Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Project Announcements => Topic started by: rgecko on April 10, 2005, 11:57:08 am
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Hi All,
Ok so I'm starting up my first Cab, I think I
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and here's the side panels...
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Awesome, you are going to need a huge printer!
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I have the original 4pl tmnt pcb if needed, good luck.
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omg that is going to look awesome. Can't wait to see it when it is done.
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I
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OK routing done, and OMG that is a lot of saw dust...
Also got the base assemble about 30%, I have some digital pics I
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Rgecko, you are awesome! ;D
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Thanks Timstuff!
So since I'm new to this, I'm wondering what people would like to see in a thread like this? does anyone care to see my spec sheet and running totals on things including pricing of things I already had laying around i.e. CPU, RAM, and Mother Board? Pics of construction? Time spent on construction and design? Where I bought all the parts and what the service was like? I
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So since I'm new to this, I'm wondering what people would like to see in a thread like this?
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Ok then, here's my on going totals, where I bought things from, and broken down into sub sections, it
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Hey, man I thought you said you paid $150 for the TV in the first post, then pulled the ole 'switcharoo' in your spreadsheet (says your TV was $184!)...will you do my taxes? :P
Nice choice on the Creative Labs Inspire 2.1, that's what I used and they're AWESOME! Just a note - don't know if your area has Circuit City, but they run a sale on these speakers every now & then for either $25 or $29. Might want to keep your receipt if this deal comes around before you install yours. I'm not sure what to make of the 5.1 sound card - not sure you really need that? I ran my speakers off the integrated sound card, works just fine.
Also I saw you listed a tball mounting plate but i didn't see a tball listed? You already got one?
I can tell you're taking the time to plan this out. It'll make a difference in the end. Keep up the good work!
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lol.
The TV was $150, but looking at the receipt I forgot the taxes and warranty, since it was used, I guess I should have speced that out in my sheet as added cost on the TV, but just getting a TV and what not . But everything in that list is pulled right from the receipts, unless marked gift or borrowed which it is then just me pricing it out in the store. I really wanted to know what this would run if you had 0 stuff to start with, so I keep track of every single screw that I buy, even the ones that won
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Wow, that's alot of moolah! I'd hate to see your wife/gf/parents' reaction when you broke the news. ;D
Me, I'm a cheap little seabass. I'm making it a point to get as much stuff for free/cheap as humanly possible. That's not too hard for me though, seeing as ol' Grandpa owns pretty much every type of tool ever invented (visitors be warned though: his lawn looks like a junk yard :P) He even had some fiberboard that he let me take. It's not enough to build my entire cabinet out of, but it's enough to at least build my control panel and some of the other paneling. He's a real helpful guy, even if he's a bit grumpy sometimes. ;D
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Also, I'd reccommend changing the logo at the top of your MameWah layout, cuz it seems to clash with the turtles theme a bit. Other than that, it's awesome. :)
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whoa - I adored to TMNT's when I was a kid, this look set to be a very impressive ! !
gorgeous artworks too - also awesome avatar 8)
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Also, I'd reccommend changing the logo at the top of your MameWah layout, cuz it seems to clash with the turtles theme a bit. Other than that, it's awesome. :)
Yeah I agree with that,
You're better off getting an ouline of the mame-logo and alpha-blending it in with the clouds in the background or something.
Other than that, it's very impressive.
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Hey,
Timstuff - I answer to no one! HA! HA! HA! but the cost on this will be our little secret right? ;)
actually like I said before, the cost of this is from the ground up as if I had nothing to start with, and to give anyone else a general idea of the cost for any one particular item they may need, i.e. have all the power tools but a jigsaw, well that should run you about $39.99, need blades for that jigsaw? Well expect to pay about $9.81 for a 10 pack; some of these prices are what they had listed at Rona/home hardware for the exact same tool I have. And the biggest cost seems to be time
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and here's some more pics of the progress, the templates I drew out onto Bristol board and the computer...
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more pics
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Just a concern of mine that you may be noticing right now is the size of your font in your front end. It looks a bit small for a TV. In fact, I would recommend doubling the size of your front end font.
