fan of sharpie for that.  When the light catches it right, it shines more than the other surface and has a purple tone to it, so it's an obvious patch job.
On the real deal, I'll try to do all touch ups with paint and a fine brush and hopefully that will make the difference.


The other thing you may notice is that my shapes that started out looking fairly accurate in the beginning still have a "hand made feel" to them.  I think this is largely because I wasn't lining things up to a consistent relative point when I was using the file as a template guide.  I just tried eye balling each segment and that didn't work so well.  I now have a different approach in mind.  I'm gonna try the router similar to what I did for my vent holes.  It will cover the larger rectangle areas if I can get it started in such a tight space without it creating massive bite marks like it did on my vents.  Then I'll do the middle line by hand with the jigsaw and a file, but using steel flat bars that cover the full design length to keep everything aligned.

Tomorrow I might try to get to the hardware store again and pick up 2 plain steel flat bars.  I think these will work well as guides that are long enough to cover the full design pattern and I won't mind if they are scratched up in the end.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-1-2-in-x-48-in-Plain-Steel-Flat-Bar-with-1-8-in-Thick-800987/204225773

...and these T-Plates might be perfect for the bigger shapes... and might work well for router templates too.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-3-in-x-3-in-Zinc-Plated-T-Plate-2-Pack-15169/202033997

I'm also thinking about how I will put graphic vinyl over the top of these things.  Not sure how I'll do that yet if they are all assembled before hand (which they would be).  I'm also thinking of a way to map out where all the threaded inserts are on the side panels so I can laminate both sides.  This will make the interior really nice and the outer edges should be within 1/64th of the perfect thickness to match up to the T-Molding.
I also made a really, really, really long punch list of things left to do.  Still plenty of additional design puzzles to solve as well.  It's hard to stay motivated at this point and takes a lot to get going.  Once I do, I don't want to stop, but life forces me to, and then it's back to no motivation again.  I'm really looking forward to the days when I can reminisce about how much effort it took to make it while laughing and enjoying it.


« Last Edit: December 08, 2021, 02:46:10 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #194 on: December 06, 2021, 02:14:43 pm »
This is a crazy amount of work! 

Have you thought about making a template out of 1/4" or 1/8" hardboard?  You can use a file for the corners because the radius of the pattern bit won't get in there but your edges will all be perfectly lined up. 

I agree - laminate looks so much better than paint.  Definitely the way to go.  For the edges, I think some MH Ready Patch or other joint compound will do the trick.  Apply a somewhat thick coat, sand it back and repeat until you have perfectly smooth edges.   :cheers:

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #195 on: December 07, 2021, 03:17:32 am »
Maybe oscillating tool with the proper size blade?

This is so cool that there must be a way to do it that achieves the precision you want but isn't so masochistic.

Totally agree on laminate for completely flat surfaces.
Saves so much time, result is a cleaner look, and it's tough!

The glue IS ferocious though.  Use the same stuff myself.
Brain tenderizer for sure.

Look forward to seeing you get to play this machine!
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix it.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #196 on: December 21, 2021, 01:37:52 pm »
Dude, you're making great progress!  Quick question.... through all of your wood working pics, I don't see a compound miter saw or any reference to one.  I think it would of made some of the cutting easier, especially for some of the small pieces.

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #197 on: July 19, 2022, 07:49:23 pm »
Dude, you're making great progress!  Quick question.... through all of your wood working pics, I don't see a compound miter saw or any reference to one.  I think it would of made some of the cutting easier, especially for some of the small pieces.


Oh with out question, having a compound miter saw would be awesome for many of these cuts.  Ultimately at the end of the day I have to work with what I have available to me though, and I can make due with a skill saw for a lot of it.  Jig saw, router, and skill saw have been sufficient for most cuts. Speaking of working... it's high time I get back to this project!  I got some new router parts I discovered (bushings!) and bits to help me with the LED front panel designs.  Got the designs printed up and am working on creating templates and a proof of concept to make sure it all comes out as intended.  Hopefully I'll be back to posting some regular updates again soon!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #198 on: September 06, 2022, 08:10:09 pm »
Wow, this is one of the most thorough jobs I've read about. How wide is the final design for your CP? I would love to work with a 4 player layout like yours.

Do you have a basic CAD drawing just for the CP that you could share with us?


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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #199 on: September 07, 2022, 08:17:08 pm »
Wow, this is one of the most thorough jobs I've read about. How wide is the final design for your CP? I would love to work with a 4 player layout like yours.

Do you have a basic CAD drawing just for the CP that you could share with us?

