The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Project Announcements => Topic started by: topher0002 on June 01, 2009, 03:01:58 pm
-
Hey everyone, well this is my third project, the first one was well documented, the
second, not at all, so on this one my goal was to document and take as many relevant pics as possible. This is my first scratch build and I am a very amateur woodworker so I ran into quite a few bumps and turns but found ways to get around or fix most of them. This will be a 2 player cabinet with a trackball in the middle.
My budget on this project was $1500, I was close but went over a bit, about $1600. I will point out the mistakes I made as I post pics. Lets just start with the basics, whats in the cab?
Computer: ($400 including shipping from ebay seller majestic_pc)
-Intel E2200 Dual Core 2.2GHz x2
-Motherboard: Foxconn 45CM-X LGA775
-Memory: Kingston 3GB DDR2 667 Ram
-Video Card: Intel GMA 950 256-Bit (onboard)
-Hard Drive: WD 250GB 7200RPM SATA 16MB Cache
-Sound Card: Realtek ALC662 6-Channel HD Audio
-Ports: 6 USB 2.0 Ports
-Case: Apevia X-plorer w/450 W Power Supply
-Running Windows XP Pro
(Note: Was going to buy a video card but the onboard one is great since I can use a regular Monitor cable with the flat screen TV)
TV: ($500 from Best Buy)
-Toshiba 26inch Widescreen LCD Flat Panel (will put model in later)
1/2 inch MDF Wood for Build except 3/4 for Control Panel ($150)
Trackball is USB X Arcade ($70)
Ipac-2 from Ultimark for Keyboard Hack ($40)
Joysticks and Buttons are all made by Happ ($60)
Logitech Speakers with Sub ($25)
Coin Mech off old Midway cab I got for free
Wiring 18 Gauge , actually underground dog fencing, works great! ($25)
Monitor Cable 10ft ($25)
18gauge Termination ($8 for 100 ct. off ebay)
Misc Hardware from home Depot ($100 ish)
Black Latex Semi-Gloss Paint ($20 from Walmart)
T-Molding Blue ($30 for 25 ft, ebay)
Corner beed for drywall, worked for marquee holding
Sponge Tape ($3, home depot)
Acrylic ($50, Home depot)
Wood Glue/other Glue ($15)
Artwork Printing etc ($50)
-
Basically I used the plans that I found on here somewhere above, I modified them a bit but the measurements are close. I rounded edges for the T-molding, I extended overhead out all the way, I went straight to the ground for more support instead of the angle. I also added 6 inches to the depth of the cabinet for a total of 2 ft.
I used 1/2 in MDF to make the cabinet lighter and while it did do that it became a problem with we got to the T-molding I accidentally used screws that were just a hair too long, there are a few spots that you can see but only with direct light where it bulges out just a little, just a bit irritating but I doubt many notice.
I used a craftsman electric Cicular saw with a 7 1/4in blade for most of my cuts and a Craftsman table saw. Other tools were a Brad nailer I got from Harbour Freight for $25 bucks, air powered, craftsman air compressor ($100), Black and Decker Jigsaw ($35), Ryobi Cordless Drill (18 volt)($75). Black and Decker Corded Drill ($30) for anything but screws really.
-
I used Irwin Clamps and also some $3 ones from Harbor freight, not as good, but definately worth $3 (the orange ones). I cut out one side of the cabinet sheet then matched it up and traced it so I would have a perfect match, rather then assuming my measurements were exactly the same on both sides.
-
I wood glued and clamped the edges on the inside of the cabinet panels as guides and nailers for the MDF that would go on the back/top/bottom. This worked well and gave me plenty to nail too without puncturing any holes from the outside.
-
I used Elmers Pro Wood Glue, Bostitch Brad nails (1 1/4in) and Quikfind 1 3/4in).
-
More Cutting, I just used a wet paper towel to wipe off excess glue.
-
A guy in Kansas City was giving away about 30 cabinets, me and a friend rented a u-haul and picked up a few, didnt have room for all 30 =(. I am using the coin mech out of this machine here, it was in great shape except for I had to replace one 25 cent sticker on the inside of the coin return and replace a spring.
-
more building...
-
more building....
-
more build pics, pretty self explanatory
-
more build pics
-
The original plan with the pics below have a light in that bottom section of the marquee with the artwork having a line of characters about that tall, I did not end up doing that so that part is just kinda there and serves no function.
