Jason's Arcade Cabinet Build

[skizzosjt]

On 10/27/2022 at 2:28 PM, Jason Carr said:

Yes, the three sections just sit on top of each other, but you do have to screw them together once you get the basic frame completed (basically what I have done above), and then you have to screw the side panels into the sides of all three pieces. Because of the finicky-ness of screwing pocket hole screws into plywood, I honestly wouldn't press my luck by screwing and unscrewing all those screws multiple times. I guess in theory it would work, but you would probably end up sacrificing some of the structural integrity depending on how many times you took it all apart and put it back together.

thanks jason, yea that all makes sense to me. but I think I'm talking about a different section regarding the top board of control panel. the video makes me think they designed it like a "pocket", it sort of drops in place and is secured already without additional fasteners. for example, here is a bit from the vid were they assemble the top board to it's....err...idk...."posts" or "feet"....so it stays in place. as the host describes "so it doesn't slide off". but I didn't notice they fasten this top board section down to the bottom/cavity section of the control panel with any screws (maybe they didn't film it though). so to share why I'm asking this question is because this gave me what is likely an out there idea, but imagine if you could lift the top board off the control panel (much like the pic I pasted in here), you could then easily unplug the cable to the I-PAC Ultimate IO and then take a different control panel top board that is the same except for a different button layout, plug that one in and drop it down. it would give me more or less a modular control panel setup for the cabinet. I kinda like the old school Mortal Kombat layout, but maybe it's not so great for certain other games so I'd also want something with a more generic layout. so I'm wondering if this cabinet design would be conducive to such an idea? sorry I don't mean to be a pester, just want to make sure I understood you right if this exact part was screwed down or not, or if it could be left unscrewed for such an idea.

[Jason Carr]

57 minutes ago, skizzosjt said:

thanks jason, yea that all makes sense to me. but I think I'm talking about a different section regarding the top board of control panel. the video makes me think they designed it like a "pocket", it sort of drops in place and is secured already without additional fasteners. for example, here is a bit from the vid were they assemble the top board to it's....err...idk...."posts" or "feet"....so it stays in place. as the host describes "so it doesn't slide off". but I didn't notice they fasten this top board section down to the bottom/cavity section of the control panel with any screws (maybe they didn't film it though)

Yes, that's correct from what I can tell. It doesn't look like they secure the control panel board down, most likely so that you can still easily access the components/wires underneath.

58 minutes ago, skizzosjt said:

so to share why I'm asking this question is because this gave me what is likely an out there idea, but imagine if you could lift the top board off the control panel (much like the pic I pasted in here), you could then easily unplug the cable to the I-PAC Ultimate IO and then take a different control panel top board that is the same except for a different button layout, plug that one in and drop it down. it would give me more or less a modular control panel setup for the cabinet. I kinda like the old school Mortal Kombat layout, but maybe it's not so great for certain other games so I'd also want something with a more generic layout. so I'm wondering if this cabinet design would be conducive to such an idea? sorry I don't mean to be a pester, just want to make sure I understood you right if this exact part was screwed down or not, or if it could be left unscrewed for such an idea.

That is a cool idea. I definitely wasn't following you before. Yes, from what I can tell, it does look like you could potentially do that, though I don't have the full cabinet together yet so I can't say for certain, but I would assume that you would have to be able to open that all up after the cabinet is completed.

[skizzosjt]

10 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Yes, that's correct from what I can tell. It doesn't look like they secure the control panel board down, most likely so that you can still easily access the components/wires underneath.

That is a cool idea. I definitely wasn't following you before. Yes, from what I can tell, it does look like you could potentially do that, though I don't have the full cabinet together yet so I can't say for certain, but I would assume that you would have to be able to open that all up after the cabinet is completed.

