First self built cab Finished, for now (New Pics)

[FLAPS]

About 2 weeks ago I started working on this cab with my extremely limited knowledge and my friends even lesser amount of knowledge of power tools and some help from my farther. Originally I had a cab that I got from eBay that I?d done a very rushed and cruddy conversion with and was never really happy with it, partly because using the monitor I had in the giant cab looked lame so I set out on making a cab that could be the size I needed. At the moment I?ve still got to fit the IPAC into the frame, wire the controls, make a new mount for the monitor since the first one isn?t so good and then fit the front but I thought I?d post what I?d done so far anyway.

Compared to some of the ones I?ve seen here it?s put heavily to shame but for now it?ll do its purpose and some day down the line I?ll put together a much better cab using what I?ve learnt from doing this one. You?ll probably notice that there isn?t a marquee space and that?s because I don?t plan to put one on now so at the top there will just be the speakers but with the size it is once the monitor goes in there won?t be a whole lot of free room so it should *fingers crossed* look alright. Also the reason it opens from the front is just to save on some hassle, the space I plan to fit it in would make it tricky to move in and out often to get into the back.

[MaMeNnO]

You might consider rotating your pics 90 degrees. That'll look much more friendlier.  ...no, that's not upside down! 

The layout of the buttons is a bit... different, but if it works for you, that's ok. Did you made a prototype first?
I am not even at the point of making one yet, but I will make a prototype on a piece of scrap wood.

[postalp123]

Very clean job for a first cab.

One major problem I foresee is the depth of the cab for your monitor, it looks a bit too shallow.

Keep in mind that almost everybody here, to some degree, had ALOT to be desired after building our first cab. 4 cabs later for me, I look back fondly on my first project and laugh at all the mistrials I had on that one (I don't believe I made a single straight cut on a single panel on that one, LOL)

Great start, keep it up.

[FLAPS]

THe buttons on the front are for start, coin inserts and esc. I used to have the start and coin buttons in the same position on the last one and they worked fine. As for the pictures I had to take them using my camera phone so to get the whole cab in the pic I had to hold the ohone straight rather then on it's side so the camera messed up a bit. I'll rotate the next ones in paint before I post though.

The monitor space was originally a problem because the monitor I intended to use didn't fit but I bought my friends spare LCD so that works fine.

[_) (V) (-)]

Looks pretty solid so far Flaps! The LCD monitor should give you all kinds of room to work with if you wish to add a marque or whatever. 

I know I wouldn't tollerate them admin buttons on the very front panel like that. I tend to lean against things while standing for long peroids and could easly see myself puching something and exiting a game accidently. 

But if they work for you that's all that matters.  Keep us posted with some more pics!

[FLAPS]

Done a little work on it recently, mostly because a friend of my is moving to Japan for a year on Monday as part of his Uni course so we wanted to get a good run on the arcade before he left. With that I fitted the monitor in with the really badly cut front just to set it up for now, I plan to cut a new one either this weekend or during the coming week but for now it

[FLAPS]

And the full pic, it clearly shows the problem with the monitor holes, the top isn't straight, one side is wider then the other and the cut on the top side of he monitor hole isn't straight so it's easier to re-cut or re-think that part.

[leapinlew]

Did you put the control panel on different?

Actually, I don't get it... is that front plate covering your marquee as well? Did I miss something?

[FLAPS]

Did you put the control panel on different?

Actually, I don't get it... is that front plate covering your marquee as well? Did I miss something?

Not putting a marquee on for now, the top section won't look as plain with the speaker holes sorted out. Ckyo did point out that using a LCD I do have alot of free room to play with behind the monitor so I might fit in a marquee of sorts at a later date but for now just trying to keep it simple since alot of it has so far been trail and error. The control panel thing was my mistake in rotating the picture in paint, there still the way they were in the first few pictures.

[leapinlew]

On my first cabinet I created a bezel out of wood and painted it. I was never really happy with it... What I eventually did was purchase a peice of smoked plexi. I ordered it to the exact size I needed so I didn't have to worry about doing any cutting.

