Woody - Arcade Stick

[edekoning]

Last year I bought a mister, and have since wanted to build a nice case and arcade stick for it. I actually started on the case last year, but was not happy with how it was turning out. The dimensions seemed off (look fine in Sketchup though), and the woodworking was somewhat sloppy due to the small size and overall complexity of the design. Threw the entire thing in the bin, got demotivated and did not start on a new design. Instead got hooked on playing shoot'em-ups, and started collecting physical Switch games from this genre. Recently I really wanted to get an arcade stick for my Switch to play all these games with. Then it hit me ... I was planning to build one for my Mister after I got the case build, but gave up before ever starting on the stick ...

So started working on a design in Sketchup: clean front and top, with just a joystick and 8 action buttons. USB on the back as well as 4 additional buttons for start, select, home, function. Rounded edges on the front and back to give a nice look. Made out of plywood, no RGB, just plain black buttons and black balltop.

[edekoning]

Went to the local DIY shop for something unrelated, when I noticed they were selling furniture panels of various types of wood. Looking through these I ended up buying a 100cm x 40cm x 18mm oak panel, which is roughly 39" x 16" x 3/4". I have never worked with real wood before, so that got me excited, and an oak arcade stick sure would be fancy 

This got me thinking about the design again. I can cut this board in 4 equal pieces, and then stack 3 to get the base shape of the arcade stick. I would need to adjust the design and dimensions somewhat. And think about how to actually cut all the holes/recesses and such, as this will essentially be a block of wood. Or I could cut/route each panel separately and then glue them together, which sounds much simpler.

Based on the new dimensions I made a paper drawing of all dimensions, and placed it on the oak panel to get a better feel for the size. I then cut the first (top) panel.

Went to https://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html to print out several button layouts, to see which one I preferred the most. This ended up being the Clustered arcade layout:

This layout uses the standard Japanese arcade design, but the proportions are set so the buttons fit together more evenly and closely. The buttons form equilateral triangles and a square.

Positioned it on the top panel and used a small phillips head screwdriver and hammer to mark all the centers for drilling. Then used Forstner bits to cut the 24mm hole for the joystick, and 30mm holes for the buttons.

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I will be using Seimitsu screw-in buttons, which support wood panels up to 12mm (1/2"). Some quick freehand routing to remove 8mm.

For the joystick I bought a Seimitsu SELS-70X-S, which is essentially a silent version of the LS-56/58 that I have used in my X-Men build. It came with a flat mounting plate, and to achieve a reasonable mounting depth, I need a panel thickness of at most 12mm. To make routing easier and more precise, I got some spare strips of wood and used double sided tape to stick them to the panel snug against the mounting plate. Router bits always leave rounded inside corners, so cleaned those up with a chisel. Its an extremely snug fit, so I don't want to fully press the mounting plate down yet, for fear of not being to easily remove it anymore. Hence the last picture might look its crooked.

[edekoning]

With the first panel done, on to the second panel.

For additional rigidity, I want to have two compartments. One for the joystick and one for the buttons and controller board.
Started with using a jigsaw to make rough cutouts. Like before, used some spare parts of MDF, and double sided tape to stick them to the panel.
Then just router copied the hole for the first compartment, and repeated for the second compartment.

As cables will need to be able to run between these compartments, I routed two small channels between them. Second panel done.

Glue time! Man this is both annoying and nerve wrecking at the same time. The glue make the panels slippery, and the clamps keep slightly shifting the panel alignment, urgh.

[edekoning]

One week later, cut the third (bottom) panel and noticed it was no longer flat, as it started bowing. I guess real wood does that 

I want to have plexi at the bottom, so need to route out 3mm. Decided to do that first, as its fairly easy to do now, but more tricky when the bottom panel is all done and glued to the rest.

