Since I’ve been stuck at home a lot during COVID-19, one of my projects was to rebuild the control panel for my arcade machine. I built the machine over 10 years ago and at the time I installed generic black buttons. I wanted to do lighting but to save costs I kept it generic. LED lights now are pretty cheap and easy to install. I wanted to light the panel but I didn’t want to stop with just lighted buttons. I wanted something that would make the whole panel pop.
I designed the control panel and cut it on the CNC machine in wood first to make sure everything lined up. MDF cuts easy and there were not real problems with that cut. Next up was the acrylic. The control panel is 36”x18”. Too big for the laser cutter. So I was going to have to use a diamond drag bit to engrave it.
After the underside controls were installed I added the graphics on top, mounted the acrylic and screwed in the buttons. The edge lighting for the top acrylic is mounted on a 90 degree aluminum bar painted black. The hardest part turned out to be the power wiring.
The RGB strips and 12 Player 1/2 buttons use 12v. The Coin, start buttons and Tron style joystick use 5v. So I wired up two different power supplies and used a DPST switch. Easy to say harder to wire and install.
However, when I got the whole thing together it was awesome! I’m using a IR blaster to so one remote can control all the RGB lights. It lets me change colors, flash fade and go crazy. I’m really happy with the final setup.
You can download the control panel graphic here:
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0244/6737/4114/files/large_control_panel_acrylic.jpg?v=1590948068
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Topic: Edge Lit Acrylic Control Panel (Read 1722 times)