 

thanks man. looking forward to seeing the rest of this beast of a cab built! it's great to be able to learn from how your building experience goes and gives me better directions on the finer details

[Jason Carr]

Okay, finally time to catch up here a bit. It's been a roller coaster to say the least. Some of the toughest problems didn't come up until the later stages, so it was getting quite frustrating from time to time. I didn't expect it to be easy, but some of this stuff was rather difficult and I had a lot to learn.

First off, I worked on the holes for the control panel board:

This process was all relatively straightforward, thankfully. I wasn't able to print out a full-size sheet of paper of all the measurements without going to the UPS store again to get them printed (and I didn't feel like it), so I just printed it all out in pieces, using Photoshop. Thankfully Photoshop is able to print everything out with the proper dimensions. After printing out the pieces, I just measured dimensions from the edges to determine exactly where everything goes and then taped them all down.

From there, I used a pointed knife to poke into the middle of the crosshair of each hole, making sure to push in deep enough to be visible in the wood. Then I just took all the pieces off. You end up with markings that you can easily just stick your drill bit into:

The next step was just to actually drill the holes. I found that using my drill press was much easier than freehanding it with my drill, and it produces much cleaner holes as well. That said, there were a few holes that I couldn't reach with my drill press, and the drill did work fine (it just saves my carpal tunnel wrists to use the drill press and the holes aren't quite as clean). It doesn't really matter how clean the holes are though, because the edges will all be covered up by the buttons/joysticks/etc.

For the most part, all went well with drilling out the holes. You can see the difference in how clean the holes are between the majority of them and the few that I had to drill by hand. The big hole for the trackball I did have to move up a tiny bit, just so that I could reach it with my small, cheap drill press. Otherwise, I would have had to drill that by hand, which would have been a bit difficult due to the size of the hole. Thankfully though, there was room to move it up, and it doesn't really present any usability issues to do so.

There is one minor issue, which I will have to deal with later. The plans call for putting pieces on the very inside edges in order to hold the whole thing place once the controls are all in, but my left-most holes for the spinner buttons are in the way there. I didn't want to move them though just because they're in the best place for usability. So that just means that I'll have to cut out a space for them when I glue in the pieces to hold it all together, which I don't see as a big issue.

Per the bits themselves, I went to Home Depot looking for forstner bits, but for whatever reason they didn't have any. I ended up going with hole saw bits instead, which are slightly more annoying because you have to constantly remove the cores after making each hole, but they did work just fine. Gonna make a new post to continue progress.

[Jason Carr]

Next, I started working on tackling the two side pieces, which has been the most challenging part of everything I've done so far (and I've had to learn the most expensive lessons). Unfortunately I ended up wasting quite a bit of plywood trying to get the two side pieces cut out properly. The first side piece I cut out ended up looking okay:

It was far from perfect though. One of the most unfortunate things I ran into is that the cabinet itself (most specifically the bottom front of the cabinet with the angles) is not perfectly 90 degrees up and down on the edges. I don't know of a good way to really get all that 100% perfect while building it. You really can't tell at all when you're looking at the base of the cabinet, but you sure can when the side panel doesn't line up properly. So this begins my tirade of wasted plywood and frustration.

First off, I had a horrible time trying to cut out my second side panel. I must have just gotten lucky with the first one, because I felt like I couldn't cut straight lines with the jigsaw to save my life when I was cutting this second piece. Here's both pieces thus far:

I did my best to modify these pieces to match up with the unexpected angles on the cabinet, but unfortunately I couldn't get my hand steady enough with the jigsaw and managed to completely screw them up (both of them). I tried to fix some of the issues by sanding and using wood filler, but ultimately, it was just a train wreck. At this point I was a bit pissed off, because plywood is so expensive these days, so this was a costly mistake.

All in all, I ended up making 5 of these side panels. The last two that I made are pretty close to perfect and fit the cabinet very well, thankfully. I learned one very important lesson though: cutting straight lines is much easier with a circular saw than with a jigsaw. For the last two, I used the jigsaw as little as possible and used the circular saw for nearly all of the cuts. Thank the Lord, I managed to do these last two without really screwing anything up, and everything lines up to the cabinet very well.

