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Mameroom Ultimate Arcade II projects

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jlfreund:
INTRO + RECEIVING KIT:

A month ago, me and a friend from work decided to build a pair of cabinets.  We're currently about 80% done (and only 80% left to go)  :)  It's our first cabinet and the goal was to make it professional looking, cover classic games, and keep within a moderate time/money budget.

For my cabinet, I'm attempting a few embelishments that I'll try to highlight in the upcoming messages: master power switch, two headphone jacks, and volume control.

We considered building from scratch, but backed down and bought the Mameroom kits.  The main reason is because of the time factor to BYO, but we were also concerned that painting MDF wouldn't look as nice as laminate, and the only laminate we could find was $50/sheet countertop laminate.

We were extremely happy with the mameroom kits -- it was probably the best decision of the project.  The quality of the cuts and instructions were perfect.  All the holes and edges line up perfectly, and the best part is with two people working, we had TWO cabinets fully assembled in one day (actually about 8 hrs of work split over two days).

There were problems with the kit that I'll outline below, but due to the complexity of the design and shipping, I'm surprised that the problems were so minor...

- A few screws and fasteners were missing
- The keyboard tray drawer slides had the wrong parts
- About 5 boards got crunched in the corner during shipping (see last picture).
- There were a couple holes drilled in the wrong place
- The T-molding groove was maybe 1/16 - 1/32 off center.

The mameroom guy was very cooperative, mailing replacement hardware immediately at no cost.  I do think the package handling should be considered a problem, but hopefully the mameroom guys will keep an eye on this issue.  Although it sounds serious, I think the chances are in your favor that if there are a few crunched corners, that it won't impact the sturdiness or appearance, which was definately the case for us.  The wrong holes were interior and easily spotted, so it wasn't a problem, and the T-molding centering just caused the strip to stick out a few hairs on one side which isn't a big deal.

I'll talk more about working with the laminated MDF provided by mameroom in subsequent followups, but for now, I want to mention that if you plan to cut your own control panel from their material (as we did), I recommend buying or asking them to throw in an extra sample piece so you can practice your tools on it before cutting the final product.

Below are some pictures of receiving the mameroom kits. more to come...

Jason

jlfreund:
ASSEMBLING CABINET KIT:

First step: Assembling the cabinets... Even though the kit provided the T-molding and precut grooves, installing the T-molding was the most laborious part of the cabinet construction.  That, and assembling the top and bottom halves are definately two-man tasks. 

One idea I had is that before assembling the top and bottom, was to seal a few little cracks on top of the bottom half where the T-molding groove kind of makes the ends weak -- by repeatedly setting drops of wood glue into the area and clamping it shut (see bottom picture).  I don't know if this was necessary, but it definately made the adjoining surface stronger to support the weight of the top half.

One minor complaint I had for the Ultimate II is that the back panels just screw in with fasteners, so the monitor and comptuer areas are not accessable.  I chose to just leave off the back panels (for now).

Jason

jlfreund:
DESIGN CP LAYOUT:

Step 2: Build a control panel template.  We purchased a couple of control panel kits, but left the top blank so we could cut our own control layout. 

We narrowed down the choices to two designs (below).  The first one put the trackball in the middle, which is more typical, but we decided to go with the second layout which seems to be fairly different from other designs, but I think it has a few advantages:

- Having spinner down by trackball with 3 buttons provides best configuration for tempest and missile command.  If spinner were on top, it would be less ergonomic and it wouldn't have good access to any action buttons at the same level.

- Having the trackball between the joysticks, causes the two joysticks to be farther apart which is ok for two player games, but bad for two-joystick games like smash TV and crazy climber.  We found the joystick spacing of the second design to be a good compromise.  For two player, you're not so close you're bumping into each other, and for two-joystick games, your arms are at a more natural shoulder-width apart.

Another thing we did in the design was to raise the middle of 3 buttons for each button group to give a more ergonomic  feel.

I used a 1 1/8" forstner bit to cut the joystick and button holes - a great $15 investment from Lowes.  A couple words of caution when using this bit:

- When cutting plywood (for a template), be careful of slippage.  The plywood sheets can shear apart causing a 1/8" slip even after the bit is fully engaged through the first layer in the plywood.  This happened to me twice (out of ~20 holes), so I had to compensate when using the template to drill the actual control panel.

- When cutting acrylic (for the control panel overlay), be mindful of heat.  Using a template, heat isn't so much of a problem since melted plastic won't cause the bit to sleip.  Even so, I dipped the bit in a cup of water, twice for every hole to keep it cool when cutting through my plastic control panel overlay and MDF control panel top.

Jason

NightGod:
I see hands slamming into a joystick when taking a big swing on that trackball in the second layout.

TOK:

--- Quote from: NightGod on September 11, 2006, 01:19:32 am ---I see hands slamming into a joystick when taking a big swing on that trackball in the second layout.

--- End quote ---

Definitely. My panel is laid out in a similar fashion and people first trying Golden Tee always hit the player 2 stick in their follow through until they get used to it.

Edit: Looking at the picture, then my panel again, my sticks are actually further apart and not as close to the trackball and still have a stick hitting issue. Unless you're not into Golden Tee at all, I'd move them further apart since it looks like there is plenty of room. Nobody that has played my cab has ever complained about the distance between the sticks for Robotron. I'd estimate its about 3" further than your setup.

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