Main > Project Announcements

2 Player control panel project (now with pics)

<< < (3/4) > >>

waveryder:
What kind of bit did you use to cut the aluminum. I have just bought a bunch of 2mm steel panels for my cab and need to start putting holes in. Any tips on drilling metal?

Great job. Cant wait to see the finished piece.

LeedsFan:

--- Quote from: waveryder on January 22, 2008, 09:46:31 am ---What kind of bit did you use to cut the aluminum. I have just bought a bunch of 2mm steel panels for my cab and need to start putting holes in. Any tips on drilling metal?

Great job. Cant wait to see the finished piece.

--- End quote ---

Well steel is a much harder metal than aluminium. That's why i chose the ali sheet even though it was expensive. So i dunno if any of my advice would apply. Plus your sheets are four times thicker at 2mm.

For what it's worth I used the finest metal jigsaw blade I could find to cut out the desired size piece. They were a five pack of blades from B&Q (part no.BS28100) and I used the finest blade in the set. For drilling the hole I just used a standard 3" part from my hole cutting set. I didn't need any special metal drill bits for this panel but I think you will with steel.  :dunno

LeedsFan:
Well I got quite a bit done today... was really going well. But it ended in huge disappointment.  :'(

I'd clamped all my top layers together and was drilling the pilot holes for the buttons. Then I made a very silly mistake. I went and drilled through one of the joystick mounting holes in error. I didn't even notice at first. I was so annoyed!  :angry:

So what now? I'd drilled right through the artwork and plexi. I can't repair that now. So I decided to continue on and drill them all and then use some plugs to fill the holes. Kinda like dummy carriage bolt heads. I was hoping to find something in glossy black.

But then worse was to follow. I decided to drill each of my three layers separately. I found it hard going trying to drill button holes through MDF, aluminium sheet and the plexi. So I separated them and did them all individually. However... the drilling of the ali sheet ended  badly. I was drilling from the non-artwork side and had the piece lying flat on some scrap wood. This was so the artwork wouldn't tear as the bit came through the other side. But what I didn't see happening was that the drilling was causing heat in the ali sheet. When I finished all my holes and turned the piece over the heat had caused the artwork to "bloom" around nearly every button hole I had made. It's like the protective coating has started to come away from the artwork and it looks bad.  :cry:

I took loads of pics of my work today but this has set me back now. I can't be bothered to post any pics of the good stuff I did. I'm even considering scrapping the artwork and ali sheet altogether now and just use plexi on a plain black painted MDF.  :-\

I knew it was going too well. Something had to go wrong. The first mistake I could kinda get around... but the artwork looks too much of a mess I feel to use now.  ???

LeedsFan:
OK... I've calmed down now. I was really angry with how yesterdays work ended. But it happens. We make mistakes and we learn. I had a few beers and did a Dynamis run with my linkshell in FFXI. Got a divine fragment for a 4th linkshell relic. w00t!!! :applaud:

So I've decided what to do about the damaged artwork. I'm gonna order the same piece again from Mamemarquees. And this time I'm gonna prep the panel surface and mount it directly. The idea of a separate aluminium panel has been scrapped. Of course this will take time to get the artwork again from across the pond... so I decided to get the panel finished in a "naked" state as it were.

Here's the good stuff i did yesterday:



First of all I cut out the hole for the trackball and then chiseled out the rest so that the plate would sit flush. I don't own a router but think I will invest in one before a next project though. The chiseling went really well and didn't take as long as I thought it would. I made sure to score out the outline first so that the chisel went square around the edges. I was really pleased with the result here:





Then I laid out my joystick and button templates and stuck them down. I spent ages making the button templates making sure they were as comfy as possible. I even made up a mock up in some spare wood a while ago to ensure the feel was just right:



Then i clamped my layers together and made the pilot holes. Which is where I made my first mistake yesterday.  :-\ Drilling through one of the joystick mount holes meant I had to continue on regardless in that manner. I'm keeping the plexi cover from yesterday though. It turned out fine with the exception of those extra holes. I don't think some dummy plastic carriage bolt heads will look too bad if I can find something in a nice glossy black. I'm thinking some hobby stores might sell some push-in plugs. I dunno... anyone got any ideas?

Here is the near finished panel:



This morning I put it all together. I will need to use some wood filler to smooth over the joystick bolt heads and also around the trackball edges. This kinda goes against one of my original intentions in that the panel had to be completely disassembled if necessary. I can still remove the joysticks by unscrewing from below and lowering them down. But I will need to fix the ball tops with something non-permanent. I used an Aradite expoxy resin on my cab and that stuff sets rock solid. So I can't do that this time or I won't be able to lower the sticks down. I need to use something though because the constant unscrewing of the ball top gets irritating in games. Any suggestions? Would a simple locking thread do? The trackball of course can still be removed but the plate will be permanently installed under the new artwork.

Here are the pics of where I am now:








I also cut out the pinball buttons this morning. Two on each side (flipper and nudge) and one at the right front for the plunger.

Some people may think the joysticks and buttons are too close together... but they feel fine. The reason I made them so close was so that i could play Defender with a "reverse" button as near to the stick as possible... and then use Player 2 buttons for the rest.

One last minute revision was to move the spinner from centre top slightly to the left. This was because I felt that any vigorous spinning of the trackball in Golden Tee would result in my hand hitting against the spinner. In fact I'm pretty sure that would definitely have happened. So I added two buttons to the right also to act as mouse buttons. Not necessary at all I know.... but the lone spinner shifted to one side would have looked lopsided and odd.

I did realise another small error in my calculations. The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that the spinner knob is sticking up too high. The only way for me to rectify this is to cut off about 10mm off the end of the shaft. I can't lower the spinner any more inside the panel as there is only about 3mm clearance between the base panel and the counterweight. I also have a replacement blue and white marble effect ball to put inside the trackball unit which i got from BobRoberts.

I'm really pleased with the way the panel itself has turned out so far. Seeing how it is now has made me so much better from yesterday. So I'm gonna wire it up and get some Mame sessions going. It's gonna take some time for the new artwork to arrive so I'm not gonna go any longer without any retro action.  :cheers:

LeedsFan:
Well I kinda left this project to stand idle for a few months. But I always intended to finish it and here are the final pics. These were taken today so I'm kinda just getting to play on it now. Very happy with it so far, just need to tweak a few setting in Mame and MaLa.   ;D

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page