I angled the monitor back and was able to get a very professional looking job. On my second cabinet I did the same thing. Here are the pics:

Here is a shot of the monitor angled back in the cabinet. I measured the gap and did a test fit with some cardboard. Then I ordered the smoked plexi


The plexi is held in by the control panel and the top of the marquee, but you could use some velcro or screws.

As you can see it covers a world of sin.

Your bezel solution will work fine - I just wanted to share with you what I did with a situation similar to yours.

Overall - keep up the good work. It's a clean looking cabinet and looks like it would be fun to play on.

[_) (V) (-)]

Could you shim up one side of the monitor to make it match the hole in the panel?

Or like Leapinlew suggested, a plexi-glass cover panel bezel thingy would hide a multitude of sins.

[FLAPS]

A long time with no updates but I hadn’t given up hope. With family visiting soon and some time off I enlisted the help of a different friend from before to get this finished so now here is the updates and a brief step by step to go with the new pictures.

First two things that needed doing was 1, a new front covering and two the wood look went for originally just wasn’t turning out as planned so the cab and it’s new front got two coats of primer.



Next up was a colour scheme, with a total lack of real painting and DIY knowledge I didn’t want to attempt doing a fancy design on the cab, but at the same time I didn’t want it to be all one colour. In the end since 1 set of controls were red and the other blue we decided to make the cab one half red and one half blue so used newspaper to cover off half of the cab to paint each side in turn.




Despite fearing the worst when doing the painting the final result was quite pleasing, there were a few patches that left some of the primer uncovered but they were soon touched up with a brush.



After that we cut and painted some plastic boarders to put over the edges, around the monitor and at the top and bottom of the control panel area. We also needed to find a way to put some sort of cover in the speaker holes, we first tried to find some covers to fit the round 3 by 3 inch holes but without any luck we bought a plastic vent cover, snapped it in half and painted it, not the best way to go about it but it did the job. When that game together it was moved into the house, controls installed and monitor fitted so here are 3 pictures of the “finished” article.

[FLAPS]

The friend who helped trying it out on New Zealand Story.





Overall I’m happy with it, I say its finished but I do have some ideas for the future like perhaps attempting to fit a small marquee style light between the two speakers since I have a lot of free room behind the monitor, as someone previously stated. There are flaws in it and spots of bad workmanship but this is the first thing I’ve attempted to make myself with power tools etc so despite it’s flaws I’m still quite proud. Its 63 inches in height, 20 in width and the furthest out part comes to 22 inches from the back. The reason I didn’t go for a normal arcade design was mainly due to the size and that I didn’t want to have to try and find a way to fill a huge screen space, which might be a lame excuse to some of you I know. As for using glass to cove the screen area, that is another idea for the future, for now it would have blocked off the buttons on the LCD that I still need to access too. There is a possibility of adding a flip down panel over the buttons fitted below a glass front but like I say that’s for the future. For now it’s time to get some fun out of playing it with friends and family, not to say the build wasn’t a lot of fun and from it I learnt two key things for the possible next one, 1 plan out every detail and 2 a complete lack of DIY knowledge is a lot less knowledge then you actually think it is. Anyway thanks for reading.

[MaMeNnO]

Well, congratulations on your first finished cabinet!
I guess you haven't planned any artwork on the cabinet...?
It looks a bit funny, coz most cabinets on here seem to have a marquee. Not that a cabinet real needs one, but to me it just gives that little extra visual attraction. Anyway, you can always decide to place one on top!

But, most important, you can play games and have that arcade feeling.

[Havok]

Great first cab! I would suggest putting smoked plexi on the monitor, and painting the monitor black to hide the bezel...

[javeryh]

Nice work!  If you get a chance it might look nice with a black bezel to cover the monitor frame and maybe some black speaker grills to "finish" it off.  Cool idea on the paint job too.