Mountain's MAME project COMPLETED WITH PICTURES 8-16-07

[mountain]

Hey everyone!

I have been lurking around here for a few months getting ideas and inspiration while slowly buying parts for our first MAME machine. Originally the goal was to build it with my son over the winter months. He is only 12 but loves the classics. He has an XBOX in his room but would rather go down to the local store to play the Galaga in the corner.

Like most of everyone here, I also have wanted an arcade machine of my own since the early 80s. I lived in Texas when the arcade boom hit and there was a huge arcade down the street from my house. After moving to Ohio in 82, we would spend Friday nights down at the Pizza Hut playing Pac man cocktail style.

So, I started searching for an old stripped cabinet and luckily found a guy on craigslist selling a bunch of machines. I picked up a decent cabinet that was a WWF Superstars that had a bad monitor. I spent the first month researching how to fix the monitor so I could use it. Long story short, fixed it, changed my mind. I am going to use a 21" flat panel CRT.

Original cabinet as I found it in the previous owners garage.



Here is the cabinet after gutting it an trimming the CP wings.



Completed

[mountain]

Here it is after I peeled the laminate off. Is that Kangaroo artwork? My wife thinks it is.

[mountain]

I spent about an hour on each side to get it down to bare wood. Gotta love heat guns.

[mountain]

I took off the front coin door panel because I want to build it out so it is easier to get to. The CP is 15" deep and it would be a pain to always bend over to put in a coin. (no coin buttons here)

Here is the new lower panel framed up.

[mountain]

Here is the wood to be bent. I notched it and soaked it to make easy to bend.

[mountain]

One last post.. I will post more pictures tomorrow.

I made the monitor shelf out of MDF and 2 x 3s. The monitor base is 9" in diameter so I decided to router a 9" hole in some 1/4" plywood and center it. This makes placement a snap. Once the base is in place all that needs done is to get the tilt and swivel correct. I will run L brackets from each corner of the monitor to secure it for the long haul.

[TOK]

Nice woodworking skills! Looks like its going to be nice. It was a Kangaroo.

[mountain]

Thanks TOK. My wife remembers playing Kangaroo but I don't. It's amazing to me that someone would ruin the artwork on that game by putting gray laminate over it. It looks like they scuffed it up with sandpaper to get the adhesive to stick. It looks like it was in great shape before that though.

[mountain]

Once I got the sides stripped I was able to see the water damage that was hiding underneath. I was able to dig out the bad areas and fill it with bondo.

After filling the area, I screwed and glued a piece of MDF on the inside for stability.

[mountain]

I notched out the area for the control panel. I did this before stripping the sides and then cleaned it up later.



Then I sanded and primed the inside edges and the top of the cabinet as well.

[mountain]

I had a hard time wrapping the new curved coin door panel. The first curve was fairly simple, but the lower (outside) curve was impossible. I broke the first piece trying to force it. My second try was a disaster as well. I tried to heat it up and ended up warping the laminate. So I cut my losses and salvaged what I could. I trimmed the original design and decide to just use the top (outer) half. Below is what I ended up with.

[mountain]

Here it is completed. It doesn't stick out as far as I had planned but I think that is probably a good thing. I like the way it looks. It should make putting coins in there a little easier.

[johnm160]

very nice work mountian I like the curved front.

[Crowquill]

Looks great so far. You also seem to be moving along at a pace few of us can match.

It is always a shame to see nice Atari side-art in that condition. All-in-all I'm kind of impressed that they put laminate over it instead of just painting it black. Kangaroo's actually a really fun game.

Thanks for posting the pic of the reinforced bottom edge. I always wondered how the casters were mounted.

[mountain]

Crowquill, I actually started this 6 weeks ago, I just finally got around to downloading the pictures. I will be caught up in a day or so and then I will post progress as it comes. I hope to hammer on the CP this weekend 

Thanks for the nice comments.

[(+_+)]

I had a hard time wrapping the new curved coin door panel. The first curve was fairly simple, but the lower (outside) curve was impossible. I broke the first piece trying to force it. My second try was a disaster as well. I tried to heat it up and ended up warping the laminate. So I cut my losses and salvaged what I could. I trimmed the original design and decide to just use the top (outer) half. Below is what I ended up with.