This was definitely the most frustrating part of the entire build thus far (and I hope it'll be the last overly frustrating bit). Will continue in the next post.

[Jason Carr]

Next, I started painting. I hate painting. It's the worst. I picked up two different paints from Home Depot, both of them flat black. One is a modern water-based paint with primer included, and that does a great job of covering the wood in a single coat. The other is an oil-based paint that is needed for the surfaces that are covered in vinyl. Apparently you have to use an oil-based paint, and you shouldn't use stuff with primer included.

I started with the water-based paint on the base:

All in all, I think it looks great, and I only had to use one coat. The final product does look a little bit better than the picture above, because it wasn't completely dry yet. I used some smaller paint rollers for the majority of it, and a brush where necessary. I also painted the inside of the top part of the cabinet, just so that it was dark inside and no bright surfaces show through (since I'm planning to use glass in front of the monitor, unlike the original design):

Again, it does look a lot better now that it's dry. I also failed to mention that I had previously drilled the holes for the speaker grills.

Next, I started painting some of the surfaces to cover in vinyl with the oil-based paint. I learned the hard way that oil-based paint is evil. If you get it on your hands, it takes a few days to get it off, unless you use some nasty chemicals. So that wasn't a whole lot of fun, but I didn't run into any significant issues. Continued in the next post.

[Jason Carr]

Next I installed the speaker grills and the coin door:

Both of these were thankfully simple and straightforward. You can see now how good the paint job on the base looks. I was tempted to sand it down and give it another coat, but I don't really see any need to, so I'm just leaving it. Finally, after painting the front of the control panel with the oil-based paint, I installed the artwork on the front, screwed all three pieces together, and drilled some holes for the cables:

Everything was straightforward, sans for the artwork. I think the artwork for the front of the control panel is a different material than the vinyl used for the sides of the cabinet. I first tried to wrap the material around the edges of the plywood, but that just straight up didn't work at all. I ended up using a knife to cut it instead. It does work, but isn't quite as clean as I'd like it to be (it would be a little bit cleaner on the edges if I could wrap it around like we'll do for the side panels).

One thing I forgot to mention (or take pictures of) is using the router with a slot cutting bit to cut a slot into the bottom front edge of the control panel section for t-molding. Thankfully using the router for this is fairly straightforward and didn't really give me any real issues. I installed the t-molding into the bottom of the control panel after I put the artwork on and before I screwed everything together. Continued in next post.

[Jason Carr]

Okay, this is finally the last post for today. Ultimately, I installed the marquee screen that I got from Pixelcade:

I had to come up with my own design for the frame, but that was easy enough just by measuring things up and calculating the difference between the size of the actual screen part and the size of the cabinet top. However, I did run into an issue with the jigsaw again; I first tried to use the jigsaw to cut out the center as a hole and do it all in one piece, but once again that was a failure because it's just so hard to cut a perfect straight line with the jigsaw. I ended up using the table saw and just made four pieces for the four sides, and glued them together. I then used wood filler on the edges and sanded them down, and now that it's painted, you can't really tell that it was four pieces.

I did have to learn how to use edge banding for the first time in making that top frame piece (for the outer edges and the inside edges). That went mostly smoothly though, thankfully, other than for the fact that I had to go to the store to pick up an iron lol. Unfortunately that top frame piece did require two coats of paint though, mostly because the edge banding just doesn't take the paint all that well. It was a bit of pain dealing with drips because of the fact that the entire piece needed painted, but I got a good result in the end with enough sandings and coats.

I screwed the marquee screen into the frame, and then just used pocket holes to screw the frame into the cabinet itself. Other than for a paint spot or two that I need to touch up, it's looking awesome.

