My first MAME cabinet (Lunacade) is FINISHED!

[nathan118]

Well, thought I should share with all the great guys that have helped me get ready for this big moment! Here are some pics from our first day working on the cabinet.

http://theburn.com/nathan118/gallery/arcade

I'm basically following the plans from Arcade Paradise, except I'm going to have a 4-player control panel. I've ordered all the parts and hope to get it done sooner than later! I'll keep you posted.



My buddy LUNA!

[BobbyG66]

Good start, do you have a theme/colors/artwork to share?

[RayB]

Wooo Stacie's a hottie!

 

[nathan118]

Wooo Stacie's a hottie!

 

hahaha, that's hilarious. I'll definitly have to show her that. If you're really bored you can go up a directory or two and check out the rest of my site.

As for a "theme"....I don't really have one yet. Right now I'm just going black paint and black t-molding. This way I can put it in a future house and not run the risk of being an eye-sore. A cool red or blue would have been fun...but not until I know I have a dedicated gameroom. I'm going red,blue,green, and yellow controls though, and a translucent blue trackball. Should give some needed color.

My brother in law is an awesome artist, so I may hit him up for some help later on. Whatever I end up doing, it'll prolly be a simple design. Even just the MAME logo you see on some is cool, but it'd be fun to do something original. If you try and tackle a project like this all at once you'll be overwhelmed. I've found that taking it in smaller steps makes it more manageable.

Anyways, hope to do more this weekend and update you all.

[nathan118]

Well, another weekend over means more work done on the arcade. We finally got it standing up. The bottom was kind of a pain, but we wanted to make sure we go it right. We're putting casters on it, so wanted to make sure we had nice surfaces for them to bolt into. We fixed the bottom after these pictures were taken, but quite a bit more progress made. Page with the start of new pictures is below.

http://theburn.com/nathan118/gallery/arcade?page=2

[nathan118]

Well we painted it, looks much better with glossy black than boring brown mdf.  

All the control parts are here, so tackling the control panel is our next big task. Gonna start working on the artwork too. My brother-in-law works at a graphic design place, so he's gonna help us out.

My best "theme" idea so far is this: Lunacade.

I must explain. If you check out my gallery there's a cool guy sitting inside the cab. His last name is Luna. So I was thinking...I can call it "Lunacade" and give it a stars/moon theme, since Luna meens "moon" in Spanish. What do you guys think?

[whammoed]

My best "theme" idea so far is this: Lunacade.

I like it, but since I frequent this forum I have already seen a lot of "cade" names including my own cab.
How about "Lunar Lander" or "Lunar Eclipse"
Of course anyone who isn't into the scene would'nt see the "cade" name as overdone, so I guess only change the name if you like something better!

[Witchboard]

Oh.. when I first saw "Lunacade" for some reason I thought of lunacy... as in a lunatic.    I thought you would have a padded wall and straight jacket theme. LOL

[nathan118]

Front door and keyboard drawer.


Cut out the control panel (MDF and Lexan). Just waiting for the artwork now.


Hope to get the whole thing done in a week or two. Can't wait! In case you haven't seen the artwork, check it out.

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=24598

[nathan118]

Well I know the last post wasn't very exciting....but this is.

We got our artwork printed and put together the control panel. Here's some pictures.

Lexan with the holes cut.


Crummy aerial photo.


Guys and their girls testing for elbow room.


More pictures can be found below. It's almost done!!!

http://theburn.com/nathan118/gallery/arcade?page=7

[AmericanDemon]

What are your dimensions for your CP?  That thing is Huge!

[nathan118]

It's 48" wide, about 20" deep. I didn't think that was overly big, since slik stik's 4 player panel is 48"x 21". It doesn't look that big in person I guess. I just knew that I wanted a 4 player panel, and I didn't want people to be elbowing each other.

I dunno, it's my first panel....so I'm excited.

[AmericanDemon]

It looks great man.  The art looks wonderful with it.  Good job.

[nathan118]

Put in another 6-7 hours today. Got the t-molding, marquee, speaker panel, TV, and smoked plexi all installed. It looks pretty good. There's a small space between the speaker panel and front of the TV that's letting in light from above, so when the light is on it lights up the top front of the TV. Other than that, just need to get the control panel done. Thanks for all the help and support. You guys rock, what an awesome community.

[nathan118]

Well, a TV just wasn't cutting it, so I went out and bought the new betson imperial multisync. We just need to mount it and I'm waiting for my arcadeVGA to get here.

[nathan118]

It's all done! Here are some final pictures. Thanks for all the help and suggestions!







And here's a link to the end of the gallery.

http://theburn.com/nathan118/gallery/arcade?page=10

[skid_68]

I love your CPO, especially the trackball. Very nice work indeed.

[fredster]

I agree!
Nice job!