Darryl
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Hi Darryl,
I hear you on that. I'll probably bring it up to a 20-22 point size font. Although I
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$40 an hour???? Is that Canadian dollar? Even so, i should really open a business! With bulk costs, and me being a really cheap bastard, i can make a living out of that! Where i come from, i would be lucky to be paid 10$ an hour for such "construction work"... I've been seriously thinking about selling games lately, and that really gave me boost!
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It is CND. I asked a couple people what they thought pricing would be if a finishing carpenter were to do this. I had a range of $25-$75 the $25 would be an apprentice from my understanding and the $75 would be a guy who has done this for years and years. although keep in mind the guy who's $25/hr may take 15 hrs to build it, and a guy who's $75/hr may only take 4 hrs to build it, have better tools to make more precise cuts, etc. I took the median on this, plus keeping track of hours, should that cost change, its easy enough for me to go back and make adjustments. Anyone else have some thoughts on what it would cost to have a pro do this work? There
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It is CND. I asked a couple people what they thought pricing would be if a finishing carpenter were to do this.
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Your research is in line with mine, and yeah this cab is gonna be all mine, but down the road if anyone I know wants one built I'll have the numbers ready to go right away... and by that I mean both time and cost. Some people seem to think things like this get built in a day, this way I can set realistic expectations on cost of materials, and time. Does that make any sense? and like said before I'm pretty sure the next cab will be made faster.
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Your research is in line with mine, and yeah this cab is gonna be all mine, but down the road if anyone I know wants one built I'll have the numbers ready to go right away... and by that I mean both time and cost.
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yeah my hours on this will be way off... we wasted a single day because we used the wrong jigsaw blade, and every cut was wavy... that was a hard lesson, and a big set back, with the proper tools, I was able to do almost all the cutting my self in a single day, and assembly I could have done in a single day if I hadn't spent several hours messing around with the router.
any pros here able to tell us what their record time is for putting a cab together?
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we wasted a single day because we used the wrong jigsaw blade, and every cut was wavy...
That happend to me too, my dad cheaped out on a new blade saying we won't need it, and as a result of that, the first cut we did with it turned out horrible, and now the monitor part of my cab will be very cramped...
BTW, i think i saw someone who did a cab in two days (because of the painting...) - but I'm only including people who built the structure from scratch, and did not name their cab TrashCade ;)...
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If anyone cares about this i've posted the question in the main forum:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,35247.0.html
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Keeping track of the hours is one thing, but how much you'd get payed for them is a little bit of an exaggeration... In the same way pixelhugger carved his logo into his shop and made flyers and posters for his unbuilt cab...
And then made them part of his sig.
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But I'm confused... you say that like its a bad thing. ???
In a way, it's kind of like an inspiration, though... The flyers were a little OVER the top, but i really liked the floor carvings...
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Hey Pixelhugger,
The floor carvings I thought were awesome! Detail! Detail! Detail! It
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and the spot where the TV is going to sit, passed the weight test... meaning I sat on it, so if it can support 195 lbs, it can support the TV
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Also instead of going the lexan/plexi rout for my CP protection, I
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If it works well, go for it. I personally will probably end up going with Lexan, because there's a really neat plastics store nearby that sells it, and it sounds like it's easier to cut and drill than plexi glass. As long as I can get it in the right size, at least. But your idea sounds pretty clever, and I'm sure that for protecting your overlay it will be second-to-none. :)
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Get Scott at MameMarquees.com to print your control panel artwork on this textured vinyl. Very durable and you don't need to go through the hassle of cutting the lexan plexi.
Also, you don't need 7 buttons for P3 and P4, 4 will be more then enough.
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Get Scott at MameMarquees.com to print your control panel artwork on this textured vinyl.
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Ok, so I
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Also, here
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Rgecko, I don't know if you've already got plan for your machine's coin door, but seeing as you're going for a four-player machine I thought you might be interested in this four player coin door that I saw while surfing on eBay today.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=13718&item=6171815709&rd=1
If you don't mind the thought of giving it a little rough-up with some sandpaper and re-painting it, I think it could work quite nicely with your cabinet, that is if you haven't already gotten one. :)
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Oh! Good find... I have a 2-player faux coin door right now, but if i can pick this up cheap I may go with this instead. I'll have to see about shipping, seems like no one in Canada ever sells coin doors on ebay, and the shipping kills me.
