Franco's Custom Cocktail (UPDATE: Wood cutting commences!! =) )

[Santoro]

This project is truly moving the bar up.  Holy Cow.

AWESOME.   

[pinballwizard79]

OMG

If I could make a cab like that my bathrobe & towels would have the initials BMF monogrammed on the corners.

Seriously dude, I have a splash of diamond plate & chrome joysticks on my baby but you.....you.....Franco, you have have Alien technology on your hands!

"Chuck Norris does not build his own arcades, he has Franco build them"

http://www.chucknorrisjokes.net/

http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/

Later

[Franco B]

Thanks guys.

No alien technology pinballwizard79, I'm just lucky to work in a large machine shop and have a lot of spare time.

Do you have any more pictures of your cab pinballwizard? I loved the ones I saw in the Control Panel Database thread and I'm itching to see some more!

Seeing as I'm here ill do a little update.....

As you know I haven't updated for a while, this is mainly because I wanted to get the CP graphics at least sorted before I carried on. Well I can happily say they are 95% complete  I was hoping to post some results of them tonight but they will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm really stoked with them and ill give due credit to the artist who did them tomorrow

I have been working on a couple of other bits in the mean time, this is one that I finished this week:



What the -smurf- is it I hear you ask? Well the top of my cab is going to hinge at the back and I wanted a way to keep the top up when swapping over CPs or anything like that so I thought I would make some kind of stay similar to a car bonnet. This is an early CAD model of it which shows how it works:



Its similar to a car bonnet support but the cabinet top will be supported at both sides. I didn't want to just have one support with the weight of the glass etc.

A couple of closeup pics:



The pivot/bar cups are made from stainless steel bar. The pockets were milled out and two counter sunk holes were drilled to mount the pivot/bar cups to the cabinet. I drilled and reamed a 1/4" hole for a dowel to locate in for the bars to pivot on.



The support bars were also made from stainless steel. One end was domed and the other was domed and then reamed 1/4" for the dowels. I also drilled and tapped an M4 hole for a grubscrew to secure the dowel in place. Its not really necessary as the dowel is a nice tight fit.



/\ Closeup of the assembled componets, The dowels were made from 1/4" silver steel. I tapped some M4 holes in the end of them to make it easier to remove them.

Ill make some locating cups for the support bars to sit in in the cabinet top when it is raised.

Ive been working on something else quite nice but Ill wait until its complete.

That's it for this evening, Ill hopefully post some artwork goodness tomorrow! 

[mountain]

Damn Dude! Will the sweet updates ever end?! You are definitely approaching this project with the right attitude. You aren't rushing it, you are taking your time making sure everything is perfect, down to the last detail.

You have a great resource in your metal abilities...I wish we were neighbors!

[Franco B]

Thanks Mike I'm probably taking my time a little too much time to be honest but I have everything planned in sequence in my head  and I really don't want to stray from it if possible. (I even have the final showcase video planned in my head, with music, frame timing and everything, lol  )

Yeah It would be handy if we lived close, I'm sure we could come up with something fairly special between us!

Okay, here are the graphics for the control panels:

Long 'horizontal' panel (x1):




Short 'vertical' panels (x2):



(if you click each image you will get a slightly larger version if you wish)

uprightbass360 did all of the graphics for me and I'm over the moon with them. I gave him an idea of what I was after (space invaders array, space invaders monster, positioning etc) and I let him go to work on it and he has produced some amazing results IMHO, we have modified the drawings here and there and tweaked a few things but we are 95% there now.  uprightbass360 has been a pleasure to work with and I'm really looking forward to working with him for the rest of my projects graphics Thanks Sam if you are reading 

Here's another pic of the CPs for reference.....


The artwork will cover the top of the panel and will also fold down over the front so the spacies will just be on the CP top. I'm going to get some vinyl decals cut out to stick on the player start/credit panels as shown below:





I sent Sam a PDF with the arrow and button placements on so that they can be included on the final vinyl. This will make it easy to cut the arrows out to reveal the LED backlit plexiglass and also to place the graphic accurately.

I think that's it for now, i know I have forgotten something but it will have to wait. Have a good weekend all 

[HaRuMaN]

 

[Ms Jersey]

The artwork reminds me of your first cabinet and that very cool cabinet by Johnnysmitch.

[pinballwizard79]

Can I have this machine when you are finished?

"These aren’t the droids your'e looking for"

[waveryder]

Can I have this machine when you are finished?

You'll have to beat me to it! 

