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A Mame machine in an antique buffet - USB probs solved (I think!)

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drventure:
Working on it  :)

I found some bearings at Tru Value that just might work. Gotta get the sizes down...

Ond:
Loved the 507 Mechanical Movements download, great fodder for some drawing ideas for your stuff.  How ya gonna use those bits to rotate your monitor you mad inventor you???  :P

drventure:
I'll speak in terms of the 507 Mechanical Movements  8)

Combination of plate 18 (twice), plus some brass swivels and a few victorian doorstops, something like this



or this



Plus, I think some brass grandfather clock pendulum cabling.

And possibly some of plate 113 (using the motor out of a back massage chair pad I picked up off CL for 10$ )

I've also got some old gears from a John Deer tractor that I can hopefully factor into the mix (I found some bearing at HomeDepot that I +think+ will fit them).


And on top of all that, I'm on the lookout for some methylene chloride to use in another part of the cabinet now 

drventure:
Just another day at the mad scientist's lab   ;)

drventure:
It's been kinda slow progress. The machine is down right now because I had to take the monitor off to build up a sheet copper and brass frame for it.

I got about half way through that project when I got sidetracked on building a couple of panel lamps out of doorstops! I got the idea from a post about a guy building a steampunk tardis and they just looked so cool, I had to give it a try.

Anyway, here's my attempt.

First, I needed to address the wiring. All my wiring and piping is exposed, so it had to look period. I found some old fashioned clothe covered lamp cord online, but 25' didn't go very far.

I've got piles of phone cord lying around though, so I was in the craft store and found some brown cotton Macrame cord that looked very much inline what what I was thinking.

First strip the cotton guts out of the cord. This was a REAL pain in the ass


Then I needed wire, so some old phone line cord I had seemed to fit the bill.
Just had to strip off the covering


I tried getting all 4 wires into a single cord, but it was just too tight a fit. I could have done it, but it would have taken REALLY forever. This process only seemed to take forever :)

So I ran 2 wires through 1 cord, 2 through a different length, and then twisted them together


I cut base plates out of some stock I had around, routed the edges, then drilled out clearance and some access holes on the sides (so I could run the wires in, and also for screwing in set screws to be able to mount the lamps to the cabinet top (remember, my cab back is actually the underside of the TOP of the buffet, so I can't screw anything "through".


I picked up a small breadboard at radio shack, cut it up into half circles and soldered 3 high power RGB LEDs to each of them, with resistors.


I used brass doorknob back plates, and two brass doorstops (one, a wall mount type and one a floor mount type) for each lamp.
Then took 2 ping pong balls, cut them in half, ground things down flat on my sander and epoxied them in place under the stops.

Then used some brass eyelets, and screws and washers for some decorative (and functional) effects.

Polished everything, then coated it all with a couple coats of Future (to keep all that brass nice and shiny!)

the end results look like this...



All I have to do now is drill holes in the back panel, set some threaded inserts in, thread in some threaded rods, clamp the lamps down and run the wired to my LEDWIZ.

the 3 LED's each are wired in parallel, so they all light as if they were one LED. They can get quite bright! Esp in full red mode (Red Alert! Red Alert!)

So now that I'm done with em, I find myself asking "Why the heck did I do that?"  :)

Gotta come up with some interesting ideas of how to use them, either in the menus or during game play.

I was thinking if there was a way to monitor the "volume" of sounds coming from the game, and flash them when high volume spikes are detected could be cool.

But, the build was fun, so why not!

and the
Lots of jiggering, tweaking, etc later

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