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Rgecko... I like what I see so far. I'm trying to get my funds straight right now, but I was thinking of building a 4 player cab with much of the design. While 4 player panels are common...clean, organized, with good art 4 player panels are hard to find on a standard upright cab.
Keep up the great work!
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more images... as I get closer to being compleated, the wood working... here's some with us putting the TV in to test it fits right... turns out it was not deep enough, so a little cutting ont he back and problem solved!
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and the controll panel done up, and on it...
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and a close up of the CP... and hopefully this will be all painted in time for when the art work arrives....
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Looking good. I like the rounded 4P CP design, as opposed to the angular cut ones that most people go for.
Can't wait to see this one all built. The modern art is a nice spruce up on the old theme.
Of interest, the new 3D PC Ninja Turtles games from Konami work great with joysticks and buttons:
http://www.konami.com/gs/tmnt/
http://www.konami.com/gs/tmnt2/
http://www.konami.com/gs/mutantmelee/
And all are 4 player as well! That would look superb running on your cab! ;D
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Lookin' pretty sharp! Can't wait to see your next update. :)
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OUT-F#@KING-STANDING.
This is gonna be one of the great ones! Sorry I'm getting here late, but I can't wait to see it.
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primer, primer, everywhere....
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so, things I've learnt... the plastic I wanted to us for the overlay, took one hit from the router, ripped to shreds, and melted up.... so basically it's tough as nails as long as there is zero heat... I tried cutting it with an exacto, but no luck, so i got a piece of plexi and cut that out instead, and i gotta say it went pretty smooth. Now i just need to do one more cote of paint tomorrow, and then wait for my artwork to arrive... oh and a little aside, a friend of mine comes over today, and says so, what's game ya gonna play on that? considering he knows it's gonna be Turtles all over it... I thought of banning him from area for the day. I
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Wow, this is looking great! My original plan was to use the UAII plans, but now I've kind of decided to go for a hybrid of that and the Jakobud plans.
I just didn't like how the UAII seems needlessly huge, and I would rather have the traditional "single" side panels.
I would love to do the rounded front on my CP, but I fear not getting it even. That kind of error would ruin the whole thing.
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oh and a little aside, a friend of mine comes over today, and says so, what's game ya gonna play on that? considering he knows it's gonna be Turtles all over it... I thought of banning him from area for the day.
Heh... reminds me of my best mate. Out of the two of us he's certainly got the looks, but he asks the above kind of questions alot, which makes me feel better. :)
The dark green paint looks spot on. This will be sweet when it's done.
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So I Did more painting, and setup all the buttons in the CP as one final test to make sure everything is cool there, also mounted the trackball, and spinner, and joystick bases, the rest will get mounted when the CP art arrives. Speaking of which, I have to say that Scott at www.mamemarquees.com is one of the best guys ever to get your stuff printed up, and a true professional! Probably won't get anymore stuff done until the weekend now.
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Looks great. ;D
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your putting art over that cp, right? cause no offense, but that paint job stinks. :P
(i did see the art from earlier in the thread, but i'm just making sure)
i do love the art. i just hope the cab lives up to it. (i'm sure it will)
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Yeah, you might want to rough up the surface with fine sand paper a bit and give it another coat or two.
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i can't wait to see the final result
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yeah the CP will be covered with an overlay, just wanted to do the one coat roughly on it so that it was sealed with the melamine paint, everything else has gotten 3 coats of paint, so that it looks all nice and pretty 8)
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Ok. ;D
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All righty then...
things are starting to come together, after many curses, and inventing some new ones, we got this monster down the stairs, back into one piece, with relatively little damage to the house or the cabinet... and a little rewiring to fix some trackball/spinner axis issues, everything now seems to be cool.... I may even hook up 2 joysticks and some buttons while I wait for the art to arrive, now I just need to measure for the size of glass I need, and order that, and because I now want to use this as a jukebox install a 200 GB hard drive... I'll pretty much be all set and ready to go. oh and install the speakers properly as well.
