Fiber Optic Lights
Okay, this is the part I've been excited to talk about. I haven't seen this done yet and this is probably going to be the thing that makes this cabinet different from others.
As a kid I remember going to the mall and I always had to go into Spencers. If you don't have one of these, basically it's a store that has different kinds of lights, various adult themed games and novelties that are tame enough to be housed in a mall. The place always smelled of incense, at Halloween they have tons of masks and full sized monsters. Lots of beer themed stuff...you get the idea.
Anyway, they always had these cool fiber optic looking plant things that slowly spun around and changed colors. As a kid this was about the coolest thing I ever saw. Since this arcade cabinet is to play 80s games that I loved, and what guy doesn't like lights and buttons, I decided to see if I could work fiber optics into the cabinet somehow.
While on Ebay I ran across a fiber optic UFO. I thought this would be really cool if I could put this UFO on top of my cabinet. That's how I got the Alien theme. Then I thought, wouldn't it be cool to have fiber optic stars on the sides of the cabinet. Well the answer is yes so I went about figuring out how to do that.
Well let me just say it isn't easy finding fiber optic fibers. Searches mostly turn up cables for computers or super expensive star field kits. I finally found a place that sold fiber of different diameters by the foot. I bought 100' of 1mm, I probably need about 200' more but that's just a guess for right now.
Fiber doesn't do anything unless there is a light at the other end. I needed what I will call a light engine. These things are pretty expensive, like $50+. I thought about just getting a bunch of Christmas lights or trying to do something with LEDs. Then I thought, hey dummy, you bought a Fiber Optic UFO that is plenty bright and has a color wheel so the fibers change colors, and you only spent $10.
So I went back on Ebay and found some other fiber optic UFOs. I found an auction for 2, they were a little different than the one I bought earlier. My criteria was it must have color wheel and it must plug into the wall (some run on batteries only). I won the auction for the 2, I think I paid about $12, figured the 2nd one would be a good backup if I totally destroyed the first one. When the package came one of the UFOs didn't work. I emailed the seller and he quickly sent me another one for no charge. I opened up one of the good ones and the bad one, found a broken wire due to the power convertor breaking off the plastic UFO base. These things also had Christmas lights in them and a mechanism to spin the fibers, neither of which I wanted in my light engine.
I ripped out the Christmas lights, reattached the broken wire, crossed my fingers and plugged it in. the light came on, the color wheel started to spin, and I was a happy guy. I busted out the Rotozip, cut the base out of the UFO, built a little wooden box out of MDF and mounted everything inside, mounted the heavy power convertor to the wood directly. Plugged it in again and everything still worked!
At this point I need to finish painting the cabinet so I can drill the holes to mount the fibers. Once I have all the fibers I'll know how big of a hole I need in the top of my light engine and I'll drill a hole.
I took a scrap piece of MDF and drilled 10 holes in random spots, stuck a piece of fiber in each and ran the mess into the light box. It worked great. You basically just drill a hole, put the fiber in and glue it down. I used electric tap to hold the fiber in place while the glue dried and wrapped electric tape around the bundle to keep it organized. Seemed to work out very well. I'm planning to use the same technique when I'm to that stage with the cabinet.
I still need to find a way to mount the light box in the cabinet. I'm thinking between the two speakers behind the marquee. I will need to ge able to get to it if the bulb burns out and I need to mounted at a central location to minimize how much fiber I need.
Here are pictures of the UFOs, the purplish one on the left is going on top of the cabinet, the grey one is one of the working cheaper models. There is a picture of the light box/light engine with the top off and a pic of my test piece of mdf.