[pinballwizard79]

Seeing little metal stuff made from bigger metal stuff makes me feel like I didnt do enough when making my own arcade.

Franco, tell the truth....did you make the screws & bolts you are using on this cab in a machine shop too? "Nails, we must be out....I will go & make some more".

 

Aw man, dont kill me, I couldnt resist.

I will PM you later regarding the dustwashers, peace.

[Franco B]

 

Well I bought the screw and some of the nuts and bolts. Ive had to make a fair few special nuts/bolts etc purely because you cant get them off the shelf. 

Yeah shoot me a PM about the dustwashers, I should have the time to get some done this week. Peace.

[waldo]

  dammit now I have to go burn my cabinet and start again . I knew I shouldnt come back to these forums to see the amzing stuff some of you are doing......wtb girlfriend with father whos has access to cnc machines

[AnthonyB]

this is amazing!

[BASS!]

Yup. Franco is the most thorough and detail oriented member that I have met here. This thing is going to be awesome:-)

[Franco B]

Cheers guys. I had a quick look this morning and I can't believe its 10 months since I started the project. I thought I would be finished by about march time at the very latest! Oh well, its a good job I enjoy doing it. Anyone want to hire me as a Project Manager? 

You guys may be able to help me whilst I'm here. As you know uprightbass360 very kindly designed my graphics for me. Before I get them printed out onto CPOs I wanted to check that the sizing/positioning etc of everything was OK.

I took the files to my local print center (Prontaprint) and asked them to print me the smaller image onto A3 (twice) and the larger one onto A2 so it would fit. They said they could do the A3s there and then but they would have to order the A2 as they don't have a printer large enough. Fair enough I thought and I asked them how much the A2 would be and they came back with £17 (~$35)  (keep in mind this is just for a colour print). I said I would leave the A2 copy and just get the two A3s thinking they would only be a couple of quid each. They printed them off for me and charged me £9.50 (~$20) for their 'trouble' 

Not to worry I thought, at least I would get to see what the graphics would look like on the CP. But alas, no it wasn't to be as they managed to print the image out the wrong size 



I'm not sure if it was my fault, theirs or some miscommunication about the formatting so I spoke to Sam (uprightbass360) and he kindly made me a basic line drawing of the image and saved it as A3 PDFs so I could print them out at work.

Sam cut the larger CP in half for me so I could print it on two sheets of A3 and then stick them together (this is only for the test positioning obviously).

Anyway, I printed them out and cut out the button holes and arrow holes etc and test fitted the printouts to my CPs:



As you can see they are not quite lining up. I lined up the 'arrow ring' on the left hand side of the long CP and you can see it gradually get more and more out of line as it goes to the right. I think we must be going wrong some where whilst converting the image to different formats or whilst printing.

This is the steps the image when through.

1) I drew the CP tops in AutoCAD including the button holes etc and this is the drawing I used to CNC cut the CP tops
2) I converted the image to A3 and A2 PDFs respectively using DWG TrueView 2009 and sent them to Sam
3) Sam did his magic in Illustrator(?) for me and converted the images back to A3 PDFs for me
4) I printed the images out using Adobe Acrobat on a A3 laser printer at work.

Does anyone know where we may be going wrong? Is there a better solution that we could use?

It seems strange though as the printout doesn't seem to be uniformly smaller that the CP, the height seems to be correct, its just the length.

Any ideas?
 

[thatitalian]

Go for a full print form the original file, that is the only way to really find out.

I hate prontaprint!

BTW, hows tricks? We still haven't played COD4! Probably this is eating your time up! Lol.

Love that artwork, everytime I see it.

[Franco B]

Yeah thats what I asked them to do, a full size print from the original JPEG 

Ill ask Sam to do me another B&W line version JPEG and try to print that out myself.

Yeah tricks are good bud, we do need to have that COD4 game! You are right tho, it is taking up too much of my time. Im on prestige 9 rank 53 so im just a couple of rank ups off my Gold Cross now so I can stop caining it so much then (apart from the gold weapons challenges). 

[BASS!]

Bleargh!!! Pm sent to work out the kinks (got some ideas as to the cause).

[Franco B]

Whilst we are sorting the artwork out I had an idea to midify one of the spinners I made.

This is the spinner I made that I was going to use previously:



It has a polished brass insert that I really like the spinner but I dont think it would really go with the rest of the cab. So I had a little think and came up with this:





My friend gave me a small piece of 0.6mm carbon fibre a while ago so I decided to cut a piece of that out the same size as the brass insert to replace it. I also made a Space Invaders laser turret out of some 0.75mm stainless. The CF is a  lot thinner than the brass insert was so the laser turret now sits flush with the top of the spinner.