The marquee screen from Pixelcade is great; it doesn't have any of the funky issues that a lot of the Chinese screens have (like the picture being warped or cut off). However, I was thrown off by the fact that it comes with a lot of extra crap and tries to communicate with the frontend over the network. Apparently they want you to use the parts that it comes with to do the actual screen rendering instead of just plugging the screen into Windows. To be honest, I think that's a really stupid idea and of course I want to connect it up to Big Box directly. Thankfully though, once you figure out how the cables all work, you can disconnect their extra junk and just connect an HDMI cable straight up to the screen. Then it shows up in Windows exactly as you'd expect.

That's it for me for the night. I'm finally to the point where I'm happy with progress again. Those side panels were really kicking my butt for quite a while, but they're done now. Next, I need to get them painted and get the artwork and the t-molding on them, and then I can install them on the cabinet. Then all that's left is the control panel and mounting the TV. Onwards!

[Headrush69]

9 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

However, I was thrown off by the fact that it comes with a lot of extra crap and tries to communicate with the frontend over the network. Apparently they want you to use the parts that it comes with to do the actual screen rendering instead of just plugging the screen into Windows. To be honest, I think that's a really stupid idea and of course I want to connect it up to Big Box directly. Thankfully though, once you figure out how the cables all work, you can disconnect their extra junk and just connect an HDMI cable straight up to the screen. Then it shows up in Windows exactly as you'd expect.

Yes, being network based it does add a slight latency to image display but it does offer some advantages as well.

If you ever add light guns (IR based at least), or have emulators that change resolutions, you don't have to deal with several issues that dual screens set ups have, and it works in LB as well. There are ways to deal with them, and if you boot directly into BB you can hide them, but it's one less thing to deal with and maintain.

9 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

The marquee screen from Pixelcade is great; it doesn't have any of the funky issues that a lot of the Chinese screens have (like the picture being warped or cut off).

Tell me about it. I bought 2 (not from Pixelcade), and they look absolutely identical, but one was a complete disaster needing custom timing and other issues and the other one worked out of the box perfectly without any configuration or "hacks" needed. 

Edited November 8, 2022 by Headrush69

[skizzosjt]

Hi Jason, I'm curious what your plans are with the buttons in the upper right hand corner of the control panel? Everyone has the obligatory start/coin buttons of course, but there is more than that here so I'm wondering what other functions you're using them for?

[Jason Carr]

4 hours ago, Headrush69 said:

If you ever add light guns (IR based at least), or have emulators that change resolutions, you don't have to deal with several issues that dual screens set ups have, and it works in LB as well. There are ways to deal with them, and if you boot directly into BB you can hide them, but it's one less thing to deal with and maintain.

Ah, I see. I have both lightguns and the marquee on my existing cab without issues, but I can see how resolution changes could be a problem. I do my best to just make sure resolutions don't change, but I know that's not always possible (Teknoparrot is the only issue that I'm aware of though).

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, skizzosjt said:

Hi Jason, I'm curious what your plans are with the buttons in the upper right hand corner of the control panel? Everyone has the obligatory start/coin buttons of course, but there is more than that here so I'm wondering what other functions you're using them for?

Player 1 Start
Player 2 Start
Player 1 Coin
Player 2 Coin
Mouse Left
Mouse Right
Volume Up
Volume Down
Menu (Tab for MAME)
Select (Enter Key)
Pause
Exit

It's definitely more than you really "need", but it makes it really convenient to have dedicated buttons for all of those things. That's pretty much everything you could possibly need. It even lets you configure games in MAME without having to pull out a keyboard.
 

[JaysArcade]

Looks good Jason. For your side pieces - an easy way to get two identical matching pieces, cut your first side, then with your second side, cut it slightly larger. Clamp the two pieces together and run a flush cut router bit around them and you will end up with two identical pieces. Yeah it's an extra bit you'll need, but once you learn this trick, you'll probably find yourself using that bit more than you'd think.

I was wondering what your 11th and 12th buttons were for. Mine doesn't have the volume buttons.

