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Naomi Projects - Update : PCB Holder
Franco B:
--- Quote from: orion on October 20, 2009, 09:27:41 am ---Wow, you really are busy! You must have a very understanding GF! Yeah she definitely deserves that juke for christmas! :) Good luck with all your projects! Now stop the chit chatting and get back to work!
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Yeah she is very understanding luckily. I work shifts so I do get a fair amount of time to work on things. If I'm not working at home I'm normally doing something project related at work so it's definitely all go go go! :)
--- Quote from: Bender on October 20, 2009, 11:17:43 am ---
--- Quote from: orion on October 20, 2009, 09:27:41 am ---Wow, you really are busy!
--- End quote ---
Not to mention he just made some time to help me out with some custom work too :cheers:
Franco is a madman!
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No worries dude. You have to sort your boys out don't you :cheers:
I just checked your tracking and it looks like your stuff should be stateside now although its not showing up on USPS but there system does seem to take longer to update.
--- Quote from: emphatic on October 20, 2009, 11:20:25 am ---The CPO turned out excellent, FrancoB! Kudos to whoever did the "final" design. :applaud:
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Its nice isn't it :) Rosco (aryssoR) did it for me, I'm making him a new DC CP top in exchange. I have had to move the game select button down a fraction as it would have fouled on one of the mounting tabs but apart from that I should be good to go.
I had a thought about lighting the marquee. Some Candy marquees are lit from a light bar below. The Naomi's have a bar that lights the strip across the front of the machine but it won't be enough to light the marquee. The marquees I'm making are two sheets of 3mm acrylic so I'm thinking of making the back piece out of frosted acrylic with a clear front.
To light it I was going to insert an LED strip to sit inside the section that holds the marquee. The trouble is that that section is only 6mm wide and the narrowest LED strips I could find are 7mm wide. I ordered some 5mm square acrylic bar yesterday and some red 3mm LEDs to make my own strip with LEDs at 25mm intervals but thinking about it now, the bottom section that holds the marquee has an open bottom so I can just insert the pre made LED strips from the bottom. Doh!
Oh well, I'm sure the square bar and LEDs will come in useful for something!
This is the LED strip:
I think it should light marquee nicely :)
The bottom of the marquee is 600mm long. You can buy 600mm lengths of this but the LEDs are spaced much further apart. I am going to try two of these 300mm strips as they should be much brighter.
bartre:
I gotta say, I'm loving just about everything about this.
Now you just got to finish it!
Franco B:
Its been a busy few days!
Thursday morning I got up about 6am as I wanted to give the shop a good clean before I picked the cab up. I took everything out of the shop I could and had a damn good sweep up and even hoovered the floor and walls :D I knew I was going to have some painting to do and I wanted to get rid of as much of the sawdust/plastic etc as possible.
I picked the van up about 9, took it back home, loaded a couple of old monitors up and took them to the tip. I set off for Chester at about 10, made it up there for about 12.45 had a chat with the guy I bought it off (top bloke!) and set off back home. I got back just after 4pm. It was 300 miles round trip and even after stopping twice on the way there, twice on the way back and was about 45mins picking it up I still averaged 50mph, even when I wasn't moving :D
Unloaded the van, took it back to the hire place and reassembled it:
Since this is a Naomi and Neo Geo hybrid I have decided to call it Neomi :)
Its in pretty good condition to be honest. The only minor points are some rust/flaky paint on the base panel, worn paint on the CP and some general dirt but nothing some TLC and paint won't cure. The plastics are in great condition which is the main thing.
You can see I have swapped the bases over for one from one of my other Naomi's. This is because the cab was originally a Confidential Mission shooter and so the coins were inserted into the gun tower and the original base has no slot or coin bucket/door in the base.
I'm going to keep the base white but add some red stripes/decals to tie it all in together.
The CP was pretty grubby inside. I assume its a mixture of spilt drinks and ash. There was even a match stick in there. There was also £1.40 :)
I gave it a good clean with some solvent cleaner and plenty of elbow grease and it has come up nicely:
Pic of the back of the cab and the other base:
Both cabs have a Sega transformer but they were wired slightly different. As I knew both setups worked with there own cabs the easiest thing to do was to swap the PSU's and power plates.
I also cleaned the back of the chassis plastic and gave the chassis a good clean with compressed air.
I put my DC/VGA box in and for 'testing' purposes and had a quick game of Confidential Mission to check every thing is working ok. :)
I have cut a new CP for the cab:
Somehow I managed to get the PL1 button two hole in the wrong position. I must have transferred the hole locations wrong from the CAD drawing to the mill as its 3mm out of position :banghead:
I was going to fix it but I'm not overly keen on the button spacing and its a little too far apart. I imported a image from a Neo Geo CP and scaled the button holes but I didn't actually do a mock up (school boy error!!). I think it will be just as easy to design a new CP with the holes closer together and cut another panel with the holes in the right positions.
I have received the Seimitsu PS 14-K's (well they are actually KN's) and had to try them in the panel :)
I have also made some mounting plates to secure the joys to the back of the panels. I just made some plates out of 3mm steel, drilled 5.5mm and couterbored them 10mm by 1.5mm deep. I faced some M5 machine screws so that the head is 1.4mm thick so that they sit in the counterbores. They will then be bonded to the back of the panel. I have shot blasted them on one side ready for painting:
Onto the painting.
I made a spray enclosure in my shop just to keep the spray from getting everywhere and stop the wind blowing any crap around:
The bezel isn't in too bad condition but I will respray it to match the CP. I was going to paint over the CP but I decided to strip it all back and start from scratch.
I couldn't find any paint stripper that was suitable for plastic but the solvent cleaner I used to clean out the CP base did revome the paint but it was still a very long job. I used it in conjunction with some wipes, 320 grit and a flat headed screw driver for the hard to reach parts. After I has got it all off I gave it a warm soapy bath (much to the GF's delight :D) and gave it a good rub down with 320 grit to key the surface before rinsing it all down and letting it dry.
CP stripped and prepped:
I put it on an MDF base with a handle so that I could move it around to spray the sides and back easily.
I took the old CP to Halfords and picked up some Ford Sunburst Red paint wiched seemed to be the best match and red primer too.
Since the primer can only be applied to metal or paint I gave the CP a few thin coats of plastic primer for the metal primer to stick too before slowing building up thin coats of red primer:
Since the monitor surround was in pretty good nick I just rubbed/cleaned it down and applied the primer directly to it. I masked off the Naomi logo but I left the grills uncovered as I'm going to spray them white once the painting is complete.
That's where I'm up to at the moment. I'm at work this morning but when I get home I am going to wet sand the pieces with 1200 grit and get them painted. Once that's done I will rub that down and apply some lacquer to protect it.
I have never really done any propper spraying before and I'm quite happy with how its turning out so far :)
emphatic:
Very nice "spray booth" with all the page 3 girls. :cheers: My girlfriend caught a glimpse of the pictures and went "HEY! THAT'S WHY YOU'RE SMILING!?" :D
I bet the cab will look awesome with the fresh paint job, those pretty Seimitsu's and the classy overlay.
Franco B:
He he, cheers dude :)
I thought I may as well put some of the better pages up ;)
Yeah she should look pretty nice ones she's all done. I am going to respray the leg covers too and I'm thinking of doing them red with a white stripe to match the Neo CP. I'll do a mockup to see what they look like.
I need to get most of the painting done this weekend as I have about a dozen or so marquee holders to make this week and I want to get the painting done whilst the shop is still clean.