Lightweight Portable Vertical Shooter Arcade Ideas

[rmikes213]

My next project is to take my fiance's old Dell laptop, strip it down, and turn the widescreen monitor on its side to make a single player vertical shooter only arcade. One of my big goals in this project is to make this thing as small and as light as possible. while keeping it as cheap as I can. Everything is going to run off the laptop, so I'm excited to be able to use the laptop's battery and make this thing portable as well.

What I'm looking for here is ideas on how to build the frame and make it lightweight. The screen/laptop casing is only about 12" x 15", and that's basically the entire thing except for the control panel. For the control panel, I'm going to do 3 action buttons, a coin in, and a player start on the face of the CP, a config button on the front of the CP, and 2 pinball buttons on the side. I'd like to use MDF, but I want to use the thinnest MDF I can get by on. I wonder if I could make a 1x1 frame? Then cover the sides and CP with 3/8" MDF, and everywhere else in 1/4" MDF? Does anyone have ideas/plans/previous builds that I could grab some inspiration from?

Thanks for all your help in advance!

[Malenko]

Have you considered just a stand alone controller that plugs into the laptop? The weight of MDF adds up, even an empty haruman vertical kit has some good weight to it (its 1/2")

[monkeychunkuk]

Yup agreed MDF can add weight how about Perspex/ plastic case that your laptop sits into?

[rmikes213]

Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. That is a good idea. I did want to make it a sturdy bartop that could be toted around everywhere, but now that you mention a stand alone controller, more ideas pop into my mind!

The laptop is going to disassembled, so it won't need to be taken out/moved. I'd like to stay with the bartop type of design, but I'm up for trying new things.

Maybe a casing that holds the laptop/screen that can be set upright and a stand popped out to sit up on an angle. Then a separate CP that i can attach/plug into the screen to make it go! So folding the screen up and disconnecting the controller would be a wiz! The screen could lay flat/against a wall and the CP could even be reused in other situations.

I had also thrown around the idea of not putting the monitor vertical, rather horizontal and loading it with nintendo and sega games (so I could play Sonic!), and this approach would let me rotate the screen casing back to horizontal because the CP wouldn't be attached right to the screen... I like where this is going...!

[michelevit]

If your trying to save weight, dont use MDF, use quality plywood. Its stronger and lighter. 1/2 inch and 1/4 inch plywood is what I would use.

[rmikes213]

Good point! Thanks.