Mountain Jukebox Clone

[calebrichardson]

Long time lurker on these boards, I felt like I should give something back so I documented some of my build. I recently joined the Tech Shop here in San Francisco (a member based woodshop, metalshop, and general workspace), and figured I could crank a juke out pretty easily on the CNC.

I assembled mine slightly differently from most of the other clones, I will point out where I ran into minor issues, and where I think things worked out fine.

I found 1/8" MDF at Home Depot.



Here is a shot of the Shop Bot Buddy and my primary pieces. The Tech Shop has a 4' x 8' foot vacuum table as well, but it is much harder to get time on it. The Buddy can cut around 24" x 30", and it is usually available. Notice that you have to screw down your workpiece, the table is pretty trashed and uneven from the screw holes, and the shop staff is bad about replacing it. Anyways, my pieces still turned out pretty well. I designed my parts in Illustrator and defined the paths in VCarve Pro.



Front cut out of 3/4" MDF. I created holes with a 1/8" router bit on the CNC, and would later put brass threaded inserts into them in order to mount the 15" ELO touchscreen. This also illustrates that I did not do a swiveling base. The speaker bar sits directly below the monitor.



Back. The large opening and holes is for removable back plate, again threaded inserts were used. This is where I made my first mistake (that followed my through the project, I messed up other times as well). I should have routed the recess for the back door now (with a 1/2" rabbet bit), when the piece is on its own. I didn't do it on the CNC because it is lousy at depth since the table is uneven, and we have a router table at the shop (although that is not perfectly flat either).   The other opening is for the I/O panel.



Bottom with cutout and holes for mounting fan and vertical motherboard/hard drive tray (8 more threaded inserts). 4 corner holes are for mounting rubber feet from the bottom.



Gluing it up at home (notice the spacers - this is important!).

[calebrichardson]

OK next I glued on the 1/8 MDF using about 20 of those green spring clamps you can buy at Home Depot for 99 cents each. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this step, but I did it similarly to how everyone else does it, except I only used one layer, not two. It is very strong with just the one.

A couple of notes:

Be sure to put spacers all the way around in to ensure that the front and back are the same distance apart everywhere. The 1/8" MDF really wants to distort and bow, and since the front and back pieces don't have a lot of material, they will distort as well. The end result is that your juke will not lay perfectly on its face or back (it will rock slightly). The effect was minor on mine (I clamped one piece at the apex of the juke to keep it somewhat stable), but the depth ended up varying by about 1/32". Normally I wouldn't care too much, but remember that I still had to route out the recess for the back panel on the router table! It ended up being a bit of a pain. My t-molding slot also ended up being slightly less than perfect (since I had to route it with the juke laying on its face).

Since I could only find 1/8" mdf in 2' x 4' panels, and the total outside path of my jukebox is about 55", I had to use an separate piece on one side. This created a seam, and I had to glue a block on the inside of the juke (visible in the pic below) in order to make the two 1/8" pieces flush. It worked out great though.

Trimming the skin was easy, the flush trim bearing pretty much keeps you from tilting the router perpendicular to the piece. Take your time and it will work great.

[calebrichardson]

I had never laminated anything before, so I was a little nervous about the next step. When I went to buy the contact cement and j-roller at Woodcraft, the clerk asked me if I had ever laminated anything before, and when I told him no he tried to convince me to use double sided tape! I told him that I wasn't afraid to try something new.  

I used Titebond contact cement, a cheap foam brush, and the previously mentioned j-roller. I ordered Formica laminate from Lowes online, they delivered it to the local store for free. Cutting the laminate to rough size was very difficult. My tin snips caused it to crack very badly, I almost ruined it! I switched to repeatedly scoring with razor blades and a straight edge. I destroyed blades and it took awhile, but the result was very good.

On to the lamination itself. I laid the laminate flat on the cardboard, carefully positioned the juke, and rolled it on. Worked great!







Trimming the laminate was easy once I figured out a good method. I had heard to put painters tape on the base of your router. However it kept wanting to peel off, and I noticed that I was scuffing (not scratching) my laminate. I looked online and saw some advice that said to put the tape on the workpiece instead. This worked great, however cutting the painters tape with the router really gummed up the flush trim bit and I had to stop a few extra times compared to when I trimmed the MDF.

