Nice cab. How did you bend the perspex without taking the paper off it or did you not have that in the original. Also how wide is the cab. As for the trackball how did you line up the whole without any mounting brackets. Awsome work!!
Thanks for asking, the freefoam (middle layer of my cp with the green freefoam cover plastic in the above picture) comes pre bent it is designed for under the eaves in houses (called soffits/facsias here in uk) I have a lot of spare after a recent extension and tbh it's excellent for a cp even without perspex because it's gloss white and smooth, the perspex was bent with the heat gun method. I have to admit there were 7 or 8 attempts with 2mm glodex (brandname) perspex which never satisfied me, Good job the stuff was only £6 a sheet and i got 4 attempts off each sheet. I found after bending a day or so, 2mm crazes internally which is due to cooling too quickly!
I mastered it toward the end of the 2nd sheet but as i needed the tinted sheet for the monitor I found it was cheap enough to order a clear 3mm piece with the tinted one as postage was the same for two, boy am i glad I did cos taking my time and clamping round the freefoam underlayer I was careful and slow to bend exactly as needed with the protective sheet still on, i made sure to keep the sheet warm for about an hour or so after still in clamps gradually lowering temperature by the distance method.
Drilling it was the worse part cos having got the bend right, then waiting 2 days to check for crazing in the bends, the drilling had to be spot on too.
All the components (trackball sticks) are mounted on a 2mm steel plate then the freefoam is laid on top with crude recessed cuts to hide the screwheads without the freefoam being uneven (freefoam is 10mm thick and easy to work), the freefoam and 3mm perspex is held on to the steel by the actual arcade buttons and nothing else, so the top surface is smooth as there are no screwheads on show. the whole machine is 600mm high by 450mm deep by 450mm wide.
The trackball mount is crude at best but it is functional if you look in the underside picture you'll see that the mount is just a rough cut 3mm plastic sheet (actually part of the de-cased dell monitor!) which was drilled with corner grooves rather than holes (just like the corner of the joystick mounts thesedays) so i could adjust to fit the hole rather than cut the hole to fit the trackball, I designed in 3mm all round to play with after aligning all 3 layers of the cp.
One more thing to add, I have now played golden tee golf on the machine and can regularly make drives over 300 yards without hitting the screen cover! The distance between end of trackball and screen is 30mm or 1 &1/4 inch. the trackball is very easy to move, hardly any friction at all. I think because I over polished the rollers and guides before I put the trackball in.
The picture below shows the old layout before the added artwork and trackball, just freefoam on top of the steel, (no green coverplastic) and NO perspex and you can see freefoam looks quite good without artwork or perspex. The white plastic frame for the internal part of the monitor bezel came from flooring door trim so hides the routed internal edge of the bezel wood. As with most of the "trim" they were things I had lying around which is why I started the build in the first place.
The eagle eyed of you will also notice the plastic strip under the monitor is different in the completed machine, this is because i found some white plastic doorframe draught excluders with semi circular white rubber ends (designed to be crushed when a door closes called bryseal stormguard I cut off the end and middle bits so it's usable under the bezel) I used this to hold the tinted 3mm perspex in place and is not attached to anything so if i gently pull out this strip I can easily remove the perspex for dusting or cleaning without having to remove any screws.
I still have the artwork files but they are 10meg each so are too big to post here if anyone wants them or knows a way to post them somewhere let me know.
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