Donkey Kong Replica: Scratch build using Gaetan's plans - 95% done

[johnrt]

The "Vent cover" on the inside of the door is 400mm X 102mm, made from 12mm ply. With a pair of small risers on each end that are 15mm X 102mm, made from 20mm ply. Staples and glue are used to attach the "vent cover" to the back panel.

Is the ventilation hole also covered with a metal grill on the the inside of the door?

[ChanceKJ]

Nope. That's just something I added on mine because my original back panel didn't have the cover and I wanted something else.

Would you like dimensions for the pull handle on the coin box?

[johnrt]

Would you like dimensions for the pull handle on the coin box?

Yes, of course! I won't promise I'll make one, but I can try. I don't have that many different routerbits.

Edit: And it'll be nice for future reference.

[ChanceKJ]

Shouldn't be hard to make one. you have a choice:



The one from my Japanese DK cab is on the left, and the one on the right is from my newer US made MarioBros.

they're both 100mm wide and approximately 18mm x 18mm. Just two different styles.  They shouldn't be hard to make.

[yotsuya]

I'm not as anal retentive on the Nintendo stuff as Chance is, but I gotta agree with him. A knob from Ikea would look totally janky on that coin door box.

[SlammedNiss]

You boys and your damned building abilities.

I hate you.

[Andy_Bogard]

Also you can pick up 20 crt tv for amost nothing! They look terrible
What will you be using as wiring? Jamma? PC? raspberry?

that is nice work!
can't wait to see the screen coming in
are you going to use a crt ou lcd?

Preferably a CRT. But a real arcade CRT is quite hard to find here. But a CRT computer monitor is very easy to find, even for free. So I may go with that.

Ugh --- I had a really nice 20 inch LCD in mine for about 2 minutes before I knew I hated it. Go with a PC CRT.

[johnrt]

Also you can pick up 20 crt tv for amost nothing! They look terrible
What will you be using as wiring? Jamma? PC? raspberry?

Raspberry? RASPBERRY??? There will NEVER be a RaspBerry in any on my cabs! 

It'll be JAMMA wired. I haven't decided yet. It may wind up with an original board. I don't know yet.

[Andy_Bogard]

Raspberry? RASPBERRY??? There will NEVER be a RaspBerry in any on my cabs! 

just asking, it seems to be the trend at the moment

It may wind up with an original board. I don't know yet.

Even better, if you have the chance to have one 

[yotsuya]

Also you can pick up 20 crt tv for amost nothing! They look terrible
What will you be using as wiring? Jamma? PC? raspberry?

Raspberry? RASPBERRY??? There will NEVER be a RaspBerry in any on my cabs! 

It'll be JAMMA wired. I haven't decided yet. It may wind up with an original board. I don't know yet.

I love you, johnrt.

[wp34]

Keep in mind that modifying the thickness of X will also directly impact the size and fit of the display bezel plexi as this panel also acts as the mounting surface for the upper bezel bracket.

Thanks.  You just saved me from making a mistake on my cabinet.   

[ChanceKJ]

No worries! If you need anything else let me know, i've got both the US and Japanese cabs now. Pictures of most are in my flicker galleries. But if you have questions about something n particular just shoot me a PM.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/chancekj/albums

[vwalbridge]

i've got both the US and Japanese cabs now.

No Canadian version yet? I am disappoint.

[ChanceKJ]

i've got both the US and Japanese cabs now.

No Canadian version yet? I am disappoint.

Haha, i'm not sure. When i find one that looks legit but was made with Robertson head screws i'll let the world know ASAP.  I've already found Canadian made knock-off NeoGeo 4-Slot, and Midway cocktail clones.  I bet you this is out there...

[johnrt]

Have you tried putting your cabs next to each other just to see whether they match sidepanel-wise?

[ChanceKJ]

Not yet.  Its gonna happen some time this week as i want them ready for people visiting (Read: Canadian Thanks Giving).  Ever since this thing came into my possession i've started to notice a whole bunch of differences from the Japanese version.  I'm planning on making some kind of documentation on it.

One things for sure, the side panels on the newer US Particle version look like they came off of someone CnC table.

Just for clarification, everything you're getting measurement wise is from my original Japanese cab to stay consistent. With the exception of the vent cover on the inside of the back panel and one of the two coin box pull handles.

