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[finished] Star Wars themed arcade cabinet build
Niels Arcade:
UPDATE november 15th 2017: it is finished :D
It has been a very busy period in my life, so it has been a while since I updated, but the project is finally finished! I've updated this thread with a lot of pictures and want to thank you guys for the support and all the great info I've found on this wonderful forum.
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Hi Everyone, in this thread I will document the build of my first arcade cabinet. I am in my 30's and arcades give me this nice sense of childhood nostalgia. I have fond memories of being a ten year old button bashing a SFII cabinet. Besides that I still like to play videogames on my PS4. I have been lurking this forum for some time now. Time has come to get to work and a build a cabinet myself.
I have considered a lot of themes for my cabinet. In the end I decided to go with an Asteroids theme. I really like the retro space theme and the red, blue and black color palette. I will not build a replica of the original Asteroids cabinet, but I will use some of the artwork for the sides and marquee of my cabinet. I found the hi res artwork at coinopart.com, I have attached a preview of the side art and marquee.
UPDATE: I Changed my mind and went for a Star Wars theme. Using Photoshop and great artwork I found on the internet I have created the designs for the marquee, cp and side art.
I created 2D exterior plans of the cabinet with the free version of QCAD on OSX. I based my design on project Mame by Koenigs http://www.koenigs.dk/mame/eng/stepprojectmame.htm. I like the elegant, simple and partly rounded design. I do think the original is a bit to short for me, since I am a tall guy (192 cm/6 feet 3). To avoid back strain while playing, I have increased the control panel height to 105 cm/41 inch, to be at the height of my waist. I have adjusted the rest of the cabinet for proportions and the total cabinet height will be 198 cm. I have attached images and a PDF of the build plans. All the sharp corners in the design will be slightly rounded.
Niels Arcade:
I bought the following things from arcadeworld.uk and arcadewinkel.nl (seller depending on price & availability):
- Coin door with two mechs
- 2x Sanwa ball top joystick
- player 1 and 2 startbuttons
- black admin buttons
- blue illuminated action buttons
- red illuminated action buttons
- i-pac 2 with wiring
- red T molding
- router T molding cutting bit
- 28 mm drill for button holes
- lock for the service door
I haven't got a definitive control panel layout yet, but I think I will go with eight action buttons for each player in case I might hookup my Xbox360 or PS4 in the future.
Niels Arcade:
I bought a used PC and LCD screen for 50 euro's each via Marktplaats (Dutch Craigslist). Especially the screen is in mint condition.
Screen:
- 23 inch Samsung SyncMaster 2333SW
- 30 inch HP ZR30W 16:10 IPS monitor
PC:
- HP DC5850 with dual core AMD Athlon X2 5400B Processor (2.8-GHz, 1MB L2 cache, HT bus 2.0)
- 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400 (800-MHz) RAM
- 80GB 7200rpm SATA disk (might gonna upgrade this for more storage capacity)
- ATI Radeon HD 7450 graphics card
I am not sure yet what Windows OS version I will be using. What should be the most stable OS for most emulators, Windows 7 or 8? Not decided about a front end either, although I have my eyes on Mala for the moment, I like the clean look of it.
Niels Arcade:
For this build I will be using 18 mm MDF plates for the sides and 15 mm plates for the front and rear. For the mounting of plates, on the inside I will use 20 x 44 and 44 x 44 mm lumber. I will use screws and glue to make everything stick together.
I have drawn the saw lines on one of the 18mm plates. For the sawing I will use a circle saw (straight lines) and jig saw (curves). To copy the second side panel I will use a router with a flush trim bit.
johnrt:
Great start of build. About the admin-panel. Are you sure you need that? My first build was also a Project MAME, i found that the CP-area was big enough to house all my admin-buttons. And today after 5 builds I find the required amount of admin-buttons to be around 1 (the Exit-button).
Feel free to see my pics of my first build from here:
http://379009.net/mame-arcade/pics/
(files have norwegian names, but just start from the top)
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