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hindsight is 20/20

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AMDman13:

I would have used laminate instead of paint. I used oil base Rustoleum Black Satin which turned out fairly good, but laminate would have been sweet. I even found a Wilsonart wholesale here in Phoenix. Also, would not have put the spinner in front of my trackball. I bought my CPT from Knievel, so there is a hole in the plexi and CPT for a spinner. We like to play a lot of Golden Tee and I never installed my spinner. It would just be too brutal.  I would also design or pay someone to design an artwork theme instead of the generic Atomic Mame artwork.

Lilwolf:

I would have made 10 instead of hot swap control panels...

why?

because I would have been done with 4 of them so far instead of my current almost done with 10 :)

But it does make things a bit easier when you get a new starwars control panel... You only have to worry about a few things.

oh plus...  I would have never written a frontend... 50x the effort then building a cab...

ArcadeBliss:

Hmmm.... Seeing as how I am in the process of building my second cab, what "lessons learned" can I bestow:

1. Finish the cab before playing on it. Or else the building stops short.
2. An internal frame is unnecessary. The CRT will not fall using only a monitor shelf and angle supports.
3. Design the cab to allow taking the entire body apart for moving it far distances i.e. Upstairs or during a house move
4. Don't ignore a cosmetic woodworking mistake. Throw the piece out and redo it or repair it or else you will always notice it later (and hate yourself   :angry: for not doing it right in the first place!)
5. Use the experience collected in this forum to answer any "unknowns" before just diving in and ending up living point 4  :hissy:

Those are my top ones for now.

councilface:

I would have used vinyl instead of paint (To be sorted this week)

A one piece CP instead of the box I have (To be done this summer)

I would have used 4-8 way switchables instead of the happs supers that I have (Soon to be sorted)

I would have used Hyperspin instead of Mamewah (now sorted).

shmokes:

My biggest mistake was in wood thickness.  I used 3/4" melamine and laminated one side of it, so now my t-molding is ever so slightly not big enough.  Should have used 5/8" plywood.  Would have looked better and weighed far far less.

I made surprisingly good choices, looking back.  I initially wanted to do an Ultimate Arcade 2 with a 4-player panel.  I now think that's just about the ugliest thing in existence.  I wanted a frankenpanel, but somehow had therestraint to talk myself down off that ledge.  There are some things I'd do differently today because of new product development.  I probably would not have put in a dedicated 4-way, now that we have things like the UltraStick 360.  I also didn't include any spinners on my panel  because of lack of space.  The new button-hole spinners from GGG and Ultimarc would solve that problem.  Additionally, I decased a TV for the monitor.  It works very well, but I find myself wishing I'd just ponied up for a D9200.  There are quite a few PC games (mostly racing games) that I want to play but they simply won't run below 800x600.  My PC is plenty powerful to play them, but since my resolution is capped at 640x480 the game just gives me an error message.

There are MANY things I would do differently in terms of the build process.  I knew nothing about carpentry when I started and I made my job much much harder than it needed to be.  Also, I built my cab with ingenious little hidden locking mechanisms on every panel so that I can break it down completely to move it.  I would still do that, but I found a far superior way to do it that I used on some of the later panels and I wish I had done the whole cab that way. 

All in all, though, I think it turned out incredibly well (though it's not quite finished).  There's little I'd change about it.

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