[johnrt]

Did some shopping today. I bought the material for the base. This is 95mm width and the base is supposed to be 85mm. But as someone already mentioned this cab could easily be a little taller, so I'm going with this. Noone will ever notice until the day this cab is placed next to another Nintendo cab.


I don't have a table saw so the nice 45 degrees corner cuts is out of the question. I'm cutting these with a jigsaw and then clean the edges with the router. This results in very accurate cuts.




And here's the result. Keep in mind that I haven't used a single drop of glue yet. Everything is dry assembled. (But it will be glued of course).


At last I made a small trolley to put the cab onto. This way I can rotate the cab as I wish during the build wihtout damaging the base. The trolley was just screwed together using some leftover materials I had lying around.




Here's a pic of the back door. It's a tight fit, I suspect a little too tight. Time will tell.


My precious:

[johnrt]

There was a nice and sunny weather outside today so I did some work on the cab:

First, holes taken in the inner marquee panel:


Then I turned to one of the hardest parts, the lower bezel part. I found that the upper slot had to be approx 8 mm wide to fit the lower bezel bracket into it. My router bit was 6 mm, so I routed it twice.


Upper slot done. I'm using a long piece of wood in case I ---fudgesicle--- up. I didn't ---fudgesicle--- up, so I actually ended up with a spare part.


Then I turned my attention to the slot where the CP will slide in to. I had a routerbit that was angled, but not enough.


So I decided to angle the router itself a little to increase the angle:




After I did the angled routing, I routed the rest of the slot with a 12mm bit.
This is the "jig" I had to make before routing it. Just to keep things in it's place during routing.


Distance to the slot should be 59mm. This is dead on.


Testing the finished angle:




Once again, dead on.


Testfitting in cab:


I think I did a decent job with this if you consider the tools I have available. You will have to find untraditional solutions yourself when you're missing the right tools. I think it turned out very nice in the end.

At last I made the control panel board and testfitted it:


The next challenging part will be the speaker grill. But first the package from ToolsToday with the correct routerbit need to arrive.

[vwalbridge]

Top notch woodworking John. I can already tell this cab is going to finish looking very good.

I'd pay you to build me a Mario Bros. Widebody but I'm worried about shipping cost from Europe. 

[jennifer]

     Apparently you did that the hard way, If you vector those plans you can make stencils on the plotter...But nice build never-the-less. 

[itruk]

Great work!

Could I ask what size timber you made the lower bezel part?



Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[johnrt]

Could I ask what size timber you made the lower bezel part?

It's a standard size here in Norway. 32mm x 95mm (or is it 33 x 95). It's a little bigger than required, but as long as the visible parts of this piece is according to plan it doesn't matter how big it is. The rest of the piece will be hidden inside the cab anyway.

[johnrt]

A non-arcade related update today:

Yesterday I was on a concert with "Brit Floyd". That's a Pink Floyd tribute band. It was a great show! Highly recommended!


This morning when I drove to work the fog was lying all over the city, except for up here in the hills. :-)


And at work today I managed to hurt my right hand handling some UPS batteries. Had to go to the emergency and glue the wound together. Bummer!


And a package from ToolsToday arrived today. Among the parts is the 8mm straight bit for the speaker panel and the 2mm t-molding slot cutter with 3 different ball bearings. Meaning I can now adjust the slot depth. The slot doesn't have to be that deep. But since I hurt my hand I have to wait at least a couple of days before I can resume the work on the cab.

[Gaetan]

Ho great ! This year I saw Australian Pink Floyd. Good show too.

I wish you a speedy recovery for your hand. 

[johnrt]

There's NO WAY I'm able to sit still even though my hand is a little reduced. I went out tonight and disassembled the cab and did the T-molding slot.


I have also started on the neverending filling/sanding procedure.


And about the base: I'm not sure how to mount the wheels. Like this?


Or like this?


These wheels may also be a little too small. I'll see if I can find some bigger ones.

[wp34]

I would go with the second option---with bigger wheels as you said.

Sorry to hear about your hand.  Hope it doesn't hurt too bad.  Did you pinch it between some batteries?

[johnrt]

I would go with the second option---with bigger wheels as you said.

Sorry to hear about your hand.  Hope it doesn't hurt too bad.  Did you pinch it between some batteries?