Thanks Yomer.  Hopefully it's all useful.  As far as sharing specific CAD files for the CP, I'm not there yet.  The approximate current dimensions of the CP are 47 3/16 inches wide by 18 inches deep.  I intend on making a few more adjustments to it yet as well both for stability and I'm shifting the spinner over to the left a bit so there's more wrist rest room.

I'm once again behind where I wanted to be from my last post.  My attempts at getting a good template for my light design isn't turning out so far, so it would just be another big post of failed efforts.   :banghead:    Short update is that my router is apparently poorly designed for precision inlay work.  The locking mechanism on it prevents you from ever being able to keep the base plate perfectly centered to the bit because it has way too much play in it and never locks in the same place twice.  That means using a centering cone / pin to precisely center the baseplate with a bushing is a futile effort.  I don't currently have a great solution and am not wanting to buy a new router just for this part.  If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears as always.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2022, 03:51:13 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #200 on: October 14, 2022, 11:41:58 am »
OK.  I decided I need to get my butt posting again even if it's chalked full of failures.  More will come next week (hopefully with successes) as I decided to spend more money to get this thing moving again.

So as mentioned before, the router I have (a craftsman) which I bought years ago when I started this project without knowing anything about routers, has a major flaw in that it's impossible to keep the base aligned to center to use bushings.  As soon as you unlock the base, there is a crazy amount of play in it, so removing it to change out a bit inevitably changes the alignment of the base every single time.

Here is a quick view of a test piece where I'm trying to run a simple straight 1/8th cut down the length of the board.  The idea was to be perfectly centered on the line, but that didn't happen.  As I worked further down the line, the further off and wobbly it became due to router rotation and the bit not being perfectly centered to the base.



Here you can see the full pattern I'm attempting to do drawn out on the board.  This is just a test piece, but it's showing me things I need to account for as I go (so it's serving its purpose).  First I noticed that when I take out that center cut, with the back of it being channeled out down to about 1/16th remaining, it's pretty easy to bend it.  Looking back at my laminated test from almost a year ago, that feels a lot stronger, so I'm trusting the laminate and glue will add a little more strength to the final thing.  It will also have 1/8th plexi behind it so that should help as well.  The main goal here is that if it gets kicked, it won't weaken or break over time.




After this I attempted to route out one of the larger rectangle shapes at the top of the design, and to no surprise ran into all kinds of issues due to the base alignment being off.

As a reminder, the end product will look like this small test pattern on the right of this photo with the laminate applied, producing an evenly lit shape, but with LEDs running on either side of it that can animate patterns up and down the whole design.



This finally caused me to break down and rationalize that no matter what, I need a better router to do this kind of precision work.  I also justified that my current router is too damn big for me to be able to use it effectively to trim a lot of the complex pieces on this thing when I put the laminate on.  I was hoping I could find what I wanted in the local stores, but unfortunately all they seemed to have was a more expensive battery only model, which I don't want.  I watched a lot of videos and the DeWalt 611 palm router seemed to get high praise from everything, so I ended up ordering that on Amazon.  Should be here late this weekend.



I'm not sure how it will perform with all the other types of router cuts I've been doing given this is a significantly lower HP router, but I figured I should definitely get the plunge base so I can do things right and only cut away 1/4" deep at a time.  This has a super simple turn of a knob to drop the bit by a 1/4" in 4 steps, so that should speed things up and give a much better result.  The design of the base also suggests far better precision no matter if you are lowering or raising it or changing bits due to the spiral design.  Every review I read said it was super accurate.

To support using this new toy, I also went out and bought some precut oak boards that are 1/4" thick.  The thickness is just a little bit taller than the bushing, which is what you need.  The idea here is I wanted as perfect of a straight edge as I could get, but from all sides so I now have a reliable flexible pattern to cut out any rectangle shape up to about 9 inches.  I used hardboard in the past to do this but because I don't have a miter saw, it's a lot harder to make perfect rectangles.  So this allowed me to only worry about 2 sides instead of 4.  The hardboard is also pretty much exactly the same height as the bushings, so I wanted a little more wiggle room to be safe.  I also remembered after trying this just how hard that is using a skill saw.  I kept getting edge chip and slight wobble even when trying to run the saw sled against a straight edge board.  In the end, I went old school and relied on a hand saw in a plastic saw guide, and that got me the best straight 90 degree cuts.



Now I should be ready for when my new router arrives.

