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| telengard:
Very good idea going modular. If you're looking for another example you can check out mine: http://users.adelphia.net/~bsturk/mame.html And I have a marble madness panel. :) Just haven't tried it yet with AnalogMame ( or found someone to play with that likes the game either ) Good luck with your cab... |
| DougHillman:
Bah. I no longer have any interest in Dzus fasteners. telengard, I'd seen your site before and really like the idea of using rack mount stuff. Donno why that never occured to me in the first place, as I'm a DJ. :) What I don't want though, is much in the way of visable hardware. I'm not overly keen on the abundance of rack mount screws that are on the modules. I'd also like something that's quicker and easier to change. While discussing this with my girlfriend she pointed me in a good direction. She talked about some sort of friction fit. Her approach was a little different than what I'm thinking of now, but it got me going in this direction. What I'm invisioning now is a system with something like the rack mount rails in the base control panel shell with sets of pins imbedded in each module. What I see are some sorta pins with the springed ball bearings at the end. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Any idea where to get something like this? |
| Garrett:
I'll add my 0.02 here - I recently finished my modular panel, and it's working out really well so far (but still needs a bit of tweaking). I've got 11 panels, with a variety of buttons, joysticks, spinners, and a trackball. Each panel is hooked onto a bar at the top of the CP box and then connected at the bottom with a rubber latch. I wanted to make it easy to move panels around and not mess with screws or bolts. I can add or remove a panel in a few seconds. My wire connections are via molex connectors. I recently had to move all of my wiring from the main part of the cab to directly below the CP box because it was bunching up too much. Works great now. The unused wires hang down out of the way. The panels themselves are constructed of 1/2" acrylic with a cover of 1/8" translucent blue plexi. I'm hoping at some point to illuminate the panel from below. Pics are here: http://home.wi.rr.com/mschwab/mame. Still doing a bunch of tweaking, touchup, adding artwork, etc, but as far as functionality, everything works perfectly. |
| DougHillman:
--- Quote from: Garrett on March 12, 2004, 02:08:12 pm ---I'll add my 0.02 here - I recently finished my modular panel, and it's working out really well so far (but still needs a bit of tweaking). I've got 11 panels, with a variety of buttons, joysticks, spinners, and a trackball. Each panel is hooked onto a bar at the top of the CP box and then connected at the bottom with a rubber latch. I wanted to make it easy to move panels around and not mess with screws or bolts. I can add or remove a panel in a few seconds. My wire connections are via molex connectors. I recently had to move all of my wiring from the main part of the cab to directly below the CP box because it was bunching up too much. Works great now. The unused wires hang down out of the way. The panels themselves are constructed of 1/2" acrylic with a cover of 1/8" translucent blue plexi. I'm hoping at some point to illuminate the panel from below. Pics are here: http://home.wi.rr.com/mschwab/mame. Still doing a bunch of tweaking, touchup, adding artwork, etc, but as far as functionality, everything works perfectly. --- End quote --- Good job Garrett. Yours is one that I've looked at before, got the site bookmarked and will probably end up with a wall full of inspiration as you have there. :) I need to start printing out all the modular panels. Again, as with some of the other options I've contemplated, I'm really trying to come up with something fairly solid, easily removable, and visually unobtrusive. My GF suggested (along with some other ideas during our brainstorming session) a method similar to yours. Hooking under a rail in the back and then some sorta latch or friction fit in the front. We'd have to find some way to do it with no visible latches though, and I think that might be difficult. I really like the idea of using acrylic for the entire panel and lighting it from beneath. I've seen some interesting stuff done with etched acrylic that has LED's or EL lighting run around the edges. I'd give my left nut for a nice SW pin like you've got there. You think I could sell a testicle on the black market for enough to buy one? ;) I'm a bit of a SW fan myself. Here's a pic of one of the walls in my (unfinished) basement. |
| FractalWalk:
I've got absolutely no experience with modular designs, but if i were to design one, I would probably have all the module freely sit on rails that are secured by a single bar on the front of the panel that hinges up and down. The back of the panel would be slotted to hold the module's "lip" in place. That way you have only one fastener to open/close at a time and swapping modules would be quick. |
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