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My first build: "Mimic"
vwalbridge:
+1 On having a little work done and some pictures to show when you start the thread.
+1 On using a lathe. My Dad always used a lathe in the garage when I was growing up. Lathe guys know a thing or two for sure. :)
Why is it called Mimic?
tomstewdevine:
Looks like great work so far, I will be looking forward to the next update.
Laythe:
Aw, thanks for the kind words.
Regarding the 'exit' button on the center column - I wound up winding my own VERY stiff spring for that button... after doing basically that. :)
It's pretty safe... now. But you sure called it. :lol
Why the name Mimic? From D&D lore. It seemed to me to fit, for what I set out to try to do.
Laythe:
So, I know the normal go-to tool for inletting a control panel is a router, but, I like my milling machine, and thought I'd give it a try. Turned the speed up, and used a big end mill to rough it out, a small one to touch up the corners.
It actually worked reasonably well, here's the resulting recess so the trackball plate can sit flush. The splintering out came from the subsequent sawing, not the milling - but none of that will show or matter much.
The P1 and P2 start buttons do intersect the trackball mounting plate, but I'll cut the steel back to clear them - they don't actually collide with the happ trackball underneath. Doing that let me keep the layout a bit tighter.
A funny story - I actually settled on the 4-button diamond before ever seeing Vertical Retrace. I don't play any 6-button fighters, let alone 8-button
console emulators, so 4 wound up being the sweet spot for my uses. I knew I wanted to be able to play Gladiator well, with it's high-middle-low buttons, and I wanted to be able to play Missile Command, with left-middle-right buttons. The diamond does both patterns elegantly in 4.
It also works for Xybots, with left and right buttons standing in for the twist-sticks. (In a pinch, it makes a surprisingly usable sort of d-pad virtual joystick for two player Smash TV.)
So I was feeling like I was pretty clever for inventing that... and then I found Vertical Retrace. Had to laugh. Well played, sir, you beat me to it.
Anyway, after a lot of priming, filling and sanding, the trackball mounting plate blended in fairly well.
Laythe:
I didn't feel any need to go with a 2x4 inner skeleton - I trust the 3/4" plywood to bear any sort of loads this thing is ever going to see. I opted for simple glued and screwed 1x2 corner batons to index everything together.
I buried the power entry box inside one of the batons to protect it a bit, since I'll be using the lower area of the machine for storage when it's all together.
The inletting I did with a dremel tool on the center console is perhaps a little crude, if seen from the backside -
But, it looks decently good from the front. I went with the GGG NovaGem CDRs, and fake coin door. An early assembly mockup to see how it would all fit together yielded this.
Not as authentic as a real coin door, but I particularly like the feel of the CDR buttons - they've got a very satisfying 'chunk' to them.
I folded up my own speaker grilles out of perforated aluminum on a finger brake, for the satellite speakers and subwoofer.
Internally, my plans are somewhat like a bartop, in that almost all of the actual running gear is in the upper half - aside from the subwoofer, the whole bottom half is empty. I've got a CPU shelf dividing the space at the height of the bottom of the control panel swell, which has 4x 120mm fans, the CPU sitting between them, and a couple cable passthroughs.
The fans are set up above the ceiling of the storage bay, which keeps them out of the way.
As seen from the top, with my crudely breadboarded proof-of-concept fan power setup, and the PC in the center:
The number and size of fans may be overkill, but the 120s are nice and quiet.
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