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Homemade plastic injection molding?
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darkcape:
I also looked at vacuum molding. but the big issue here was having something solid enough to bump into (A lot of drunk people wandering around an arcade machine leaning up against the site could be disastrous) would be great to use vacuum molding to create a mold but then what to fill it with that would be Strong enough to take minor abuse. Looking at the resin idea looks like the right path. I actually thought of using glue slicks melted down but could see people with fingernails scratching it. Resin idea looks great just having hard time finding a distributor. (will post one when I find one)
Mooters:
Found the link to the article if anyone was interested ;)

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/17/226237&mode=thread&tid=101

Spyder
Stormy151:
Vacuform.  The "bumpy" parts on the Star Wars cabinets were probably vacuformed.  In the case of vacuforming, it's not the molds- but the machine that's "relatively" expensive- in terms of money, or time if you build one.  You can build a home vacuformer fairly cheap, but the bigger you get- the harder it is to heat the plastic, unless you build one with large heating elements, which costs $$$.  Small ones can use the oven as a heat source.

For those that don't know about vacuforming, basically, a sheet of plastic (most often styrene) is suspended in a frame.  You heat the plastic until it becomes soft.  You have your mold placed on a table full of holes (kind of like an air hockey table but bigger and more holes).  You drape the heated soft plastic over the mold, and activate the vacuum, which sucks air through the holes in the table and the plastic forms around the part.

Here's an example.  Make your own Stormtrooper armor:

http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/vacuumforming/index.html
Generic Eric:
How durable is this stuff?  Is it good for buttons and such? how about gun holsters?
Stormy151:
Depends on the plastic/thickness.  Styrene not so much, but ABS would probably work for a gun holster, so would Kydex.

Buttons, probably not.  You could probably make a cover that fit over an existing button though.

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