[calebrichardson]

I cut the front 1/8" acrylic using the laser cutters at the shop. I decided not to bevel and polish the cut edge.



I glued the face on using Loctite spray on adhesive. I was not too happy with this, I worry about the long term effectiveness since I only sprayed the acrylic (I didn't want to elaborately tape up the jukebox carcass to avoid spraying everywhere). I should have used the liquid contact cement with a brush, or some other adhesive with a longer set up time. Anyways, it turned out OK, and hasn't popped off yet, even with me banging on the T-Molding with a mallet.



Here is the I/O panel I cut on the laser cutter out of 1/16" acrylic.



It has a power inlet, momentary power button, two usb ports, an ethernet port, RCA out, headphone out, and a DPDT switch for changing between external and internal audio. I overlooked one important detail however. 1/16" acrylic is extremely flexible, as a result pulling on various plugs wanted to bend the acrylic since it was only bolted onto the carcass at each end. So what I did was carefully cut, drill, and glue in additional anchor points, redesign my I/O panel with the new bolt holes (I could barely get everything to fit), and cut it on the laser again. Also, 1/16" acrylic really wants to shatter, so be careful with it. I fully expect to have to replace this plate at some point.



Here is a pic of me testing where you can see the motherboard tray. The hard drive is on the other side. I used a mini-itx board, 2.5" hard drive, and a PicoPSU. I run the dell speaker bar off the 12V rail of the PSU (I built a little adapter). I soldered a molex connector into the powermate, and ran that usb cable and the monitor usb cable to a usb header on the motherboard.



I affixed the speaker grill using glazing points (awesome idea by mountain). The grill itself is 1/8" mirrored acrylic cut on the laser cutter. I didn't' bother using speaker cloth, the 1/4" MDF frame (also cut on with the laser - that black is not a shadow, it is char!) is probably not even necessary

[PIZZ]

Looks great, Must be nice to have access to a cnc. I might have to build one diy.. maybe thats the next project!

[mountain]

Looking good! It's interesting to see a different approach to building this design.

[calebrichardson]

OK so I took some pics in the light today, had a hard time capturing this thing with my iPhone 4 camera.

The internals. I affixed four Groovy Game Gear led lights vertically to the motherboard tray. They cast a slight shadow on the marquee since they are a bit low, I may raise them later.



A closeup of the I/O panel.



The back. I painted the back, back plate, and bottom using Painter's Touch semi-glass latex black paint and a 4" roller. It came out pretty well. I didn't put t-molding on the back. The transition between the laminate, back frame, and removable back panel all looks pretty good in person. I was originally going to put mirrored acrylic grill in the cutout in the back for ventilation, however I think I may recut the panel with a grill as part of it. I want to stick with the back being all black.



The front. I am running a commercial app called album player, I really like it better than some of the free options. The chrome t-molding I ordered from t-molding.com. Beware buying from other places! This is not a knock against those other places, but some of them require a 3/32" slot cutter, while t-molding.com's uses a 1/16", which I already had. As you can see, I don't have any artwork for the marquee. I am terrible at design, and while my friend may help me out, he is very busy. If anyone wants to help with this I can offer cutting and shipping some laser cut parts (pretty much acrylic only) for you as a trade. Let me know if you are interested.



Retrospective:

I am pretty happy with how this came out. I am a bit of a perfectionist, so the slightly warped chassis (the bottom still sits perfectly flat though, even without rubber feet), and less than perfect front face gluing bother me a little bit, but no one will ever notice.

Mountain's design is awesome, however I with that I hadn't ripped him off so much. After lamination I discovered a Formica product called DecoMetal, which is basically metal laminate. I would love to build a steampunk themed jukebox with that laminate and custom valves/knobs for volume and other settings.

Anyways, thanks to Mountain and everyone else who has built one of these before me, I learned a lot from scouring all of your posts. If anyone wants more details, pictures, or even the Illustrator files, let me know and I would be happy to provide.

[drventure]

After lamination I discovered a Formica product called DecoMetal, which is basically metal laminate. I would love to build a steampunk themed jukebox with that laminate and custom valves/knobs for volume and other settings.

Nice build, but that steampunk juke I'd definitely like to see!

[BobA]

Great looking build.  Thanks for posting all the detail as you went along. 

Thanks to Mountain for the original idea.