In other news the white board I've been using for my work table is pretty warped now is kind of unusable for this type of router work.  The warps make it impossible to lay long pieces down flat.  Not sure if that  happened from the board staying in my garage, or perhaps a combo of that plus me bending the board the past year with clamps with some of the techniques I used for routing.  Either way, I need to find a new flat table board solution.  I have an old laminated desk board in storage I might try to use, but it also has a pretty thick edge that might be problematic for my clamps to fit on.  We shall see.

I also need to think about how I'm going to translate my test board into a pattern.  The pattern needs to account for the additional offset that the bushing requires.  Once I have that made, it should be super simple to get consistent results between the 2 panels I'm making.  Stay tuned!
« Last Edit: October 30, 2022, 11:13:10 pm by vertexguy »

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #201 on: October 14, 2022, 11:51:46 am »
The right tool definitely helps.... especially when you are doing all the intricate things you are attempting.  Hard to justify the $$$ if there's not a longer term use though.  Luckily my Craftsman router worked for my simple cuts.

Good to see you making progress!

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Re: The Kline's Arcade - 4 player - first build, help needed!
« Reply #202 on: October 29, 2022, 06:18:15 pm »
My new router arrived a little later than I'd hoped, but it's here, and so far it's working out great.


First thing I did to test it out was to check the alignment once I had the bushing in the plunger base.
For those that don't know like me before this, bushings are round metal guides that fit into the center hole on the base plate. They have an extruded smaller metal hole to ride along a template and your bit pokes through that smaller hole. 



You also have to account for the offset from the bushing outer edge to the blade with your templates. The part that annoys me is they don't include a centering tool when you buy a router!
 You have to order it separate, and I can't get one in the local home improvement stores.  So rather than let that stop me once again, I figured out an alternative.
 
The 1/4" shank on my tiny 1/8" bit is pretty much the perfect size to fit in the hole of the bushing I'm using. 



I flipped it upside down and left as much of the shank sticking out as possible to make my own centering pin.



I loosened the screws on the base plate so I can align it.  Then I realized I had to lock the plunge base in place before the next step or it would still have too much play.

After locking the base, drop the plunge base onto the bit and move the baseplate accordingly so the bit pokes through the bushing.



That centers the base plate. Then tighten the baseplate screws and its good to go. I let the plunge base extend full again and then I have enough room to remove the bit and flip the bit around.

If I have to unlock the baseplate for any reason, it then must be recentered.

I first did some tests with the scrap piece I initially started on by setting up my rectangle templates to be 1/8th wider than the pattern and started cutting. 



This piece already had a bad center cut line and one messed up rectangle from my old router, but the new rectangles came out decent.



That gave me the confidence to attempt to make a template. I saved some pieces from an old TV cabinet we were getting rid of for this purpose.

The back of it was a nice 1/4 thick piece of mdf.  However mistakes were still abound.  I later discovered I somehow messed up my pattern dimensions.

Here's the finished template.



I decided not to put the center line in the template as I will only need a straight edge for that. Then I decided to test the template out on more scrap wood.  Glad I did.

Turns out my offset wasnt quite enough, so my resulting pattern is 1/16th too small.

I also realized after the fact that I need to only make 1/4" deep cuts at a time, and most importantly, vaccuum out the dust in between passes.

Because I didnt vaccuum as I went or in between depth cuts, the dust gathered in the corners of the template and change the shape of it. So as I went deeper with each pass, the corners became more packed with saw dust which prevented me from getting the right shape deeper down.



Once I got all the rectangles cut I wanted to test cut a center line to make sure it would be perfectly aligned.
 Here you can see 3 attempts, starting on the right and going left, adjusting after each.

My guess is the first cut was off slightly because of the router tipping ever so slightly.

To fix that, I built up an equal height set of boards on the opposite side of the template and that got me the third cut.

The second was me moving the template further away in hopes of correcting it but that wasn't the issue.



Now with support on both sides, I'm ready to cut the center line.  I did this in 3 passes to get all the way through, moving 1/4" deeper each pass.

The result was almost right. Turns out I didn't have everything taped down well enough. When I finished the cut I noticed there was a slight wiggle to the bottom boards.

It started nice and centered but it gets off by about a 1/16th by the other end. I'm gonna think on it a few days and decide if I like the smaller design or if I want to widen it.  I'm also debating the center line because while it looks ok, it weakens the board a lot more.  It will have some additional strength from laminate and then plexi pressed against the back. Once I decide on those items I'll cut the final pieces, laminate them, and use the template to add the design.



Hopefully I can post some better updates again soon!
« Last Edit: October 30, 2022, 11:33:18 pm by vertexguy »