{"id":293,"date":"2018-08-04T20:32:26","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T00:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/?p=293"},"modified":"2018-08-04T20:32:26","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T00:32:26","slug":"arcade-cabinet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/?p=293","title":{"rendered":"Arcade cabinet"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently finished up a bartop arcade cabinet that I’ve been working on for a while. I got the basic design from this instructables post<\/a>, and tweaked it a bit.<\/p>\n

\"Cabinet\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first modification I made was to make it a bit wider, since I don’t want to have to stand that close to people. You’ll notice mine doesn’t have any art on the marquee or the sides. I may add something eventually, but I think it looks fine plain.<\/p>\n

I made the side panel design a bit more angular, and deeper (to accommodate a subwoofer).
\n\"Side<\/p>\n

I also mounted speakers facing down under the marquee. It’s just a Logitech 2.1 set that I disassembled, but it sounds pretty good. The controls are pretty much identical, except that I added a dedicated hotkey button. If you hit it by itself, it’s pause. In combination with other buttons, it can exit the game, open the menu, etc.
\n\"Unfinished\"<\/p>\n

The display and controls are both covered with a single large piece of plexiglas. I cut it to the right size, then clamped the full width between some boards and applied heat with a heat gun as I slowly bent it to the correct angle. It worked out pretty well, except that I cut it a bit short and had to add an extra piece of trim at the top to cover the gap. I also cut it wide enough that I needed to make a groove in both side panels for it to fit into. I thought this would make it very secure (which it did), but it was also a lot of work. I think it would have been fine if I’d just cut it to fit between the panels.
\n\"Plexi\"
\n\"Plexi\"<\/p>\n

The control panel is 1\/2″ MDF, which did not work out well. It’s too thick for the screw in buttons I had, but too thin and soft to act as a support by itself. In
\nthe future, I’d probably get snap-in buttons that click into the plexi and make the panel out of plywood. If you look closely, you can see that I routed the entire control panel board thinner, except for the last quarter inch or so. That is not something I want to repeat. The ragged holes at the top are just to run the speaker wires (and reduce weight a bit).
\n\"Skeleton\"<\/p>\n

I designed the front to illustrate the protagonist (left) and antagonist (right) ships from a bunch of early space games, with the oldest at the top. The “planet” at the bottom is a modified and pixelated image of the moon.
\n\"Front<\/p>\n

Here’s a shot of the guts. Instead of cutting a door into the back, I chose to just not have a bottom panel. This gives me very easy access to all of the wiring, and simplifies the design a bit. The joysticks are not actually screwed into anything (since the panel is MDF, which doesn’t hold screws well). Instead, I mounted an oak support beneath the control panel, which provides support and also presses the joysticks into indentations that I cut with a router inlay bit.
\n\"The<\/p>\n

There are more pictures of the cabinet and the construction process<\/a> available as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently finished up a bartop arcade cabinet that I’ve been working on for a while. I got the basic design from this instructables post, and tweaked it a bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robobunny.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}