Mame Cabinet Mar 9, 2005 I've wanted to build a Mame cabinet for 2 or 3 years now, but as with most things like this, there's always a better time to do it. I finally decided today to do it. Mame is an application that you can run on your computer that emulates the hardware of various gaming platforms, or in non-geek terms, it allows you to play games - anthing from old Atari games, Commodore 64, Nintendo, Sega, or even the old stand-up arcade games. The difference is, you can put a computer inside an arcade cabinet, and have literally hundreds of games to play. After lunch, I went with a couple of co-workers to local arcade and pinball shop in search of a cabinet. He didn't have any junk or non-functional cabinets, but he did have an old defender game in non-working condition for $300. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd hate to destroy a classic cabinet, and I think I could have a lot more fun, save more money, drink a lot more beer, and learn more about wood working if I built my own. After looking around online, it looks like Lusid's design is what I'd really like to use - he's made his layouts available and it's a pretty straightforward construction. Got the wood purchased - 3 4x8 sheets of 3/4" MDF, $18.99 each Mar 10 Measured out and drew cutting lines on MDF. Submitted order to Happ Controls for 2 joysticks and 20 buttons. I might add a trackball, spinner, and coin door at some point down the road, but this will suffice for now. Mar 11 Got most of the wood cut up. Assembled the lower portion of the control panel. Used #20 biscuits and glued it together. Ordered t-molding from Rockler (got 100 ft, so I should have plenty left over). Mar 12 Purchased a 27" TV - unfortunately the wife saw it within a few minutes of getting home. Her friend Lori was visiting and was supposed to be distracting her while I hid it in the garage. It was gonna happen sooner or later, just wish I had a chance to get the computer and sound system purchased first. :) Finished cutting the side pieces. The angled part of the sides was the only part that couldn't be cut with the table saw. We used a circular saw on the straights, a jig saw on the curved portion (the radius of which, oddly enough, matches the radius of a beer bottle), and sanded it smooth. Each exterior piece is supported by a piece of 1 1/2" pine stock that is glued and screwed onto the cabinet. From there, the exterior piece will be screwed into the pine stock. Installed bottom base, and put in a temporary holder on top to get the cabinet free standing. Casualties - 3 1/8" drill bits. Mar 13 All internal supports are glued and screwed in place. Installed front, back bottom, and control panel support pieces. Set control panel and tv in place to make sure all is lining up ok. Mar 14 Control panel top will be removable. To help this, anchors were installed in the control panel box, and socket head screws will hold the top down. Tonite's status Mar 15 I took the night off, but Robert did some work. He cut the front angles on the control top and rounded the corners. Then he adhered the laminate to the control top, trimmed the edges flush, then finally drilled and countersank the holes for the screws. Mar 16 Removed the control panel and routed all the edges of the cabinet. Installed the monitor shelf. This step was particularly crucial, as getting the shelf installed directly affects how the TV sits in the cabinet, which affects bezel and speaker shelf placement. When removing the control panel top, part of the laminate chipped off as a screw was loosened. A deeper countersink or filing the edges down could have prevented this from happening, but this means that I'll fill it, paint it, and put some sort of graphics on the control top. Heck, I could probably add something goofy to the bezel and sides too. I had only planned on painting the cabinet black and making a custom marquee, but now, it looks as if I'll be motivated to do a little more. :) Set the TV in and tossed a couple pieces in to simulate the top and bottom bezel portions. It was about this time that I wondered how the TV could be turned on and off. I wondered if it would come back on when the power is cut, since the bezel would likely block the remote line of sight. It wouldn't. However, the remote signal proved to be pretty resilient - even with the bezel in place, we could still get the remote to work if it's held near one of the lower corners of the screen. Mar 17 Installed stops on the monitor shelf. This will be very helpful when re-installing the TV - getting it lined up will be very simple. Installed the speaker panel. Full shot of progress so far Mar 20 Cut and glued the bezel, clamped it up. Cut marquee frame, cut a dado in each. Mar 21 Rounded corners on