It's not easy do the trickier shapes and that's what makes it that much more appreciated and better to look at. It turned out very nice anyways.

[mountain]

Last weekend I removed the old speaker panel and fit an old pair of computer speakers I had lying around.

I took apart the speakers and painted them black to hide them.


I had to route out the top side of the panel because the speaker faces were not flat.


I took some old speaker grill material, remnants from my car audio days, and cut them down to size and screwed them to the panel.


Here it is mounted in the cabinet.

[tivogre]

Here it is completed. It doesn't stick out as far as I had planned but I think that is probably a good thing. I like the way it looks. It should make putting coins in there a little easier.

I feel your pain on those compound curved parts.  I broke about $50 worth of laminate doing (and redoing) my coin door panel:



Yours turned out great in the end!

[MameMaster!]

nice job so far...you know as soon as I recognized the cab I winced when I realized that they cut of the original "arms" of the cabinet to make room for the new control panel too....ouch.

Have fun!

[mountain]

...you know as soon as I recognized the cab I winced when I realized that they cut of the original "arms" of the cabinet to make room for the new control panel too....ouch.

Umm.....I did that.

[mountain]

tivogre, I saw your project 2-3 months ago just googling for ideas. Very impressive build!

When I started getting concerned about the coin door being too hard to reach, I remembered what you did. I may have had more luck if I had as many clamps as you do. Did you buy the company or something 

[tivogre]

tivogre, I saw your project 2-3 months ago just googling for ideas. Very impressive build!

When I started getting concerned about the coin door being too hard to reach, I remembered what you did. I may have had more luck if I had as many clamps as you do. Did you but the company or something 

Lol!

No.  Two things contributed to my clamp collection:

1.  I caught Sears "getting out of the business" on Bessey K-Bodies about 4 years ago.  They were liquidating the stock at ~75% off.  I bought out all I could find at the 4 local Sears stores.

2.  Each Christmas, I filled out the collection.  I have lots of relatives that want to but something in the $30 range.  I made a list each year of what clamp sizes I needed and e-mailed it out.

Thanks for the compliments on the build.  As you saw, I DID have to cheat a little and inject some epoxy behind the concave curves.  It's held up great;  no one would ever know (if I didn't broadcast it to the world on the web page)!

[mountain]

I got a lot done this past weekend. I wanted to get the control panel and the base done because the artwork was to be finished today. Well, I got the artwork done at a local print shop and it was not sized correctly 

Here is the CP waiting to be completed.




Here is a profile shot of the top. I based my design on kneivels design. I love the clean look and the layout is very comfortable. I figure why try to re-invent the wheel, his design is proven.



Here is a close up shot of the joystick mount. I purchased the Ultimarc Mag-stick plus sticks before doing a lot of research. Since they do not use a universal design I decided to use an old Wico joystick that came with the cabinet as a template to make a new mount for it. I then designed them to mount from the bottom for an easy swap if I don't like the Mag-sticks.





Here is a shot from the top showing the way they are mounted. Just need to make sure I don't use too long of a screw 

[mountain]

I found an old pinball plunger that I want to use with Virtual Pinball. I want a clean look so I decided to put the mounting base on the inside. I turned the mount around and mounted it backwards and also flipped it upside down. This was needed in order for it to mount correctly and to be level.

After drilling the holes and basically being committed, I realized that I forgot about the flipper buttons that I planned on putting on the side  I noticed that I would have the room, I just needed to 'mod' the base. I took my cut-off wheel and chopped it down.





It will be tight but they will fit now.

[mountain]

My Plexiglass for the top of the control panel showed up today. I really wanted to get it cut because the artwork should be done in a few days.

After much thought I ended up using the spacer that comes with the 3" Happ trackball. It is excactly the right size to use a a template for cutting the trackball hole. I spaced it about 1/4" off of a piece of scrap MDF because of the gap between the bearing and the cutter.



I then flipped the scrap piece and routered out the hole. It worked perfectly. So I left it assembled and clamped the Plexi to and did it again.



I am still amazed at how easy this was. Here is a shot around the trackball after I ran the 45 degree bit around it.