Looks much better IMO, only took 30 mins too 

[jeffhlewis]

Franco:

where did you find those singular USB terminal plates? That's exactly what I'm looking for!

[Franco B]

Jeff,

I got mine from Maplins in the UK [Product Link]

but you can also get them from Markertek in the US amongst other places [Product Link]

Bear in mind that they are gender changers as well as USB A>B/B>A changers.

[Bender]

Damn, every time you post a picture I think well he's outdone himself now, then.....
you do it again!

Man those are hands down the nicest spinner knobs I've ever seen!

[bvicarious]

It's weird that the button holes on the printout are the correct size, but their horizontal position is off? Would you mind posting the cad files you used to cut the control panel?

[Franco B]

Thanks Bender.

bivicarious, upon closer inspection the printout is smaller in width as well as height so it looks like there is a scaling problem either in format conversion or when printing the document.

The long CP should be 555mm x 253mm and the smaller CP should be 284 x 258mm

The long CP printout is approx 543 x 246mm.

I have attached the DWGs that I used to created the PDFs. I used the geometry in the same DWGs to drill the CPs.

I have also attached the PDFs that I created from the DWGs, could anyone tell me if they are the same size? Is it possible to measure the PDFs in illustrator or similar?

(I have zipped the files as the forum doesn't like DWGs and Ive already lost this post once  )

Thanks in advance.

[bvicarious]

PDF in illustrator: 554.927 x 252.984mm
PDF in corel draw: 554.9266 x 252.984mm

DWG in illustrator: 554.76 x 252.891mm
DWG in corel draw: won't load
DWG->DXF in corel draw: 555.00002 x 253.00002mm
same DXF in illustrator: 554.76 x 252.891mm

loading the DWG in Autocad viewer shows the correct dimensions, obviously

DWG imported into maya: 555 x 253mm
DXF imported into maya: 555 x 253mm
PDF -> AI (via corel draw) -> imported into maya: 554.9138 x 252.9586mm


Illustrator likes to play fast and loose with measurements of non-AI files, as I've found out recently, even when that file translates correctly in other programs. So bringing anything -> Illustrator will introduce some error. Unfortunately I can't export PDF from corel draw, so I don't know if that introduces any error.

In any case, each file I loaded was only very slightly off, not the 10mm difference that the printers gave you. It seems like the problem is mostly printed related. What format did you send to get printed, the PDFs?

edit: I didn't see in your first post that you printed the outlines on your work printer.. was scaling turned off? can you print a 1" square or something and see if that measures accurately? is there any difference between the PDFs with the art outlines on them and the ones you attached?

[Franco B]

Thank you for all of your  research for me, that's very kind 

Yeah, I can appreciate/tolerate a 0.25mm difference but ~10mm is impossible to work with.

Sam is checking the artworks size for me although I really think it must be a printer issue.

The files that I gave to the printers was a PDF containing both images. I asked them to print the images out at 100% size but it looks to me like they fitted them to the paper as you can see the image completely fills the A3 paper up to the widest edge wheres the image should be slightly smaller.

When I printed the image at work I didn't see any scaling option within Adobe Acrobat (6.0), where abouts is the scaling option?

I will try and print a grid out to see how accurately it prints.

Could you do me another huge favour bvicarious? I'm going to attach the line drawings PDFs to this post, could you check their size for me? If they are somewhere near the correct size then I know its the printer that is the problem.

The longer image is split into two so I could print it on two A3 sheets, I don't know if you could splice them together to measure them?

If they are correct I think I am going to go back to the print shop tomorrow and get them to print off the line drawings as we will know the drawings are correct and they should print off correctly as their printer should be properly calibrated.

Thanks once again for all of your help.

[bvicarious]

The pdfs you attached are rasterized so I can't get the exact measurements, but when I printed out the small CP the button holes are the correct size, 28mm. If those are correct, I would guess the rest of the thing is too.

I use FoxIt for PDF viewing but I think all the scaling options are in the print dialog which is usually controlled by the printer driver. Here's a pic of mine with page scaling set to "actual size"

It just occurred to me that there could've been confusion, if you said to print it "100% size" they might have mistaken that for 100% of the page. They should know better than that though, as 100% clearly means 1:1 scale.