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

Looks good Jason. For your side pieces - an easy way to get two identical matching pieces, cut your first side, then with your second side, cut it slightly larger. Clamp the two pieces together and run a flush cut router bit around them and you will end up with two identical pieces. Yeah it's an extra bit you'll need, but once you learn this trick, you'll probably find yourself using that bit more than you'd think.

I was wondering what your 11th and 12th buttons were for. Mine doesn't have the volume buttons.

That indeed would have likely saved me some frustration...

[Headrush69]

5 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Volume Up
Volume Down
Menu (Tab for MAME)
Select (Enter Key)

It's definitely more than you really "need", but it makes it really convenient to have dedicated buttons for all of those things. That's pretty much everything you could possibly need. It even lets you configure games in MAME without having to pull out a keyboard.
 

If you have children in the house, mapping those functions to the shifted feature of the iPac might be a safer option. You pretty much double the number of keys you have and it gives you lots of options for handling keystrokes needed for even games in computers systems. (ex Y, N, F1..F11)

[FlightRisk]

I'm wondering about the weight of different types of wood. I owned an Arcade in the 80s and had 5 pins and about 30 games. They weighed a ton! I kept a Tempest that I still have and don't want to re-use the case. So even if real wood costs a lot more, I am thinking about using it just because of weight. Maybe having a modular system is a good idea though. If you could take 2 or 3 sections apart, remove the computer and the monitor, it would be more manageable to move.

[Jason Carr]

20 hours ago, Headrush69 said:

If you have children in the house, mapping those functions to the shifted feature of the iPac might be a safer option. You pretty much double the number of keys you have and it gives you lots of options for handling keystrokes needed for even games in computers systems. (ex Y, N, F1..F11)

Sure, I can see that being helpful for some households. For me, my kids are old enough to know better and I'd rather make it obvious to my adult friends how to use the cabinet.

4 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

I'm wondering about the weight of different types of wood. I owned an Arcade in the 80s and had 5 pins and about 30 games. They weighed a ton! I kept a Tempest that I still have and don't want to re-use the case. So even if real wood costs a lot more, I am thinking about using it just because of weight. Maybe having a modular system is a good idea though. If you could take 2 or 3 sections apart, remove the computer and the monitor, it would be more manageable to move.

Yeah, I think a full-size arcade machine is going to be heavy no matter what you do. I'm no expert on wood types. I am using birch plywood though, which you would think would be lighter than some other options, but I don't really know. I do think that a big part of the weight of the older machines is the CRTs, so at least we don't have to deal with that anymore, but at the same time, these 32" widescreen cabinets are a lot wider than most cabinets were back in the day, which I'm sure doesn't help.

[Lordmonkus]

Birch plywood is the perfect choice. It wont warp and its no where near as heavy as particle board or MDF which are both garbage materials. Solid wood is likely to warp at some point unless it is 100% dried and never exposed to humidity or moisture.

[Jason Carr]

It is finished! I have a lot of catching up to do here before we get there though, starting with painting and applying the graphics:

The painting was straightforward and went well. However, for whatever reason the graphics for the wings didn't turn out that great. I'm not sure if I didn't sand them well enough, or if my paint job was uneven, or what, but they just didn't look too great. There were lots of bubbles and rough parts, and trying to squeegee them out just didn't work. You probably can't tell too much in the pictures, but you sure could in real life. Later on I ended up getting re-prints for the wings done on control panel material, which gave me a much better end result. Continued in next post.

 

[Jason Carr]

Next I worked on applying the graphics to the control panel:

And started putting the controls in:

I made a pretty unfortunate mistake though. I cut all the holes out all the way up to the edge of the holes, which should work in theory, but after plugging in some of the buttons to light them up, it really didn't look very good. So, just like with the art for the wings, I had to order a reprint. Redos definitely started to become a trend with this project.

After ripping off the art, re-sanding, repainting, and re-sanding again, I put the reprinted artwork on and this time cut out much smaller holes. I found that the buttons/controls could rip out the holes to be a bit larger if needed, and this resulted in a much better end product. Just another lesson learned of many. Continued in next post.