I'm making my first cabinet! - It now has a name! Ultra Violet!

[yfdgricker]

I am attempting to build my first Arcade cabinet and surprisingly it is going pretty well. I don't have a name for it yet but I loved Knievel's NEON idea and incorporated two 12 inch purple neon rings to the side of the cab. It will also have two 8 inch strait purple neon sticks in the base to light up the ground under the cabinet. Nice ground FXs The cabinet itself with be black with black T-molding. I haven't decided whether I'll add some purple accents to the bottom, I will try it and see how it looks since I can easily throw another coat of black over it if I don't like it. I chose purple mainly because I knew it would be easier for my wife to let me build it if I included her favorite color in the design.

A brief history:

I had always dreamed of having an arcade game in my house since I was a little kid (who hasn't). My wife and I saw the Midway 12 in 1 home cabinets and after very little convincing, we bought one. I started looking at some sites for more information about how I could hook up a computer to the video and audio in jacks so I could play the 12 games on the machine or switch and play others via MAME. I stumbled across ArcadeCab.com (http://www.arcadecab.com/Intro.htm) by Mike Trello and well one thing led to another. I also purchased the Project Arcade book and looked at countless other sites before I decided to attempt to build a cabinet. Out of all the sites though, Arcade Cab.com's step by step plans just made sense to me.

I'm now about 65% of the way complete with the cabinet.


Materials I'm using:

I bought two sheets of 3/4 cabinet grade plywood from Home Depot which I used for the sides, front door, base, shelves, speaker area and top of the cabinet. I bought one sheet of 1/2 MDF from Home Depot which I used for the back areas which no one would see.


Guts:

The guts of the machine will be a AMD 1.8GHz PC, with a 60GB HD and a wireless card to allow me to remotely make changes or add stuff. I'm using an Altec Lansing 2.1 speaker setup. I'm using WinXP, MAMEWah for the front end and several emulators for the back end.


Control panel:

I just bought a pair of arcade style joysticks from EBay before I decided to build my cab so I'm working those into the design. (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8283228200) They are set up so that down the road, I can remove them and put in an X-Arcade or a custom built CP.


Items that might help others:

In case your interested, I found the 1/16 slot router bit at Lowes for $15.95 and the arbor was another $10.95. It saved me from having to order the T-molding bit online. I've attached the links to the products on their site.
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=227321-353-85526MC&lpage=none
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=227316-353-92813C&lpage=none

Routing was one of the funnest parts of the project! Literally 15 minutes was all it took to route both sides and the control panel and Neon holes. It was great and pretty easy. If you were worried about routing, route a test piece of wood and you'll see you have nothing to worry about (Don't forget the T-Molding will cover up any minor slip ups)

My second favorite tool: the jigsaw! It's amazing what you can cut with one of those.

The cabinet will soon be making the trip across town from the woodshop I'm building it in to my third floor entertainment room where it will be painted, the computer will be installed (I'm leaning towards open mounting everything rather than having the mobo and components in a case), and the neon accents will be installed.

I'm going to put together a site with pictures and information. Hopefully I can help others who are building their first cabinet. I know I had some things pop up during the construction that I looked up on other peoples sites and this forum. You never know what you will run into until you start building!

The site will be at http://www.steelvalleywebdesign.com/mamecab

I'm sure there were other things I was going to share but I can't think of them now. I'll post more as things progress.

Thanks to everyone for convincing me to build this cabinet. It's been fun so far!

Greg

[arcade-mad]

Hi
looking good so far but i wouldnt use those joysticks you will be better off using proper arcade sticks and buttons and connecting them to your pc via an i pac check out ultimarc there you will find all the buttons in all colours and all the joysticks you need.  http://www.ultimarc.com./

Hope this helps

regards

[gamecreature]

Or if you don't want to buy new, you can surf the arcade parts section on Ebay for joysticks. I have six joysticks and only the last pair I paid for indirectly, because they came with the cabinet I bought. If you can't find parts within your price range, you're not looking hard enough. There's several nice vendors right here on this board. Just make sure you factor in the depth of the plywood when you're getting your parts.

[psychopanda]

Nice looking cab, wish I could cut circles that well!

[yfdgricker]

Thanks for the joystick info. I'll most likely wire my own custom control pad. I'm only using those joysticks temporarily because I had them. Rest assured they will be replaced in due time.

The side circles were cut with a jigsaw, a steady hand and the knowledge that the T-Molding will cover any slight imperfections in the circle. All in all they turned out really good.

[Crafty]

Congratilations welcome...

Its looking excelent so far..

Cant wait to see more photos

[danny_galaga]

very nice work. circles look good. whats going in them? just the t molding? if so you will never have to worry about ventilation (",)

[yfdgricker]

very nice work. circles look good. whats going in them? just the t molding? if so you will never have to worry about ventilation (",)

The circles in the side will be T-Molded and a 12 inch purple neon subwoofer ring will be placed around the opening. There will be artwork in the holes illuminated by the neons.

Update: I love weekends cause I get to work on my cabinet. Tonight we moved the cabinet from the basement woodshop to it's third floor resting place. I owe my dad big time for that! Who's brilliant idea was it to build the entertainment room on the third floor? I spend most of the night countersinking screws and filling the screw holes with wood filler. I then sanded and applied the primer basecoat to both the cabinet and myself. B-E-A-utiful (the cabinet, not myself). I also picked up a gallon of high gloss black enamel paint and some foam rollers. The nice thing about moving the cabinet to my house  is that I can now put coats of paint on at night when I get home from work. That means the cabinet ought to be all painted by next weekend with several coats of the high gloss black.

