First Cab Started 9/12

[Honkyharris]

Hey everyone,
    So as many others have said before me I've been lurking around these forums for a little while now and it's motivated me to build my own cab. So this past week I went out and picked up some of the materials I'd need to get started. Since this is my first cab I didn't want to stray too far off the beaten path so I went ahead and picked up Saints book and I've read much of the first few chapters. So far I'm really impressed with how the book is written. I also decided to use Lusid's plans but with a slight variation to make them more like Knievel's.
    I have a basic knowledge of the hardware and software for my cab. I've already got many of the games I want working on my setup although I do need to design my own Mala GUI.
    I do have a little background in wood working, but I've not worked on anything this cumbersome before. Fortunately for me my Dad is an exceptional wood worker. After some back and forth discussion with my dad I've decided to use 3/4" MDF for my cab. I feel it will be easy to work with and I've not concerned about the cab getting wet since it will be in our finished basement.

    We started working Saturday 9/12 and continued with some more work today 9/13 so I figured I'd start my project announcement and show everyone where I am so I can ask for recommendations for future work. I'll also throw in a few suggestions of things that helped me with the wood working.

    Saturday we started early with dimensioning the sections to be cut. It's important to make sure all dimensions are taken from the same datum so you don't begin to stack a dimensioning error. (Many thanks to my dad and drafting teacher's for the tip!)



Once all the dimensions were on the board we started cutting using my dad's 7-1/4" circular saw with a carbide tipped blade.



We ended up getting one 4x8 sheet dimensioned and cut before we called it a day.

More work to follow.

Honkyharris

[wp34]

Welcome to the boards. 

What are you using for a straight-edge with your circular saw?

[Honkyharris]

Now for day two. We started with more dimensioning, but this time I was able to use my completed side to draw out my second side. Once the completed side was clamped to the top of the untouched 4x8 sheet of MDF I traced it so I would know roughly where to cut. The idea then was to cut close to this line, within about 1/8 of an inch so in could then be routed using the finished side again as a template.

The picture below shows the traced on 4x8 sheet with several cuts. We used the circular saw (dropped in) for the longer cuts and drilled holes where we needed to get the jigsaw blade in. This allowed us to use the jigsaw for less cuts as it is much slower, but better for tight corners.



Here you can see the piece fully separated from the rest of the sheet and ready to be routed to match my finished side.



Once we had the two sides lined up and clamped they were ready to be routed. Using a flush mounted cutter on an arbor with a bearing we were able to easily match the two sides up. A couple of notes here : Yes my Dad cut this as I have little experience with the router. This stuff got everywhere! Seriously, even with me following along closely with a shop vac in was still very dusty in there. Wear a respirator or mask of some sort!



Just a couple of other tips I thought might be helpful to others.  You can see in the previous two pictures we totally forgot to cut the 45 along the back of the sides. So later we had to re-clamp those two pieces together and cut that 45 using the circular saw and then sand it clean. Even though this ended up coming out okay....try not to skip steps as in other cases in might really screw you.

My inside cab dimension will be 26" and since each of the pieces on the inside needs to match for the cab to be square we decided to cut each 26" dimensioned piece 1/8 of an inch long and then route them using a 'master' piece. This worked out nicely as all of our interior pieces now have the exact same dimension. This did add a significant amount of work and mess, but in the end I feel the fit will be much cleaner.

As of tonight I've got my t-molding on order with the arbor and bit I'll need to route in the slot.

More to follow hopefully next weekend!

Honkyharris

[Honkyharris]

Welcome to the boards. 

What are you using for a straight-edge with your circular saw?

wp34,

The dimensions were made with the T-square shown in the first picture I believe. Then I measured the distance from the edge of the circular saw to the inside or outside blade tooth depending on cut direction. The metal guide shown is a 5' long power tool guide that grips the wood on either side and allowed us to cut all the straight lines with the circular saw. A table saw would work much better for this, but we don't have one fit for this job.

As a side note, many of the longer cuts required longer than a 5' guide. In this case we took a 1' wide strip of plywood and used the factory machined edge as our guide. Once clamped into place this works just as well and is a little more versatile...plus a lot cheaper if you've got some spare plywood lying around with the machined edge left on one side.

Hope this helps,

Honkyharris

P.S. Here are the fixed sides I wasn't able to show before due to picture limit.


Fixed sides.

[drventure]

That garage is just way too clean!

Nice start, though.

and welcome to the board!

[Honkyharris]

Edit : Moved to another Thread

[Honkyharris]

Alright so a couple weekends later I've finally found the time to keep working on my cab.  I wanted to start today by assembling my CP box. I set the pieces out on a scrap piece I was using as a table and began to see how they would go together. I realized that the back needed to be trimmed at an angle to make sure the CP would rest on the top of the box properly. I made a pencil mark to show where I would need to cut and made the angled cut on the band saw.



I decided for the CP box that using biscuit connections would be very easy and clean. After we had the pieces mocked up we made all the pencil marks needed to line up the biscuits and began using my dads new biscuit cutter. That thing worked like a charm!



Here is a picture with all the biscuits in place ready for glue and assembly. This picture also shows the pencil marking system we used to show where the biscuits needed to be cut in at.



Continued in next post....