I ran out of double sided tape and had to go buy some new. Unfortunately, panels would not stick properly with the new tape. Looks like the old one was thicker, thus able to be used on a slightly rough wood surface. The new one is so thin its useless, oh well, time to for some screws I guess. Seems I forgot to take pictures, but what I did was route out 3mm roughly 2cm wide around the edges. Then I used a jigsaw to cut rough holes, and glued the panel on to the other panels.

I made such a stupid mistake and realized too late. I had glued to bottom panel upside down, man I was so upset with myself  I was too busy with all those clamps, glueing a bowing panel, and removing spilled out glue, that by the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. I ripped off all clamps and tried pulling the wood loose, but it was not budging. Fast drying glue ... ... ...

Anyway the show must go on, so I router copied the holes of the middle panel onto the bottom panel. The result is somewhat interesting, with a 3mm slot around the entire inside. Flipping the arcade stick, looking at the top and the final height, it starts to look rather nice already.

[edekoning]

Now I still need to route out that 3mm for the plexi, so how to do that. I started watching some random woodworking videos on Youtube, until one got gave me an idea.

Take a spare piece of wood, and using a circular saw, cut a hole that matches the dimension of the plexiglas. Then cut this panel to size => slightly bigger than the arcade stick. Now we essentially have a window frame that can be clamped onto the arcade stick. There is enough surface area width to keep the router stable while cutting. I then keep 3 clamps on at all time, and move them around while routing. So happy that turned out nice. There are some router marks on the middle brace, but those I will sand away.

[edekoning]

I needed to drill 5 holes in the back, one for the USB connector, and 4 for buttons. However, I also need to use the router to run a round-over bit along the top and bottom of the front and back side. The holes would interfere with the router bit, so I need to route the edges before drilling the holes.

The oak furniture panel I bought was chamfered along side the long edges. At the start of the build I debated whether or not trim the panel to get rid of this chamfer. But when you stack the panels together it does look nice and breaks-up otherwise boring sides.

[edekoning]

I only routed the edges of the backside, so I could put the case on its still flat front side. This would allow me to drill the holes downwards, instead of sideways.

To prevent tear-out during drilling I wanted to clamp a piece of scrap wood to the inside. I took no picture of this, but the entire setup with the weight of the clamps on one side, and the case standing on its side, was shaky as hell. Then I realized I had this 3mm slot that I would be cutting through, and thought that could be an additional source of tear-out. Luckily, we recently bought some wall art that was protected with a sheet of 3mm MDF. So I cut a strip from this, and jammed it in the slot. And look at that, an almost perfect fit.

I then spent another hour cutting strips to fill up the entire slot along the inside, but none would go in easily. Most likely due to glue buildup inside the slot, and or the slot not actually being 3mm everywhere. So I just gave up on this.

The drilling of the holes went fine until the last one (figures). I guess I did not tighten the clamps enough, but as I started to drill, the vibration made the clamps fall off, shifting the case slightly. And before I knew it the hole was slightly offset compared to the others.

With that out of the way, I rounded the front edges with the router, marking the wood working part of the build essentially done.

[edekoning]

Time for sanding. Lots of sanding as I caused a lot of wood burns with my router work. I then quickly realized that sanding oak is a lot work work than sanding plywood, or MDF. Especially when sanding by hand (my sander broke a while ago). I mainly focused on getting the outside to look nice and smooth. Sanding away all the corner burn marks on the inside was too much for me. but hey its the inside, to no-one will care about it (except me).

Then it was time to oil the wood. I bought 2 cans of Osmo TopOil, which should protect the wood from water and dirt. First two layers of the natural color, which adds some white pigment to slightly brighten the wood. Then two layers of clear satin, to slightly darken the wood and give it a somewhat wet look. 10 hours of drying between each layer 

The result is awesome, and wood feels really smooth and nice to touch. Super happy with it.

[edekoning]

Next up is plexiglass, mounting of the controller board (GP2040-CE V5.6E - Fight Board), and wiring everything up. Waiting on some parts to arrive now, and I expect to not have any time in the coming 2 weeks to work on this. So might be a while before I post any progress.