Author Topic: Starting the build... (Read 3557 times)

johnbuzzz · « **on:** December 29, 2005, 12:16:32 pm »

Let the building begin...Making a straightforward Ultimate II. Want to make a four player frankenpanel also...

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #1 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:22:23 pm »

I'm using dowels for support. Here's a picture of the bottom almost done.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #2 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:27:01 pm »

Here's the bottom completed. This is a picture of the little plug that you get with a dowel kit that makes it foolproof to line up either side...

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #3 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:33:27 pm »

A picture of the keyboard drawer. Getting ready to attach the top. I used about 8 dowels and glued it pretty good. I made it 29 inches wide so it will just squeeze through the doorway at the top of the stairs if I ever decide to move! You can see the epoxy that I was testing for filling the holes. It worked well. It didn't have the smell of bondo but took too long to dry completely. I ended up just using bondo in the end.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #4 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:37:50 pm »

Here's where I got a little carried away with the router. When I was coming around the corner, the router didn't have as much board to rest on so it angles a little bit and took out too much mdf. I just filled it with epoxy and re-routed it.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #5 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:41:48 pm »

Here she is with the top attached...another picture of the dowel "guides"

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #6 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:45:57 pm »

Ended up having to buy a few more clamps. I wish I would have remembered that the coin door had ROUND edges when I was cutting the hole!

walls83 · « **Reply #7 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:48:55 pm »

coming along nicely... I need to get one of the dowel pin liner-upper thingies.

Nice work

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #8 on:** December 29, 2005, 12:50:32 pm »

For the control panel I wanted a little more support than 3/4" mdf would give so I went with 3/4" MDO.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #9 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:01:18 pm »

Here's the frankenpanel in her infancy! I want to thank RAS for making his autocad layout available and also to GSXR moviestar for the initial layout. It saved me a lot of time! I made the big mistake of using cutouts for player 3 & 4 as you can see from the pictures. I kind of taped them into place on the printout of the original autocad file. WHAT WAS I THINKING! It came back to haunt me when I was doing the artwork. I used the autocad design as a layer so I could line everything up right. But...it only had player 1 and 2 so I had to try and measure where I placed 3 & 4 which was really not smart on my part. If I would have just placed them in autocad rather than "taping them" I would have saved about a week of procrastination and a days worth of measuring, printing, re-adjusting, printing... a real pain. It ended up being 50 inches wide. Unfortunately Mame marquee only goes up to 49 inches. I have a printer that prints 13 x 19 so I'll just print 4 sheets and have slight overlap. I've been waiting to use it for something other than 8.5 x 11 anyway!

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #10 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:03:17 pm »

Thanks Walls. Yea, the dowel guides REALLY speed things up. I picked them up at Home Depot. About 6 bucks with a drill bit and some dowels...

walls83 · « **Reply #11 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:06:50 pm »

If your concerned with the placement of the art on players 3 and 4 I would suggest printing the art before you start drilling. It will save you alot of time and heart ache.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #12 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:09:47 pm »

Just finished drilling the holes.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #13 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:12:44 pm »

Whew!!!! that's enough for one day!!! Just kidding! Actually she's almost done. I just never knew how to post pictures! I figured I really enjoyed looking at other builds in chronological order so I thought I would do the same. If any one wants any pictures of anything specific that I haven't posted feel free to ask. There's a lot of pictures and I figured it would be overkill...

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #14 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:18:46 pm »

Threw on a couple coats of enamel primer. I plan on using enamel because it will be a little more durable than a latex. I used peg board for venting on the top piece as you can see. Actually I mis-cut the last piece of mdf that I had and they only sold it in sheet of 4 x 8. The peg board was about 30 dollars cheaper and came in 4 x 4 sheets so I went with it.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #15 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:19:59 pm »

Picture for the previous comment

figured I screw up sooner or later

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #16 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:22:46 pm »

Another picture of the full cab primered. Also the bottom of the CP.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #17 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:28:21 pm »

Another picture of the cab with "mood lighting"

You can see in the routered edges for the t-molding that there was a little bit of paint build up. I ended up scraping it out when i installed the molding. If I did it again I would probably would put a piece of tape over the length of it all to keep it clean. Here's the CP going through a clamp job.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #18 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:30:41 pm »

Sorry. Put the wrong picture in of the cab...and CP

TurboC-- · « **Reply #19 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:35:52 pm »

Need to compress those jpegs a bit buddy, this page is too hard to use...