[Honkyharris]

I also had enough time to make the slot cuts for the t-molding. I followed a tip from some others I'd like to recommend to future cab builders. First and foremost make sure you use scrap pieces to check the depth of your slot cutter and then use scrap pieces of t-molding to check and make sure the location is good. We had to make several passes in scrap to get this right.

Once we got it all lined up it went pretty smoothly. Here is a pic of the finished slot work.



Be sure to check out my review of the Whiteside slot cutter I purchased from t-molding.com (I wasn't too impressed)
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=96749.0


More to come as always....
Honkyharris

[Honkyharris]

I'd also like to get everyone's opinion on some marquee work I've done. Here are the two potentials. The second one was more of an afterthought as the first may seem a bit cluttered to some.

#1


#2


I'd also like to take this opportunity to apologize to tunergw and others before me that have used this name for their machine. I am in no way trying to copy your work. As a matter of fact I don't see that my work could even come close to matching up to turnergw's

I've not yet finished my CP artwork but the general theme will be like the first image with red on the left, orange in the middle, and yellow on the right.

Suggestions appreciated!
Thanks,
Honkyharris

[saleem]

i like the second pic,nice for a marquee.aint too hot on the stright lines creating diamonds for the cp.the color is gonna be a bit in your face and its backed of with black which is kinda neutral.any reason you went redder on one side than the other?red either side,blending to lighter color in the middle would have looked cooler?.if time machine is gonna have buttons etc on it then ditch that otherwise keep it if nothing will interfere with it.

just dont like the lines and the diamonds.

its your cp so you go with what you want.

[Honkyharris]

Saleem,

     Thanks for your opinion. The two above example are both trials for my marquee. I've not completed my CP artwork. Hope it makes a bit more sense now. I'll post the CP artwork once I complete it.

Honkyharris

[Honkyharris]

Hey all,

    Been a bit busy to post my recent updates, but I wanted to take the time to post my Marquee / CP artwork. Please give opinions / suggestions!!

Marquee :



CP :



My layout for CP is pretty basic. Two 8-ways w/ 6 button for P1/P2. Center 3" Happ Trackball. 2 admins buttons at top for each player. Top middle is TT 4-way Pacman Style with 2 buttons.

The Halo effect is what I had planned on using for the joystick/admin button location although I may use a starburst to set off the trackball in the middle. (Still undecided)

Again, please give critiques and suggestions. I'm not an artist by any means, but I do know Autocad and basic Photoshop.

Thanks,
Honky

PS - I may end up adjusting the sizing some. I plan on printing this out on a home printer and doing a full-scale setup on a scrap piece to make sure I like the dimensions.

[drventure]

I like the marquee, but the CP, not so much. The lines don't do it for me.

Maybe play up the curves  in the button borders that you already have somehow?

And I'd experiment more with the negative fade effect from the marquee on the CP. That's slick.

[Ond]

The 'E' in Machine is getting a little lost in the yellow underneath, you might consider black outlining the letters to make them stand out, even just a thin outline.  The font works well.  I like the CP but I'd thicken the lines a bit and 'strengthen' the T on M theme.

[Honkyharris]

The 'E' in Machine is getting a little lost in the yellow underneath, you might consider black outlining the letters to make them stand out, even just a thin outline.  The font works well.  I like the CP but I'd thicken the lines a bit and 'strengthen' the T on M theme.

Yea I agree about the E getting lost. I'll try a small 5-10 pixel outline in PS tonight and see how that looks. As far as your CP tip...I guess I felt like if the lines were much more thick they'd be overbearing and I'm not quite sure what you mean by strengthen the T on M theme. Anyway thanks for the reply Ond...and btw I love your projects

Drventure thank you also for your reply. I was trying to stick with hard lines for the artwork, but I like the halo's around the joystick/button location. The idea was that the lines go into those areas and make the buttons / joysticks the corresponding color. I have red/yellow/orange buttons & red/yellow joysticks to pull this off. Not sure exactly how it's going to look, but I'm planning to do a test layout with a home printed copy so I'll be sure to post that when I do it.

Any other tips please throw em up here!

Thanks again,
Honky

[Trebeck]

Great start so far and welcome to the hobby!

 

[HanoiBoi]

Nice work H-word Harris.  Might I ask what program you are using for your control panel and marquee?  (Specifically the control panel) and also ask if there are dimensions readily available for the controls.  Or should I ask, are the button layouts proportional to the entire panel?

Thanks.

[Honkyharris]

Nice work H-word Harris.  Might I ask what program you are using for your control panel and marquee?  (Specifically the control panel) and also ask if there are dimensions readily available for the controls.  Or should I ask, are the button layouts proportional to the entire panel?

Thanks.

HanoiBoi ,

   Wow really sorry I didn't catch your post earlier. My project has been on hold the last month or so due to real life stuff, but i'm back up and running now. My CP was dimensioned using an Autocad 2010 free trial, converted to a PDF, then inserted into Photoshop to add some color. The marquee was simply done in Photoshop. The dimensions of the CP / Underneath Box are the basic layout from the St. Clair book as this is my first build. The button dimensioning is based on my own testing unit that I made and liked (dimension wise)

Again sorry for the late reply,
Honkyharris