-
Here is the coin mech I pulled from the old Midway cabinet. I wanted to just trace it out but I ended up measuring and cutting from the hole in the midway cabinet to make sure it was right. I found that tracing underneath while it is sitting there just didnt work very well, I kept hitting screws and juts, etc. This method worked great.
-
Here are some pics with that piece installed
-
This is the beginning of the TV Mount.
-
Before I started the mount i measured the depth, width, height of the tv to figure out where I wanted to have it sit. I forgot to cut out a section for the video connection, I ended up having to cut this out later, would have been easier to do it before gluing and nailing it down.
One big thing was that I didnt have to make access to the power button on the TV because the TV remembers if it was on or off when unplugged, make sure this is the case when you buy one, I made them do it for me at the store so I was sure. Just in case there is always the remote so it will have its own little storage spot inside the cabinet somewhere.
-
I didnt end up using full 2x4's across as you see below, I wanted it to be lighter and open up some more access to underneath so i just chopped them down to 8 inches or so.
-
I added blocks to the side of the tv to make it as snug as possible, I do not want this thing moving at all. Ideally there are screw mounts in the back of the tv I wish I had used but it was impossible to use them after I had already screwed/nailed some of this stuff into place.
On the last picture is the Bezel, that I was somehow way off on the cut, I fix this later by using Acrylic on the outside with black paint around exact corners of screen, you wont be able to tell that this piece is off at all so I left it.
-
Here is the compressor I use, along with the type of paint I used. Couple more build pics.
-
Im sorry about the sideways pics, I will fix them later....more build pics.
-
I added a 2x4 along the top of the tv, once again making sure its not going to move.
-
Time for the control panel. I used the visio stencils found on this site, modified them a bit for my 6 button setup. Ive used this method for all of my cabinets and it works great. I cut the size of the panel first, then layout my controls.
I made a small mistake this time by putting buttons too close to the top of the panel and ended up having to route out the box so the panel would fold down like normal, make sure you have a couple inches of room on all sides so you dont run into this problem.
I put the Menu/Pause on the front instead of the top this time, I think that turned out great. I thought there may be a problem bumping it while playing or something but none at all really.
-
Wow, nice amount of pics, keep it up. That will help a few newbies, I'm sure.
-
Will do, I know pics are literally worth a thousand words when building something, much easier to see then to explain. I will keep them coming.
I put the control panel on the cabinet just to make sure i liked the size and how it sits, etc...everything looked good so i started drilling. Using a 1 1/8 in paddle bit and a corded drill. I suggest using a corded drill so you dont lose RPMS toward the end of drilling and your holes get rough and have tear out due to the battery wearing down.
-
More control panel pics, trackball from X-Arcade with PS2 Port. I cut the trackball hole by tracing and cutting....drill pilot holes first so you have somwhere to start from inside the lines. I routed out the thickness of the mounting plate later so it would not have to go on top of the acrylic to be used later. You will see pics of that later.
-
more CP pics.
-
The Painting Begins. 1 Gallon of Black Latex Semi Gloss Paint goes a long way, I ended up putting 2 coats on, althrough 3 probably wouldnt have hurt.
-
I used a 4 inch foam roller for painting pretty much everything, except for a small brush to do tighter areas.
-
I cut a nice big door for the back panel so I could access everything easily, you should do this before nailing/gluing it all together, I dont know what I was thinking, I had to cut it out with a Jig after contructed and the lines are not straight at all but fortunately its not seen by many since its on the back.
-
The control panel is upside down obviously, the two buttons shown are the menu button and pause button which will be underneath the 1st player side.
-
More Painting and temporarily putting it together to see overall look.
-
more painting
-
Here are the Hinges I used, should have used silver but I already had these so I used them, they work fine. I had to cut off a bit of the door to get it to fit right, cut a little too much off, hence the gap. Once again, should have cut the door before nailing/gluing it all together. Lesson Learned but I made it work.
-
I like these hinges but as you see in the next couple of post I had to modify them....
-
Here are the modifications I made to make it close like I wanted.
-
Thrown together to see how it looks again, coin mech and all
-
One side of the coin mech had 25cents and one side had 50 cents, I looked for the same sticker online and could not find one. So i took them both out (hint: if your not used to these things take a picture of how it looked before you took it a part and save yourself an hour)
I scanned a copy of the 25 cent sticker at real size, and printed at real size with basic Microsoft Paint. Printed it out and stuck it in, looks perfect.