I'm getting antsy for the neons and the PC Motherboard I ordered to come in. It's been a week and I haven't heard any shipping info for either of them. Oh well, hopefully they will be in by the time I get the painting done and the speakers installed. I've decided to skip a case for the new motherboard. I think I'll mount it to the inside of the cabinet. That ought to be cool.

I got two speaker covers I ordered online a few days ago and they will look great! I'll add some pics and details about the covers on my Mame Cabinet site sometime this week. I also recieved the T-molding for the cab. It was perfect, all 100 feet of it! Maybe I'll hear about the PC and the neons tomorrow.

Time to wash the primer basecoat off me.

The pic below shows the basecoat on the cab. Nothing really fancy there.

[leapinlew]

Lookin good!

The thing about primer.... it doesn't want to wash off that easy...

[yfdgricker]

Ok, I painted the first coat of black last night and it's looking sharp. See the attached pic.

I'm trying to come up with a name for the cab now. I'm trying to use purple in it (but not absolutely necessary). It will have purple neons, MAMEWah custom layouts w/ purple and maybe some purple paint highlights on the sides of the cab.

I was searching on Google for purple just to see what came up and I ran across a site with the words "Monsters of the Purple Twilight". Might work. My wife wasn't too moved by it. I thought with the artwork on the sides of the game characters on hexagons bursting out it might work. I'm making a marquee with that theme just to see if it sticks. "Monsters of the Purple Twilight" was a reference to the German Zepplins used against Brittan during WWI.

[yfdgricker]

Since this is a learning process, here is one of those 'don't do what I did' things.

After putting 3 coats of high gloss black enamel paint on my cabinet and adding the haze to the sides with a can of purple spray paint from about 2 feet away, I decided I wanted it a little more glossy. I bought 2 cans of clear high gloss spray paint thinking I can spray a coat on the cabinet and give it a mirror finish. Didn't work. It's impossible to get an even coat with a can of spray paint. Maybe if I had a gallon of the clear coat and a paint sprayer or foam roller it would work but not using a can of spray paint. So I threw two more coats of the black enamel over the cabinet and it's back to my pre experiment days.

So for anyone building a cabinet, spray paint clear coat doesn't work.

I also went to Lowes and had them cut the acrylic for the marquee. They cut me 3 pieces the size I needed because that's how many they could get from the piece I bought. Now I have a spare. I also picked up some small black wood screws to attach the marquee holders to the wood. ($9.95) Oh yeah, I picked up a rubber mallot too to smack the T-Molding in place when I get to that point.

I picked up a 512MB stick of ram for the 1.8GHz PC motherboard I got off Ebay from Circuit City ($59.00 - $30 rebate = $29).

I picked up two SPST push buttons to hook up to the motherboard so you can turn it on and off without opening the cabinet. Catalog #: 275-1566 (2.75/each)
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062545&cp=&origkw=normally+open+momentary+switch&kw=normally+open+momentary+switch&parentPage=search

I'm still waiting for my neons to come in from Los Angeles. Then I can get that part finished.

[leapinlew]

Kneivel said he didn't have any issues with his neons, but my neons cause my monitor to flicker really bad. Check it out just in case you need to shield yours before you put the monitor in.

[yfdgricker]

Good news and bad news. The neons came today! That's the good news. The bad news, one ring doesn't work at all and the other lights up completely for about 15 minutes then half of it shuts off. Guess I'll have to give the company I ordered them a call Monday or Wednesday.

Also, the 8 inch neons look ok but didn't get the wide dispersal feel I was going for. I might drop the cab on its back again and try relocating the neons. Maybe a couple of small mirrors to reflect some of the light out might do the trick.

Other than that, it looks great. T-Molding was a pain and there are still places where the T-molding doesn't want to stay down. I'll worry about those tomorrow. I hate T-molding! Grrr.

I also worked on mounting the motherboard, power supply, subwoofers, hard drive and CD drive but I couldn't quite get the PC to work. I'll work on it tomorrow.

I'll post a picture of the cab so far tomorrow.

The neons aren't affected by the monitor. Whew.

[yfdgricker]

I haven't updated my progress since July 11 because I've been too busy working and playing games. Ok, ok, more playing games and less working. I'll start with a photo taken just this past weekend so you can see what I currently have. Then I'll add pictures leading up to the final project. If you can't wait and want to see all of the photos and info, go to http://www.steelvalleywebdesign.com/mamecab/index.html



Here is a great shot showing my Ultra Violet cab and my Midway 12 in 1.



One more photo with the lights off in the room. The bottom lights, neon rings and Front Marquee lighting is a little more purple than what shows in the photo. My camera likes to capture those a little more bluer then they are.



I'm currently still trying to come up with some ideas for side art. I might try the Ultra Violet lettering in vinyl side art. I'm going to be ordering the custom marquee this week. Right now it just has a paper one, double layered. It looks good but not great.

I'll post more pics this weekend!

[danny_galaga]

well done! now whatever you do for side art, make sure it deals with the hole feature properly to give it a homogenous look.