Yes, just as I was about to toss them in the container. I tore up an inch of the skin. Pretty deep also. But the doctor did a great job gluing it together and it's holding fine. And it doesn't hurt.

[ChanceKJ]

Yikes on the hand! Hope that heals up quick!

Second option for the wheels. Both of my cabs have the wheels attached to the bottom floor of the cab and not the back side of the base.  There are small square risers made of half inch ply between my wheels and the base of the cab too.

[ChanceKJ]

[johnrt]

I'm thinking of making a CP that has 4 buttons. 1P, 2P, Btn1 and Btn2 (then I can play a few more games on it afterwards). The original DK CP has just 1 button in addition to the 1P and 2P button. I don't want to just drill an extra hole in the original artwork. It has too look natural and be a part of the CPO artwork. Has any of you done that?

[vwalbridge]

See my post here.

Of course, this was for my mini DK so the buttons are more cramped. But I thought about labeling the second button a bunch of different things like "BOOM" or "ACTION!" or "EXTRA". (I know, they all sound dumb) I could never settle on anything so I just labeled it "JUMP" as well. Looking back, I think that I should have labeled it nothing and even left the orange triangle outline off as well.

Now that I think about it, if I had to do it again, I might labeled them "RUN" and "JUMP" (in that order) I know that none of the original DK games had a run button but it does throw it back to mario on the NES days. Or even "FIRE" and "JUMP"


...yea they all sound sorta weird.

[johnrt]

See my post here.

Of course, this was for my mini DK so the buttons are more cramped. But I thought about labeling the second button a bunch of different things like "BOOM" or "ACTION!" or "EXTRA". (I know, they all sound dumb) I could never settle on anything so I just labeled it "JUMP" as well. Looking back, I think that I should have labeled it nothing and even left the orange triangle outline off as well.

Now that I think about it, if I had to do it again, I might labeled them "RUN" and "JUMP" (in that order) I know that none of the original DK games had a run button but it does throw it back to mario on the NES days. Or even "FIRE" and "JUMP"

...yea they all sound sorta weird.

Yeah I was thinking of something like that. So it's time to fire up Photoshop again.

And you're right about the naming of the buttons. I need to think about that... One possibility is to just remove the button text on both buttons.

[vwalbridge]

Have you thought about doing 2 different control panels you can swap out?

One dedicated DK panel true to the original.

And one 2 button (or even 2 player) panel true to a VS panel or even totally original?

[johnrt]

Have you thought about doing 2 different control panels you can swap out?

One dedicated DK panel true to the original.

And one 2 button (or even 2 player) panel true to a VS panel or even totally original?

Yes, I have thought about it for sure. But for now it's gonna be a 1-player CP prefreably with 2 buttons. Making another CP is easy. I can even find an original later.

[DeLuSioNal29]

Have you thought about doing 2 different control panels you can swap out?

One dedicated DK panel true to the original.

And one 2 button (or even 2 player) panel true to a VS panel or even totally original?

Was considering this for my build.  One DK original CP, and one .vs original CP.  Hmmm.

As for the wheels, mine are also attached to the bottom of the cab.  It's a lot stronger.

D

[johnrt]

As for the wheels, mine are also attached to the bottom of the cab.  It's a lot stronger.

Yes, I have ordered some wheels that should fit.

[ChanceKJ]

My DKU project used both a DK3 control panel and a swappable Vrs panel.

[johnrt]

I've been sanding and filling the bottom of the cab. The plan is to finish the bottom so I can work on the cab uprised from now on. The bottom was also primed and painted black with a foam roller. I know it's unneccessary, but I don't like untreated wood, at least on the outside of a cab.





Next I painted the base and found these very strong stainless steel angels that has been lying around in a drawer for years. I'm gonna use these to fasten the base onto the cab.




At last I found these corner protectors which I'm gonna staple to the bottom when I'm working on the cab:

[johnrt]

I'm desperately trying to finish filling, priming and sanding the side panels and the front so I can move the cab from the shed into the house. I hate this part of the builds. It makes me regret that I started with it in the first place. However I think the side panels and the front is good enough now. The wood was very thirsty, I've use over a liter of primer on it so far.

[vwalbridge]

That priming looks very good. I love how smooth the surface is after prime paint has been sanded.