UPDATED: Donkey Kong cabinet Lamp?

[melarky]

I've been thinking about making a mini donkey kong cabinet for a while now, and now that I just recently found out that my wife is pregnant with our first son, I really want to get it done before he is born (early november).

I have access to a CNC machine, but I am not extremely proficient with CNC programs like Mastercam and such.  The ones I use are more used for signs and decorative pieces, but they can handle a 2D cut if given the correct outline in a vector image file.

I see that jakobud.com is back up (hooray!), and he has a vector of the Donkey Kong cabinet, but it is not layed out as each sheet.  It mostly just gives dimensions of the cabinet already put together.  Is there an easy way to take those measurments and creat outlines of each required piece (the pieces only have to be to scale compared to each other, I can stretch the final vectors to any size I want with my program).

I'm sure there's a way, I just am not clever enough with the programs that I have (luckily this isn't my job, but just a side hobby).  I am way more comfortable with photoshop than illustrator, so editing vectors is not my strong suit.  But if could find a way to make the outlines of all the pieces to proportioned correctly against each other, then I could get the cabinet cut out pretty easily.  Are there already files out there that have this done?

Are there any pointers on how I should start doing this (the side's I've already played with, and was able to remove the little arrows and measurment marks that jakobud had on the vector to create a 2-d outline of that, but how to make the other pieces that will be the correct size in respect to them is what is puzzling me).  Any help is appreciated.

p.s. Wasn't sure if this should be posted in the artwork or general forum, moderators please move if I have this in the wrong forum...

[melarky]

Well, I think I may have figured this out, but just to make sure, after I programmed in all the dimensions, I scaled it down to be about 8-10 inches tall and did a test cut last night on 1/4" birch.  I started assembling it last night (just using wood glue for the small guy) to make sure all of the parts fit correctly.  If it goes together well enough, I may paint it and make a lamp or something out of it (it's looking pretty fun as it's taking shape, even unpainted and rubber-banded together to hold it while the glue dries...

I may take some pics and post them if it works out ok.  I may also make some other small models if this one works out.  It's actually been pretty fun to cut out and put together.  I only ran the CNC machine at 40 IPM (have to slow it down until we fix a problem with the y axis binding), and it still cut the small model out in like 20 minutes (I'm pretty sure I could get it cut in much less time in the future, I had forgot to set the passing depth deeper than the 1/4" of wood, so it took 2 passes for each piece when it could have easily cut through the 1/4" in one pass).  It will also speed up once the y-axis is fixed.  Fun stuff.

[Kevin Mullins]

Being a machinist myself, mostly conventonal, it would be awesome to have a CNC mill around to play with. The modeling work sounds like a blast. I'd like to do some mini cab work sometime as well. Be sure to come back and give us a look.

[melarky]

I got the mini (9" tall) cabinet put together (realized I had forgot to cut the back panel, oh well, I'll do that later).  I also painted it, but I messed up (I used an airbrush to paint the inside black and the sides and front pieces blue, but then I used a brush to try to paint the edges where the t-molding would go white, and it looked horrible).  I sanded it all (not to bare wood, just smooth), and will re-paint it this week (will probably ditch the airbrush and go with just rattle cans, kept getting clogs in my air brush).  I will post some pics once I have it more complete.

We also cut our first PCB on our CNC machine.  Just a simple board that powers a few LEDs to say "KONG".  I couldn't fit it all the way across, so it is actually spelled out like:

KO
NG

Should be good enough for what I want to use it for.  I bought all the parts to make it a lamp, and I will have it turn the "KONG" LED's on and a superbright LED on for the marquee with one click, then turn the lamp on with the second click.  Kind of like a night light type of thing.  It looks horrible (the PCB), but it works.  We made a few mistakes as this was our first board (forgot to mirror it so that we could mount the LEDs flush on the board, had to offset them a little, but I think it looks awsome when lit up, and we'll put it behind some smoked plexi which will make it look great).

[Kevin Mullins]

That sounds like a nifty little project.
Can't wait to see it all together.

[melarky]

I painted the "t-molding" last night, but still need to repaint the blue and maybe some of the black.  I got some pics of the cab after I painted the t-molding though and I'll attach them (they look way better in real life, I'm pretty happy with the t-molding now).