[Franco B]

Excellent. Thanks again for your help buddy 

Ill take the images to the print shop tomorrow and Ill let you know how I get on, cheers.

Ill be taking my tape measure and a big knobbly stick with me incase they get it wrong again  

[Twin-X]

Franco,

Is it possible that you could make me a pair of stainless dustwashers like your's.
I really love them and they would fit my project well (although it will look like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- compared to your cocktail cab )

Oh and offcourse name your price.

Thanks,
Jeffry

[nantom]

Managed to get the panel to house the I/O components finished tonight....



Really happy with how it came out, just a shame its going to be hidden on the back of the cab, although it could go on the side though I suppose, hmm.

The eagle eyed amongst you may notice that the top of the USB hub isn't parallel to the rest of the panel, this isn't a mistake (not on my behalf anyway), the hub actually tapers about 1.5mm along its length so I had to mill a trapezoid pocket to fit it. The main thing is that the components are a good fit (a little too good in places!) I was going to araldite the components in place but I think the only one that will need it will be the VGA port.

I also got my clear buttons drilled this week. I made a hexagonal split bush to hold them on the nut whilst they are being drilled as I am going to have a fair few buttons to drill in the near future .....



I have all of my wood now and Its my last morning at work tomorrow (16 days off, woot!) so I PROMISE the next pictures I post will be of some kind of wood construction. 

Hey...kudos.  Metal working has always been a longing of mine! Looks great! Where did you get the power/switch combo?  I searched for hours looking for one just like you have!?! I had to make them separate.

[Franco B]

Thanks. I got mine from Maplins in the UK, They have it listed as a [Fused Snap-In IEC Chassis Plug with Switch].

EDIT: Whilst I'm here, quick update.

Oh the joys of printing!  How hard can it be to print an image out? Very hard apparently! 

I went back to Prontaprint (for the last time I may add) and they wanted £5 just to put my USB stick in their PC! I found a smaller print place and they only charged me a couple of quid. Once again it was a waste though as they managed to print the images the wrong size 

I have now found an online printing company that specialises in large format printing and they are currently printing the images for me. I have specified the exact dimensions that they need to be printed too so third forth ?? (I've lost count) time lucky!

[BASS!]

Good luck buddy. I completely understand the stress of this part. I can't wait to see how this part comes along!

Sam:-)

[Franco B]

Success!! 



I got the images printed from www.copycentre.org and the print sizes are spot on. It cost about £7 for one A2 print and two A3 prints but that also included vat and next day recorded delivery.

The print sizes are spot on but my dimensions are a mm or two out here and there which is to be expected as the panel blanks were cut by hand. Now I know where the errors are I can correct them in AutoCAD, send Sam the changed PDFs and ask him to do his magic his end and then ill get some more B&W prints to check the corrections.

Its tempting just to get the final CPO prints from the 'corrected' drawings but I would rather spend another couple of hours + £7 to check the corrections than get it printed without checking them just for the finished CPOs not to line up correctly. At least if I know its 100% when I send it off I know it should be 100% when I get the CPOs.

[javeryh]

Awesome!  I really love this thing.  Projects like this make me think I should start designing an "original" and see how it turns out.   

[bvicarious]

hooray

[Neilyboy]

hell yes franco this thing is flipping awesome!!! serious skill man.. wish i had axx to a machine shop that can machine metals like that.. I love the metal below the buttons..

neil

[Franco B]

Thanks for the kind words guys.

I really do want to get at least one part 100% finished for the moment, hence trying to get the CPs finished. There still is one hundred and one things floating around my head to do to get them finished to the standard I want but we are slowly getting there. I don't know if I'm anal or lazy, or a mix between the two.

I really don't want to bump my own thread for the sake of it, thats why im trying to only post with an update. I dont want you guys to think im not replying. I will bump my thread if there is something to answer you guys but I dont want to post (and bump) for the sake of it.

Thanks for looking. I'm hoping to show something quite worthy soon.

[Bender]

hi franco

do those hinges have a centered pivot point?
most of the hinges I've found for cabinets are off center pivots

[Stub]

I use the same ones. When he fully extends the hinge the door and the board its attached to will be in line with each other. Is that what you were asking?

[Franco B]

What he said (if thats what you want to know).

By the way, this project is in no way, shape or form dead. Sam who was doing my artwork for me has been unable to carry on with the graphics due to work commitments but thatitalian has kindly offered to carry on with the CP graphics for me

Im not going to be doing a lot on this project whilst I get the juke finished but I want to get the graphics sent on for printing asap.