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updated 10 th January 2K5
I started off by looking at other people's projects posted on the Arcade Controls website. This gave me an idea of what other people had tried to build.
I decided to go for a traditional style cabinet. I didn't start this stage till I'd ordered my controls and built my control panel. Below is one of my very rough sketches.
I had tried a few experiments to work out the height of the control panel by getting various friends to sit on a stool and wobble their arms about. After many laughs we decided on 35" for the top surface of the control panel. I worked out that the joysticks and trackballs needed about 2 1/2" oc clearance so my control box would be 4" high at the front (I'm using 1/2" MDF for the control panel - but this might get re-cut in plywood). This meant that my shelf for the control panel would need to be 31" from the floor.
I then proceeded to make a eigth scale sketch of my cabinet, making loads of adjustments when it just didn't look right. I've got a Sanyo 21" TV to put inside this cabinet, but I may replace this with a proper arcade monitor sometime in the future. I'll be making my cabinet 24" wide internally so I can hopefully cope with any size monitor change.
| Click on the thumb to see a larger image. | My 1:8 scale sketch of the side panel. |
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Here is a full scale mock up of my cabinet from my 1/8 th scale sketch. When cutting out my full scale cardboard side I made adjustments to the bezel area to make things fit correctly, these changes were made on the scale sketch.
I did it in wobbly cardboard, but it gave me a great sense of scale and how imposing a structure it will be (probably too imposing).
Click on the thumbs for a full size pic.
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| I bought a couple of 63 cm high fold away stools from Ikea, that will be used for extended play. They were quite cheap less than £20. | |
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The next step of the process is to get me sen over to my Dad's (he's got all the tools to cut the beast out) 200 miles away and construct the actual cabinet. Pictures of this will be added when I have them.
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