My first arcade cab - completed

[Sweep]

I guess I have kind of done this backwards by not posting until completed, but I thought I'd throw a few pics up of my first cabinet build, a mame machine build roughly off the Project Arcade/Lusid plans.  So it's probably nothing most haven't seen before, but I was quite shocked at how awesome it all turned out.  Been wanting to build one for years and finally just decided to do it approximately a month ago.  

I went with standard 3/4 inch MDF for the whole thing, turned out well IMO for my first major wood working project since highschool shop class...

Quick pic of one side cut out:


I had already cut out the sheet containing the door, back pieces, speaker panel etc per the plans.  I used the 48" drywall T-square you see there to serve as a saw guide for all the cuts, made with a regular circular saw and a couple w/ the jigsaw.  Worked great, think it was $10 at harbor freight, the smaller carpenters square was like $6 or something.  Just FYI The $3 clamp shown was garbage.  I had about 4-5 total, all but one are trashed now, and I rebuilt a couple of them along the way...

Side 2 I traced from 1 and then rough cut slightly oversized w/ the circular saw and used a flush trim bit in my $49 harbor freight router.  Worked absolutely great, sides turned out 100% identical as far as I could tell.  Slot cutting bit set I got from HF as well, worked perfect.  Certainly has to beat trying to jury-rig something with a dremel and cut off wheel.  I got 20% off the router with a coupon so I guess it was only $40ish.  

Here is a shot of the sides assembled together on the monitor shelf and base.  The base I wish I had taken a pic of, I strayed from the plans and used 2x4 construction as I didn't like the idea of just using MDF strips for the base.  Mounted some casters I got at harbor freight again for like $4 each or something, swivels for the front, fixed for the rear two.  Worked nice.  



Here it is coming together nicely, most pieces mounted.


Ended up needing to trim the speaker panel for the TV, and drilled the CP holes.  I downsized the CP some from the plans as I didn't want a trackball and it seems oversized otherwise.  Think I went with 31" width panel.  


Here it is all finished up.  I put on a couple coats of Glidden primer and I believe 3 total coats of Glidden semi-gloss black.  Used a 8 inch I think it was foam roller from Home Depot to apply.  I painted inside and out just to seal the MDF completely.  

Marquee is the atomic mame logo from Game on grafix.  Great quality.  


Controls are Happ competition joys, with GroovyGameGear's standard buttons/switches.  They were priced very well I thought, work great.  I also went with their KeyWiz encoder and wiring set.  Works 100% so far, wiring was painless, although probably alot less neat in the end than what I see on here.  Tmolding purchased through GGG as well, good prices it seems, fast shipping and good stuff.  I recommend...

CP overlay was printed by Game on Grafix again, using someones artwork as a background, I drew up the button and joy surrounds in Photoshop.  Very happy with it.




One more powered on with poor yellow lighting and the marquee washing out my phone's camera...





Really appreciate all the info and resources people have posted on this forum, and obviously to the site owner for all the original content and keeping the site running.  Totally invaluable for guys like me who can follow a guide but probably not build from the ground up to start with...

[Sweep]

Forgot to add the coindoor I got off ebay for around $40 shipped I think.  Required just a little bit of tuning to take quarters on one of the units, then I just went ahead and modified it per a post on here to take all coins.  Works great,  Part of the mechs were plastic that needs to be cut or bent to take all coins (bypasses the kickback ramp to the return tray for smaller coins) which I didn't want to permanently cut, so I just removed that plastic piece of the mech and built replacements out of a Cheezit box top, lol.  Pretty darn pleased with how that turned out for $40, didn't even need to paint it although I need to get some lock mechanisms for it still although not critical obviously.  Occasionally a penny or dime will hang up on the wire switches, just throw a second one in and you're good.  Pretty rare anyway, 1 out of 10 pennies maybe. 

The screen is a 27" tube TV I had in my basement forever, luckily it has power memory feature and remembers it was on Line in input when powered back on.  Fits nicely in the 26" wide cab per the plans.  No changes to size necessary.  

Screen bezel is acylic sheet from home depot, around $20 for the sheet I think.  Tried to mask out the basic shape of the screen and Painted the back side with rattle can gloss black spray paint.  Can see some of the edges of the TV bezel itself, but it still looks great IMO.  

Speaker grills you can't really see but those are pieces of a gutter guard piece from home depot, only a few bucks.  They are a plastic grill pattern with screen behind them.  It was brown to start with, I just sprayed it with the rattle can and trimmed out a pair of roughly 4"x5" pieces to cover the speaker holes.  The holes are cut to fit the altec lansing speakers I mounted (2.1 kit i also had sitting in my basement, sounds awesome in the cab IMO).  I think I am going to put a piece of speaker cloth or maybe foam on the backside as you can see some light around the speakers.  It's not bad as is though.  Grills are just mounted with a pair of really small screws each, I was pleasantly surprised with how well that turned out, had my doubts about that part initially.  

Oh and the marquee light is a 18" fluorescent  "under cabinet" light from Walmart.  Don't recall the price, but want to say under $10.  Lights up the marquee excellently, the pic looks like crap but it is perfect IMO.

PC is just a Core 2 Duo CPU with 1gb of RAM, Nvidia 7600gt, and 500 gb drive, all spare parts I had in a closet.  Runs well with 99% of what I've tried.  Front end is hyperspin that I've spent a crapton of time getting working, so far have Mame, Sega Naomi, Atomiswave, SNES, NES, Model2, and NeoGeo emulators setup and working with all roms for each and emumovies clips and everything.  Not sure what other emulators I want to add.  Really happy with how good Hyperspin works, really makes the cab, but setup did take quite a bit of reading and tweaking for every emulator except Mame.  I need to go ahead and shell straight into it once I'm done with screwing around with the emulators.  

Anyway, I think that is it for a longwinded first post. Thanks again to everyone who makes this site what it is.  

[Unstupid]

Nice Work!  Good job not overcomplicating the CP!  2 joysticks and 6 or 7 buttons per player !   

[Sweep]

Thanks!

Yeah, that was one of my goals, not to criticize those who put alot of buttons and trackballs/spinners, but I felt most of those looked a little too busy, and I really don't care for Centipede or that Golf game so I figured I'd keep it simple (and cheaper) and just go with a 2 player 8-way joystick/button only setup.

Standard street fighter layout w/ the the extra 7th button for the occasional NeoGeo game.  I could have easily just gone w/ the 6 street fighter buttons and been perfectly happy now looking back.  

The 4 admin buttons are Exit, Menu, Pause and Shift.  I have a few keys like reset, Enter, etc mapped as Shift + player button combos.  Works great.  Also no coin buttons as the coindoor works, and if I get tired of that the KeyWiz defaults to shift + each player start button as inserting a coin too.  Works well so far I think, no complaints there.

I have enough MDF left over I probably could build another CP and do a 4 player setup maybe.  

[grtcdnbvr]

Don't sell yourself short on the design, it looks great.
My favorite is the way you sum it all up so it sounds like a weekend "no big deal" sort of project.

[ARTIFACT]

Nice work!