control panel box Cut pieces of laminate to lie flush with screen, adhered pieces to bezel Put marque frame together and installed. The top piece will not be permanently attached - this will allow the marquee to be removed easily. Filled screw holes with wood filler and sanded Layed out grid on bottom side of control panel to help laying out the buttons Drilled holes for joystick and buttons. In hindsight, I might have opted to drill a button hole for the joystick, and mount it from underneath. However, we might countersink the joystick base so it's flush with the top of the the control panel - six of one, half a dozen of the other I suppose. Here she is. Still need to finish 2 side pieces of the bezel, get speakers and install them, counter sink and install joystick bases. That's about it for the construction phase, then we'll move to wiring everything up, painting, and graphics. Mar 23 Installed speakers and speaker grills. This wasn't trivial because the fronts of the speake rs are curved. So we routed out the backside of the speaker panel so they could recess into the panel. Then, we drilled/routed holes at the speaker locations. Finally, we drilled holes for the grill pegs - there are 6 pegs per grill. Since the final mounting of the grills would be flat instead of curved, this meant that the holes for the grill pegs at the ends wouldn't be straight in - they needed to be drilled at an angle that we eyeballed. One set of hole locations was slighly off, so we filled it with wood filler, and we'll redrill them later. After installation, we played with the sound a bit - it's gonna do just fine, whether for games or music. Here's a couple videos showing the speakers from the front and the sub in the cabinet. (caution - videos are ~10 MB downloads) Mar 24 Redrilled remaining pair of speaker grill holes Drilled remaining holes for bolts to attach control box Cut and glued bezel pieces for the side of the screen Routed joystick portion of control panel to sink the joystick base so it was flush with the top of the control panel. After some consideration, we routed an additional 3/32" so a piece of plexi could be mounted on top of the joystick base. Then the plexi was cut and corners rounded to fit. Mar 27 Wired up the control panel, tested on the computer. Mar 28 Sanded bezel sides to be flush with the front, filled holes on bezel front and sanded. Refilled holes on entire cabinet and did some general sanding. Put a couple finishing nails to attach the marquee frame to the speaker panel. Filled the holes and sanded. The only screws that will be visible on the cabinet will be the 2 on each side of the bezel. Screws on the back of the cabinet will not be filled, but they won't be visible unless you're crawling around behind the cabinet. Remaining hdwe construction - install casters, install joystick bolts. After that, it's time to paint. Mar 29 Installed braces in bottom of cabinet for casters. Mar 30 Bought a quart of primer and a quart of paint Mar 31 Primed the cabinet, spray painted the inside to help seal the wood from moisture Apr 4 Put on first coat of paint. It will need an additional coat, so we'll need to lightly sand it and be sure to close the garage door to help keep the bugs out of the wet paint. Apr 6 Sanded the first coat of the cabinet. This made it extremely smooth - might only requir e one more coat of paint. Spray painted the backs (interiors) of all remaining pieces - top, back angled section, back top, back bottom, bezel, and control box. Primed the top and bezel. Haven't touched the contr ol panel top yet. This shows how the pieces are primed on the outside, and the insides are spray painted t o help seal it from moisture. Here's a good reason why painting should be done with the door closed and during daylight hours when the final coat is applied. :) just won an ebay auction... Apr 13 The last week has been a series of sanding and painting - there's probably 4 or 5 coats on all the pieces. At least one more coat is needed, then we'll put on a couple coats of polyurethane to protect the finish. Any decals will be applied and coated with poly. Lastly, the control panel edges still need to be rounded then painted. If all goes as planned, final assembly will take place in a week. Control Panel Control Panel box, top of marquee frame, and a back piece Bezel, a back piece, and top Cabinet Apr 26 Lots more painting and many layers of poly in the past couple weeks (thanks Robert! - how many was that on the control panel, 18?) - the cabinet is 99% finished. Still need to mount the marquee light, install the coin door guts, and put on some decals. Got the coin door mounted Reattaching the wiring post-paint And the finished product... Now for a few rounds of software tweaking...