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #20 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:38:07 pm »

Crap...sorry. I forget about how it was with dial-up. Pictures from this point on will be much smaller.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #21 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:40:56 pm »

I used rustoleum black satin for the outside. I didn't do formica because I was too cheap. Maybe the next cab I will.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #22 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:45:30 pm »

This is the smoked tempered glass for covering the monitor. I got this j-channel from the glass shop. I may switch it out because I anticipate it leaving too large of a shadow on the upper and lower edges of the marquee.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #23 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:48:03 pm »

Used a flush trim bit with the router to cut all the holes in the lexan.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #24 on:** December 29, 2005, 01:58:24 pm »

Here's the CPO. Thanks to ROM for the wonderful art. I really wanted lightning but couldn't find any hi-res pics... Thanks again to ras and GSXR for the inspiration. The colors really don't show ay all because of the resolution but it is very nice.

More Cowbell · « **Reply #25 on:** December 29, 2005, 02:33:08 pm »

Wow! Nice set of tools. Man, if I had a router and all of the bits and clamps and doodads and spapoop that you have, I could have finished my cab in less than 2 months. Nice work, looks great!

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #26 on:** December 31, 2005, 01:31:42 am »

The wiring from beneath. Testing out all the buttons.

TurboC-- · « **Reply #27 on:** January 01, 2006, 06:07:07 am »

Actually I'm on cable. It still adds up. You have 6M worth of pics on the page, it's just a lot to scroll through. Tried Irfanview? It's a good free image viewer that allows a lot of manipulations, including good jpeg compression.

c64rulez · « **Reply #28 on:** January 01, 2006, 07:12:05 am »

Looks very good but do yourself a favour and check that keyboard drawer. It looks like it's not coming out far enough.
I was dumb enough to find out just that when I mounted the cp in place. I then had to reconstruct the drawer.

Bones · « **Reply #29 on:** January 01, 2006, 07:23:08 am »

Looking great!

It might just be the picture, but that Lexan looks really thick. Just what thickness is it?

markrvp · « **Reply #30 on:** January 01, 2006, 11:01:45 am »

Your control panel looks VERY, VERY NICE. Congratulations on great execution of artwork and layout.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #31 on:** January 02, 2006, 02:06:20 am »

Thanks for the nice comments guys. The lexan is 1/4". I must admit it left me a small sliver of board to squeeze the t-molding into but it's a thing of beauty. I just got my marquee and side art from mame marquee. They are pixelhuggers designs I believe. I will post pictures when I get them on.

Here's my Wells Gardner. I almost cried when I saw the shipping charge. Then I realized I was only an hour north of them so while I was going to Indy to pick up my new pinball - head to head U.S.A. football, I swung by and picked it up. WG forgot to include a power cord. They had it to me in the mail in three days.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #32 on:** January 02, 2006, 02:28:12 am »

c64rulez, you are right on the keyboard drawer but hopefully I won't have to use it too much. I couldn't find a heavy duty drawer slide for a good price so I had to settle for a cheap drawer one. Does anyone know where to get the nice ones for a good price? I could always just swap it out and have a longer drawer travel.

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #33 on:** January 02, 2006, 02:32:36 am »

Here's a picture of the speakers. I took apart some Klipsch 2.1. The sound control slides off the bottom of the speaker (not before sacrificing a nice piece of knuckle to the arcade gods

) I just used some duct tape around the speakers to avoid any light from shining through once the marquee was lit. It worked out nice. I can hear the bass from capcom bowling half across the house!

johnbuzzz · « **Reply #34 on:** January 02, 2006, 02:41:53 am »

A big thanks to everyone here. I lurked around the site for a few weeks before jumping in. Everything I needed to know is in the forum. Plus I bought St. Clair's book which explained a few things. I've had a Hotrod joystick for a couple years and thought that was the greatest thing when I got it. Now it looks like a vic-20 next to an x-box 360 when I have it next to the frankenpanel. The old timers should catch that one!

c64rulez · « **Reply #35 on:** January 02, 2006, 05:06:59 am »

Quote from: johnbuzzz on January 02, 2006, 02:28:12 am

c64rulez, you are right on the keyboard drawer but hopefully I won't have to use it too much. I couldn't find a heavy duty drawer slide for a good price so I had to settle for a cheap drawer one. Does anyone know where to get the nice ones for a good price? I could always just swap it out and have a longer drawer travel.

swap it or lose it.
You don't need any heavy duty stuff for it. It's only a keyboard.
I can't tell from the pictures the depth of the drawer, but mine is 16" and holding fine.

jfunk · « **Reply #36 on:** January 03, 2006, 09:13:07 am »

I wanted that pin!! Just a bad time for it to come available..

Great looking CP! Can't wait to see the rest!


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