Secondly I needed to replace a spring on one side because it would not depress all the way back out when compressed in. I took the other one with me to ace hardware and got a box of springs of different sizes, used the closes fit and worked perfectly.
In this cabinet I am not making this functional, its just for looks.
-
I wanted to route out a groove for the mounting plate so that I could mount the trackball flush with the Acrylic to be put over it later. I basically cut out a template of the size of the plate with full 1/2 inch piece of mdf. Then I lowered the bit (flush trim bit I believe) to about 1/8 inch lower then the template and routed out the square, turned out good but its maybe a fingernail width too low, but it honestly didnt matter much later.
I apologize, I forgot to take a picture of the routed out area before putting the plate in.
-
More CP Pics
-
The worst part of the whole project, the T-Molding. I got a router bit specifically for t-molding from ebay, it cut the slot too big for the t-molding i specically baught for arcade games. So I could not just hammer it in, I had to glue it in, I tried several things, the only thing that worked was a hot glue gun.....it sucked.
I went back after and used some all purpose glue that worked ok to hold it down a little better.
Then since my wood was 1/2 inch I had to use a knife to cut off the excess, part of it went ok but its "notchy" lots of nicks and stuff I dont like, but all I could do so its done.
-
Damn - what size slot cutter did you order? Next time, test it on a scrap piece before actually cut into your cabinet! Everything looks great so far. :cheers:
-
Thanks, yeah the mistake I made was I did test it on a piece of scrap for cutting, and it worked great, never thought about the size of the slot being wrong I guess, oh well.
Here are just some pics of the lock and acrylic over the bezel after cutting it to size.
The last pic is where I mounted the Volume control for the speakers, this worked out perfect I think, no one really sees it but its easy to get to if you need it, I found this to be really handy as alot of the games seem to be at different volume levels. Its mounted directly underneath the control panel underneath in the upper corner.
-
Here are some pics of how I mounted the speakers, worked great.
-
The acrylic:
For the button holes: used a 1 1/8 in fostener bit, worked great. I sandwiched the area I was drilling before every hole to keep the acrylic from flapping around, I think thats the key to not messing up, make sure its clamped down and close to the hole.
For Cutting The shape of the control panel and Bezel from Acrylic: Used a fine tooth jigsaw blade and jigsaw. Same rules with the Clampdown.
For the Trackball Hole: used a 3 1/8 inch holesaw but it was too big, i figured i would need a little extra since the trackball was a 3 inch trackball but that was not the case, Should have gotten the 3", there is a small gap around the trackball that kinda sucks.
This did work but I think next time I will use a flush trim router bit and a template. Not sure what my thinking was here.
-
I threw everything together again just to see how it was all fitting together, really dusty and a lot of touch ups needed at this point but you get the idea.
At first the plan was to put the acrylic behind the bezel but you will see later I changed my mind and put it on the front, it looks much better that way....and i can cover up my cutting mistake :laugh:
I then painted the bottom side of the acrylic for the control panel blac, this turned out AWESOME, it looks great. Also it completely covers the mounting plate for the trackball, etc. you will see that in later pics.
-
just more painting.
-
Ok, Im going to back track here a bit, I missed some pics that could be useful so I will throw them in here.
The red cup used below was just to draw lines around the corners of the control panel and cut them. Some people like to use a compass but Zog like Red cup, compass nowhere to be found. :dunno
Other pics are just after drilling holes with the paddle bit (1 1/8 in)
-
Another problem I ran into that I will mention, is that when I rounded the corners of the control panel on top obviously the box corners are now visible and ugly. I basically choped them off with a jig and covered them with sheet metal, looks kinda cool really, I will show pics of this later but thought I would mention it.
Below is just the Door Cut out.
-
This is also out of order, I did the t-molding slots before construction of the cabinet obviously....here are those pics.
-
Here is the control panel after buttons in place and wiring done, starting to look like a nice cabinet minus the dust
-
Full cabinet pics with CP.
-
As you can see above I basically painted the acrylic with the outline of the TV Screen on put it on the outside, It looks MUCH better then behind the bezel.
The pics below are of the back of the cabinet, with computer and such, I am running Mameway by the way for a front end.
-
I was going to do one single Power but I just decided to do two , I know theres ways to do it, but honestly I just didn't feel like it. So here is what I did.
