Well, after lurking on the message boards and putting off building my MAME cabinet. I finally decided to start building! Thanks to the community here for the inspiration to finally own my own arcade cabinet!

After much consideration I decided on a few requirements.
- be movable, I tend to move a lot and I wanted it to fit through a standard door frame
- have a removable control panel, I would like a trackball, but I don't like the massive all-in-one control panels
- support a real arcade monitor
- have a convenient place to set beer!

I designed the cab after looking at many, MANY other projects. Because of the mobility requirement I decide to go with plywood instead of MDF (stronger, lighter). A friend of mine is giving me a 21" CRT monitor he has in storage. I do want a real arcade monitor, but that can wait and I save 440 bucks!

Here are some images of the cabinet plans.

isometric view

front

left side - Notice the flat surface on top, perfect for cold refreshing beverages!


back - The circle at the top is a Vornado Compact 530 with the base removed. I have read that they are very quiet and powerful. My hope is that it will be enough to circulate air in the bottom and out the top to keep the whole cabinet cool.

top

inside - The blob in the middle is the PCB. I am not going to use a case so the PCB, hard drives and anything else for the computer will be mounted on plastic PCB feet.

back door open - For access to most of the components. The monitor will be placed in the cab from the front by removing the lexan.

top door open - This will give me convenient access to the speakers and the florescent back light for the marquee.
The whole thing is 6 feet tall, 30 inches wide, and 40 inches deep from the edge of the control panel. The sides are 3/4" plywood the frame is made from 2x4s except for the framing on top and back, it is 2x2s. In the plans I used car speakers, in reality I plan to use a 3 piece computer speaker system. I'll put the two speakers where the car speakers are and the subwoofer on the bottom shelf. I was looking at coin doors and found a good deal on eBay so I ordered a over/under coin door. From what I can see it looks like the same one that Happ sells, part# 40-0038-00. Except this one doesn't come with the locks, however it comes with two working .984 token coin mechs! All for just under 65$ total w/ shipping. I also ordered the controls, two super joysticks and 16 Happ long concave push buttons from tornadoterrys.com for $54.69 total w/ shipping. Since the control panel is removable I will build that first. The idea is to test the button placement and of course I'll be able to use it while I'm building the rest of the cab! My house doesn't have any room to build someting like this, not to mention that I don't own any woodworking tools. So I'm going to build it at a friends house, he has a garage and a bunch of tools. I'll start next weekend. As I'm working I'll post pic of my progress. I'll also post more detail on how the removable CP works.
For anyone who wants to design there own cabinet I suggest using Sketchup. I found it easy to learn and there are a great number of components available in Google's 3D warehouse, which is where I got the models for the more complex parts. Plus it's free!
I have never attempted a project of this scale, so if any one has any suggestion or comments on anything I can do better please let me know.
Thanks again to all who have posted their projects before me!