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Nice work! I like what you've done. I have the same speakers in my cab (Creative Inspire 2.1?). I'm interested to see how you install yours...
Keepup the good work!
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Looks awesome. Great job.
No way my wife would let me put a big green cab in the house, though. She equates an arcade machine in the house with putting a disco ball in the living room. ???
Sheesh, women. She just cant understand style!
I calmly explained to her that building a cab was a way to recapture my youth, and was way cheaper for me than an affair would be (to recapture my youth).
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Slept on the couch that night.
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Sweet! Looking pretty close to done, I'd say. :)
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GameOver, the speakers are now installed, just need to put on the grills, yeah they are Creative Inspire 2.1, to install them, all I did was take some Velcro tape, and put a strip on the speakers, and a strip on the inside of the cab, it holds them on there well enough.
Dweebs0r, lol, now looking at this big green monster all I can think of is the hulk,
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added the kick plate, insalled speakers and grills, and cup holders, and USB cables to CP. The glass comes next week, and looks like the artwork as well. Getting closer...
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Are you going to use yellow T-molding on the top half of the cab, or did you already use black?
Cab looks sweet. I'm very impressed.
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yeah, i'm not quite sure if that yellow t-molding is working for the cab...maybe after it gets some awesome sideart...only time will tell.
of course, to you, who the freak cares what it looks like, you'll be playing it instead of inspecting it all day.
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nope yellow on the bottom, the top is a black faux leather t-molding. the one really nice thing about t-molding is it's easy to swap around, which i probably won't do unless with the art work it looks really off, then I'll think about it, but i'm already dreaming of making a cocktail cab :D
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so my artwork arrived yesterday. Very nice print job, the material was easy to apply, and seem very durable, the CP overlay I mounted on bristol board, so that the joystick washers under it wouldn't stick, this seems to have worked out well. and now for a ton of pics.
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Marquee and CP
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and each of the sides
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and one of the overall cab. All I need now is my smoked glass and many many hours configuring the PC for best performance.
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Wow, I am VERY impressed. It looks great.
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One word: sweet! :)
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Great Job, rgecko!
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Wow. Thats one great cab.
I need to ask, Where did you get your artwork printed? and/or how did you get such quality art that big?
Also, where did ja get that diamond plate kick plate and how did ja cut it to size?
Sorry if you've already explained all this before. ::)
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phenomenal job, probably the best first attempt I've seen. post some more pictures!
I thought of an idea, and it makes sense now cause it's late, but it might be extremely stupid when I'm not so sleepy. I was thinking it might be cool if your speaker grilss looked like something- for example turtle shells, or the "foot" symbol, something like that. Like I said, i'm pretty sleepy
UAII with full side art on the top half are amazing
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I think he said earlier that his speaker grills are supposed to be manhole covers. I think they look pretty clever. :)
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Impressive. That turned out great!
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--timoe I had everything printed by Scott at www.mamemarquee.com he's a great guy to deal with, and really knows what he's doing, personally having had several years in the graph design business, I can say he won't jerk you around on anything, and he knows how things will look when they get printed out. On my end I took a poster and had that image photographed in and scanned in through a computer, to get your best print resolution you'll want your artwork at 300 dpi (dots per inch) DON'T upscale something to that as it won't help you, you need to start at that native resolution. some of the art I only had at 92 DPI but the resolution was much higher so I could scale it back down in size, so it printed out sharply, when the artwork arrived there were no surprises i.e. alterations of the files, or anything else that can happen to it when printed, the art came on vinyl that was easy to apply to treated wood, and then I used a NEW exacto knife to cut it along the edges, once mounted, All I can say is that while artwork, really makes your cab look sharp, it's the little things along the way you need to take care of, when you get frustrated, stop and walk away, the dumbest mistakes I made, were when I was just trying to get things done so they would be done.