I finished cutting the rest of the holes and trimmed the outside edges of the panel.



By the way, those green clamps are on sale at Home Depot right now for only .99 cents .

[bfauska]

Looking good.  Nice idea with spacing the template off of the panel for the gap on the router bit.

Looking forward to seeing your artwork.

Later,
Brian

[Chris G]

Great work so far!  I wish I could make 1/10th your progress during this span.

[Knievel]

Key-ripes..did you sneak into my garage and use my CP templates? 

Nice work on the Coin door panel.

[mountain]

Key-ripes..did you sneak into my garage and use my CP templates? 

That sure would have saved me some time!

Like I said earlier in the thread, I modeled my CP after your work. I contacted you for prices but declined due to my cheap nature. You did point me in the right direction for my artwork. I have always wanted a MAME cabinet, but after stumbling across the Neon MAME build thread I had to have one now! If it turns out half as nice as your cabinets, I will be thrilled! 

[Knievel]

Ah yes. No worries, my tops are for those without the time and/or tools. You're obviously not lacking in those areas.

So why are you're using 4/8-way switchable joys when you have the dedicated 4-way?

[mountain]

So why are you're using 4/8-way switchable joys when you have the dedicated 4-way?

I purchased the switchable joys before I did all of my homework. It sounded like a great idea before I realized a dedicated 4-way was even possible. I am a true rookie to this hobbie and learn something new everytime I get on this site.

After making a visit to some local arcades, I am now in search of some vintage Wico 8-way joys. This project, in part, is to bring back the fun I remember playing these games and these joysticks are what I grew up on. As soon as I mounted the clickety click joysticks, I knew I needed the Wicos.

[alandrogers]

You have really great photos of the work you're doing.

I'm just starting work on my CP box now, and it's nice to see some of the detail work like the 45-degree routing on the trackball. I hadn't thought of that one.

My project is going to run a bit slower, but you said you had been at this for 6 weeks. That gives me some hope

[mountain]

Well, I took a week or so off from working on the cabinet. Last night I mounted the base that goes under the CP to the cabinet. Whoa! It looked horrible. It didn't match the cabinet like I thought it would. I don’t know how to explain it other than it just looked out of place. Since I am wrapping it with laminate, I could not round the edges. This made it seem to stick out like a sore thumb. It needed to be more subtle.

So I took it apart and started over. I thought it would look a little more streamlined if I rounded the front edges as well as shrink it all the way around.

To make the curve for the front, I took two ¼” pieces of MDF and clamped/screwed/glued them to a jig that follows the shape of the front edge of the actual CP.





I made the front piece smaller for the corner piece I made (see further below)



Making the base smaller created a few unwanted obstacles. The leaf switches or the left 8-way joy and the dedicated 4-way ended up right against the wall of the base. I routed out a few notches so they clear.





Waiting for the corner piece.



I took a piece of scrap PVC pipe I had laying around and used it for the corner to ensure I had a perfectly rounded corner.



After threading the PVC, I used machine screws from the inside out to securely mount the PVC. I then cleaned it up with Bondo. I plan on hinging the CP for friends and family to see inside, so it needs to be nice.



Both sides done!



After some primer.



DOH!
I forgot to consider the hinge. I had to make an adapter piece to square up the front edge. This is where I stopped. Tomorrow I will do some touch up primering, attach the top and see how it looks on the cabinet.

[Knievel]

Nice work! Great idea using the PVC pipe.

[arcadefever]

OMG  some serious building is going on here ....

you have some great wood skills 

[leapinlew]

Very nice - and good documentation.

I just love the Hank Hill avatar also. Keep up the good work!

[RyoriNoTetsujin]

WOW.  You've obviously got the tools ... and the skills!  I wish I had half the gear your working with.

I can't wait to see the finished product!  It should be pretty amazing! 

[vrf]

THis is seriously some awesome craftsmenship going on here. I love how you decided to redo the box. A true artist!

[javeryh]

All I can say is - HOLY BANANAS!!! That is some serious woodworking!!  I love it!  Nice documentation too - I am highly interested in all the details of these things.

[Loki]

Wha... that looks great!  I'd love to see more of this.