I cut two button size holes in the back of the cabinet all the way to one side using my 1 1/8 in. paddle bit. I cut the computer power wire to where I had most of the length coming from the mother board. I patched in some regular wiring with each of the two power switch wires (white and blue in this case) and wired them to a regular arcade button like I would on the control panel. Thats the black button you see below.
The empty hole you see below is just where I mounted the power strip on the inside of the cabinet, i lined the power switch on the power strip up with that hole so u just have to stick your finger and flip the switch, then push the black arcade button and power we have to everything.
The black button just controls the computer nothing else, the power strip being turned on turns Everything else on that needs power.
I think this worked out fine.
-
In some of the pictures above you can see gaps in places such as the lid of the control panel, and above/below the bezel maybe. I used the foam tape pictured below and it worked awesome, however around the bezel I went ahead and tack nailed it so it wouldn't ever come off.
This worked out better then expected, I will post pics of that soon, note there are lot of scratches and nicks and such that I will be touching up in some of the later pics too, so these are very rough.
The corners pictured on the cab above with the screws/bolts is the sheet metal i used to cover up the corners that I had to round off, I painted the sheet metal black, drilled pilot holes and locked it in. Worked awesome.
-
Ok now for the artwork, for the marquee:
I basically used a file off of free vector library site, modified it some changed the bacground moved and resized the characters, etc. I cannot take credit for the artwork, just manipulated another.
Here is what I came up with though.
I would attach the vectorized AI file but it wouldnt let me so I am attaching the JPG export of it. If anyone wants the AI file just let me know and I will email it to you if you would like it, anyone can use it, I dont care.
-
I got my marquee printed, its printed direclty on the acrylic which is awesome but I should have made the background white instead of transparent. I added paper behind it later to make it look right, but it turned out very very cool.
Also I added a second light because I thought the one was just not bright enough. This was kind of a pain as I had to get them screwed down in that tight spot where the marquee holds. Would have been easier with a powered angled screw driver instead of the pliers and phillips drill bit, and painful fingers I used, but it got the job done.
-
You will notice that Donkey Kong and his barrels are mostly black, This was because of the missing white background, later it looks fine after thats added. Unfortunately the guy I built this for picked it up before I could get any more pics of it. It was a fathers day present for someone so time was out.
-
The artwork on the sides of the machine above is all printed vinyl, I had to cut each character out which was tedious but it looks good. Its nice that the stickered vinyl would let you put them on and then take them off without it tearing, however after getting them in the places I wanted and after a few humid days in the garage they started to come off. Basically I went back with 3M adhesive and applied to each individual sticker, there not going anywhere now. Although I did have to go back with some goo be gone and clean up the edges.
WARNING! Goo be Gone will destroy acrylic, keep it AWAY. I used it a tiny bit to get rid of a couple of places on the front glass for the screen and it left some ugly streaks that will not go away. Ultimately I had to replace the screen over the TV.
It worked great on the wood though, but heavy use will remove paint.
-
I found also that the computer was getting too hot in the cabinet so I decided to buy a Fan to put ont he back of the cabinet to help with that. Below I basically j ust drilled group of holes for air to pass through and installed the fan on the inside. Works great, next time though I think I will use Speaker mesh or something to make it look more professional.
-
Heres some pics of the other side of the cab with slightly different art then the other.
-
I zip tied the remote inside the cab just in case its ever needed. Here just a couple pics of the finalized back of the cabinet.
-
looks good
-
I wish I had a final pic after I cleaned up the cabinet really well and put the white background on the marquee but the pic below is the closest to final pic I have. I was really happy with it except for the trackball hole.
Here are the my lessons Learned:
- Use 3/4 inch MDF instead of 1/2 inch
- Do not cut trackball hole too big
- Budget $150 more then originally planned for Misc Costs
- Make sure t-molding fits securely with the slot cutter you bought on a scrap piece of wood....you do NOT want to have to glue this stuff in, its a major pain.
- Be VERY careful with Goo-Be-Gone or other products that are similiar, they can ruin parts of your project and cost you time, money and aggrevation. Light use on wood is fine, keep it FAR AWAY from your Acrylic or Plexi.
--------
I think thats about it, thanks to everyone for checking out this build. Hopefully I have let some first timers know what not to do. I have learned a lot from the people on this forum and I thank you all. My 4th build is just a gutted cabinet I am putting together for a friend at his house, that one will not probably be documented....my 5th project will be a Scratch Cocktail or jukebox , but first I have to focus on finishing my basement.
THANKS!