I also grabbed some pics of the PCB that we made, and I'll attach those too.  I still have to drill the top to put the lamp parts into the cab, and I'll probably make some sort of base for this thing (I think it will be tippy when the lamp parts are installed), but it's coming along quite nicely.

[melarky]

I finished repainting the blue last night (don't have any pictures, but I'm pretty happy with the results).  I ended up going down to the craft store and finding some spray paint that would work (it's really light blue, not what I would have picked if there was any better colors available, but it went from this powder blue spray paint to navy blue, so I grabbed the powder blue).

I am probably going to start putting lamp parts into it tonight, but I thought I would ask a question here in preperation for the artwork.  I am going to need a way to attach the marquee, and I am not sure the best way.  There really isn't any small angle plastic that I'm aware (at least not small enough for this little arcade), and I also don't want to just glue the marquee on, but don't know if there are small enough nails or screws to fasten something down.

I was thinking of maybe using transparency plastic instead of plexi and finding a way to fold it over the top a little and fasten it to the machine somehow.  Maybe super gluing that would be strong enough, but it doesn't seem like it would be.  Does anyone have any ideas for this as I'm going to be ready to print probably this weekend and figure out a way to finish this bad boy.

[melarky]

I finished this project this last weekend.  It turned out better than I thought it would, I'm really happy with it.  I took some pictures, and will try to post some later.

I ended up getting the artwork for the marquee and screen printed on normal paper and then laminated.  I then just cut and superglued it on (I did that artwork as one piece, I just had them print a black stripe where black connectors for the marquee would go, you'll see what I mean when I post pictures).

The KONG LEDs don't really show through the artwork (dang, but it was still fun to make that PCB).  It lights up the artwork, but you can't really make out the letters KONG.  Still a fun night light (I have a super bright cluster of 9 LEDs for the marquee, it's a little "bluer" than I like, and I may change that to an amber cluster in the future, but it works for now and I had it on hand so it was convenient.

The only thing left is the back (I still haven't put the back panel on it, should be quick once I actually cut it out and paint it black ) and I also may change the lamp shade.  We found a little black lampshade at K-Mart that looks nice on it, but my original ambitious idea was to get that black lamp shade and mod podge the red steel work and ladders all around the shade, so it looked like a screen of the game, would throw in random barrells, hammers, jumpmans, donkey kongs, etc...  It was actually a project for my wife, but I don't think she wants to do it anymore, and the black shade without the characters looks great too, so we probably won't do it unless we get really really bored someday.

Putting this little lamp together has gottem me really excited about making the real arcade.  It will be really fun to have the lamp on the dresser and the twinner mini arcade in the corner.  My wife is also excited for the larger arcade now too (she really likes how the lamp turned out).

[melarky]

I got my wife to send me some of the pics.  I also forgot that I will probably paint on some grill lines in the future on the front.  Here are some pics of the pretty much done lamp:

[melarky]

Here are some shots of it lit up (first one is just the night light on which is the marquee and kong board, the second is just the lamp on, and the third is both night light and lamp on):

[Masterful Gaze]

Sweet! Got me too thinking, if you go a little bigger it would make an awesome nightstand to have by the bed.

Yeah, the wife would let me do that...

[rohan]

You might get her to OK a cocktail game as a nightstand...I've got a SixPac and Tank! cocktails serving that exact purpose.

[melarky]

Making this lamp has actually got me thinking about making a little bit bigger model, and sticking one of those 5" playstation screens in it and using one of those mini joysticks I saw in another thread somewhere (http://www.p3america.com/pp/851.htm).  You could put a Jakks game in there (too bad they don't have one with Donkey Kong), or something like that.

I might do that once I'm done with the larger arcade since I already have the arcade parts programmed in and scaling them up or down is now very easy.

And I am itching to build a cocktail table ever since I saw that "Crazy Canadian" cocktail (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,27612.0.html), and I think the only way I could do it is if it were the end table for our living room (but maybe a night stand is the way to go ).

[MYX]

That is great. I would love to build one of those. After I finish my cab, I may try one of these. Great idea. My wife may throw up a little when she hears about it.

[melarky]

I finally got around to finishing the 2/3 scale one and posted about it in the Project Announcements thread:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=60545.0

These were really fun to make.