The diamond kick plate was done at a local metal shop in Mississauga, I have the general location of it listed in my list of parts, it basically worked out that I stopped in there one day on my way home from work, and they cut it right there and then
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That cab is really sick!
I didnt know Scott could print sideart that big. What are the dimensions and what did it cost to have it done?
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Measurements:
29 5/16" x 54 3/4" -- side art
48
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$200 for the whole set? That's not nearly as bad as I expected with such large side art prints! Sounds like Scott is a really great guy to work with. I'll definately go to him for my art prints. :)
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Wow. That looks great. Nice work.
Darryl
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:o...wow she's a beaut!....enjoy it!
Great job!
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rgecko,
I noticed that it looks like the area where the keyboard draw should be is a lot smaller that the UAII plans.
I also want to reduce the front profile (height) of the keyboard draw area.
Do you have a keyboard there?
I was wondering you added additional support under the CP?
Any problems when you actually made the change?
Thanks,
JD
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Hey JD,
I actually dropped the keyboard totally from the design, to do any admin work I use VNC from another computer, and do all the admin work on it remotely, through a wireless network, I may get a wireless keyboard (19.99) at my local computer shop down the road.
There is no additional support under the CP, everything under the CP is as is in the plans, but i did add additional support under the Monitor/TV area, as the TV I'm using is really heavy. I also framed the whole cabinet with 2 x 2 and screwed everything into that, instead of the MDF, the CP box I designed myself, the top of the CP is from a Visio diagram floating around somewhere, I can post specs, and dimensions on it later.
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rgecko:
Great Great Great UAII job. I've got to rebuild mine now that it died during moving to my new house, and I had been teetering on whether or not to do full size side art. Looking at your cabinet made me make up my mind to do it.
Looks amazing. Have fun with it. ;D
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OK, the tempered glass came in, and got it installed. I'm using small L-brackets on the front and back of it to keep it in place, 6 on the back of it, and then 2 at the base of it, seems to keep it in place fairly sturdy, plus the glass seems pretty resilient, as it had the door close on it, and luckily nothing broke.
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also here's a close up of the CP art work, to give you an idea of quality, and one of the speakers... like I said in an earlier post, wish I had taken my time, and used a stencil.
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and here's the inside of the cabinet, and a pic of control panle clamps holding down the CP to the cabinet. The CP isn't moving unless those are unlocked.
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I see what you mean about the stencil. Look on the bright side, people really won't notice since they'll be too blown away by the rest of it.
It would have been cool to rust them up like the "Black Mesa" case mod (just google it if you haven't seen the work of art).
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and one final shot of the total package glass and all installed.
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Veinman, yeah that case mod rocks. I had done something similar to that back in the day with some spray paints and air brushing for a Star Wars model I made. By the time I had gotten to the speakers, I was like, man I just want to get playing some games, and have this done, stupid impatient me >:( let that be a lesson to everyone else, DON'T RUSH it or you'll regret it, little things I tell ya, little things... ugh!
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;D Don't let it get you down, trust me, you have done a fabulous job and this is something you should really be proud of. I only hope mine comes out half as good.
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Excellent job. Don't worry about the speaker grills that much. If they really start bothering you down the road, they shouldn't bee too hard to change anyway. Enjoy your great machine! I'll be lucky if mine comes out anywhere near as good as yours! :)
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Marquee and CP
I noticed that you changed the color of the Donatello name on your final print out for the cp, why is that?
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I noticed that you changed the color of the Donatello name on your final print out for the cp, why is that?
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All I have to say is ... NICE job ... that's a cabinet to be proud of (and which, now that he has seen it, my son envies).
Now, you know that you have to build a few more to justify your costs, right ?
;D
Cheers.
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Too old to appreciate the show but I love the cab, nice work!
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Hey rgecko thanks for the information and help on my last post. I forgot to ask in my first post but I wanted to ask you now if it was ok that I tried to get the same art work printed and make an Arcade Cabinet almost like your's but with a few changes of my own. I will be getting the same artwork printed from Scott at Mamemarquees and pretty much using the same type of style. I just wanted to ask you and make sure it was ok with you before I go copying your ideal. I love the TMNT cab and I cant wait to start re-living some of my fond Turtle memories and I cant wait to start working on mine. Even though I hardly know what I am doing (I have no wood working skills).
