reko19 & Generic Eric, here are a few construction pictures for you.
This is the cabinet after all of the pieces were cut out. This is just a dry fit. I used biscuits for all of the joints and they provide enough friction to hold things together.
If you were wondering how I cut the holes for the ventilation fans I used the most dangerous woodworking tool know to man...the drill press circle cutter!
If you ever want to use one of these make sure you read and follow all of the safety instructions, especially the ones with regard to drill press RPM.
This is the backbox as it was originally designed. The monitor was mounted quite far forward in the cabinet and there was not going to be any glass covering the monitor. Of course the monitor mounts had been glued in place by the time I decided to change things around.
This is the new backbox design, shown with the back panel and monitor mounting bracket in place. The monitor is mounted much further back in this design and you can see the backing strips for the glass around the inside of the backbox. One major change with this design is that the monitor will not come out through the front of the backbox once the trim is in place. So to facilitate servicing the monitor I made the bottom of the backbox removeable. That is what those two blocks with the chrome bolts are for on each side at the bottom. I also had to remove the fan mount as moving the monitor back interfered with it. I now mount the fan directly to the back panel. Don't ask me why I used a monitor mounting bracket...it is totally not required if you have 4 of the correct length metric bolts available...which I did not.
The lockdown bar is construted out of 4 pieces of solid oak. The top is made out of a piece of 1 x 4 oak, with addional pieces glued to the front and side the thicken up the edges. You can see the spot routed out for the glass. I planned on using 3/16" glass so made the cutout 7/32" deep. At this point I still did not know how I was going to fasten the lockdown bar to the cabinet. I found some nice brass cup washers, but I didn't have the correct bolts to fit them.
Here the cabinet is all glued up, taped up and ready for sanding. The dadoes for the bottom panel can still be seen here, they were plugged and filled. The holes for the legs have not been drilled yet either. It is quite a challenge to glue up something like this when you use biscuits and there are the number of pieces that I had to deal with. I used Bessey K-body clamps to aid with the glue up...those things are worth their weight in gold.
I don't seem to have any pictures of the leg construction...perhaps it is just something that I wish to forget.
There were quite a few steps in building the legs and having never done anything like this before I actually made 5 legs. I used the extra leg to try out each step before using trying it on the actual legs. The following photos are of that extra leg.
After I planed the legs smooth I cut the rough shape for the top of the leg. Then using a template I made I used my flush-trim bit in my router to get the final shape at the top. Once that was done all I had to do was to drill the mounting holes and cross hole.
Next I had to cut the notch in the top of the leg. I didn't have a 90 degree bit and I didn't want to spend $35 on one just for 4 legs. What I did was to make a jig to hold the leg at a 45 degree angle and then I put a 3/4" cylindrical bit in the router and slower routed out the notch.
After that I had to put the chamfer on the two out side edges. This was done in several pass through the router table...even though I was taking things very carefully you can run into issues with the grain in oak. There was some splintering but in the end none showed.
Oh, I almost forgot. I had to drill out the bottom of the leg for the leg adjuster t-nut. Then apply about 5 coats of poly and the legs are done!
Prior to painting the cabinet I completed all of the wiring that I could, including mounting my Mini-Pac and routing all of the wires to their locations. This was a very good idea as it was a very simple job to finish the cabinet once the painting was complete.
Once the paint was completed, I took off all of the masking and installed the buttons. I was so excited as I finally had a button wrench...but due to the location of my buttons I could only use the wrench on about 1/2 of the buttons...but is was nice to use it when I could.
The monitor is mounted and the mounting bracket secured. You can see where the fan mount used to be at the top of the box.
I am now ready to install the trim pieces to the front of the backbox.
The glass and all of the trim in place. I was quite concerned about this step but it went ahead without incident. The backbox is now complete and ready for connection to the main cabinet.
Everything is assembled and ready for the computer and the monitor. However, I had a small issue with the playfield glass. There was a flaw in it so I had to wait another day while the glass shop made me another piece. I was concerned about how accurately they could cut a piece of glass. I shouldn't have been. The two pieces of playfield glass must be almost exactly the same size as then both fit very well and there is only 1/16" play in the length and 3/64" play side to side.
This is the control layout used for HyperPin, the flipper buttons are used to rotate the wheel normally, the skip buttons are used to go from letter to letter.
This is the control layout used for Future Pinball and Virtual Pinball. The Pause key will actually have to wait until I get the U-HID-G from Ultimarc as Future Pinball uses the Pause/Break key for Pause/Highscore and the Mini-Pac cannot generate that key.
I hope that answers a few of your questions. If there is anything else you would like to know...just ask.
Cheers.