And thanks again for your help with my questions.
Jesse
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That's no problem at all, go ahead and borrow whatever you want, the more enjoyment you get out of your cabinet the better it is and if I can be of any help that's no problem at all.
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Looks really good. Fanastic work.
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Wouldn't the marquee stand out a bit more if the background was an opaque black, so just the turtles lit up when the marquee is illuminated?
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The turtles are pretty dark, but even a dark background would probably still light up a bit, plus I think the white adds a bit of a contrast to all that dark colour in it. of course my real answers is I don't know, this is the only version I've seen with it lit up, intersting question though.
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Yeah, but if you went that route, you could use some sort of dark, opaque material to stop the light from illuminating a black background.
You could get some heavy, black poster paper and cut it so it just covered the black background but not the turtles. Then when you light the marquee up, the turtles light up in all their green glory, while keeping a nice dark black background for contrast.
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all right so what I'm seeing is keep the white background as is, so that in day light it looks "lit", but cut some cardboard/bristolboard, to knock out the white area, so that then lights are out you get a green glow.... hmmm that may work, now I also need to get the track ball to glow green.... yellow + blue = green... time to look at some LEDs...
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You can take that route, or if you want to spend a bit more cash you could get another marquee printed with a black background, and then add the black poster-paper to further block light transmission through the black areas.
It's just my opininion though. You can go with what you like obviously. It's just that the turtles on a white background make it look the marquee is unfinished somehow.
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so something like the top image?
also not sure if you know, but close up it has a grey turtle pattern running across the Background, as show in the second image... I may try the blocking out first, and then maybe reprinting down the road... right my bigger issue is getting a brighter light up there, as I had to move it back about 6 inches, which with a 15 watt bulb ends up deffusing the light a fair amount...
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Ooh, I didn't even notice the gray pattern behind the turtles. Still, I do like the mockup you made with the black background. But, always go with your gut. You won't be happy with your cab unless you've got it exactly how you want it and not how a committee thinks it should be.
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and here's the inside of the cabinet, and a pic of control panle clamps holding down the CP to the cabinet. The CP isn't moving unless those are unlocked.
where did u get those clamps from? those look way better than using suitcase latches. I'm going to have swappable CPs, and the clamps you are using look perfect
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Happ's part is at: http://www.happcontrols.com/amusement/acesor/49005900.htm
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Happ's part is at: http://www.happcontrols.com/amusement/acesor/49005900.htm
thanks so much- it's very nice that they can be mounted flat or at a right angle.
i noticed that you had 2 clamps for each side. was it not very secure with just one, or you just wanted 2 for each side?
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The controll panel was just so big 2 on each side just seemed more appropriate to me, and would probably give equal pull to the front and back parts of it. But I'm guessing 1 on each side would have also been fine.
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I have been a long time TMNT fan.. from the comics.. to the pen & paper RPG.. all the way to the video game..
I must say very nice job on the cab!!! Compliments to the chef!
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hey, i have a brand new happ 4 player coin door at my home if you need one, im in the us & its heavy it would need to ship surface
thanks
divemaster
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Now there is a cab to be proud of. That is awsome! ;D
I love the artwork.
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Hey Rgecko,
1st awesome job man!
I really like all the little 'extra touches' you put into this project.
The speaker grills are awesome!!!
I haven't finished my first cab yet but already see the need to make a 4 player setup. And as fate would have it I've pretty much tapped out the ol budget on the first (yet to be finished) cab. However, I have a few spare piceces lying around that I hoped to use. 4 green happs joysticks, misc buttons, and get this, a green woodgrain laminated 3 foot wide tabletop.
I figured 4 players and a green theme, Hmmm . . .
TMNT is a no brainer here. Going to be a challenge to do this on the cheep but I'll see how far I get.
I'd like to ASK YOUR PERMISSION to borrow some ideas, artwork, etc... from your project. Not excatly sure what I am going for yet but I really like what you did with this one. Let me know, doood. Cowabunga!
_)