MAME Arcade Cabinet Progress

[SpaceBooger]

Today around 1pm I began building the arcade cabinet that will house a computer dedicated to playing arcade games.

At 10am my father who is a retired engineer and I went over the plans that I designed and headed out to the hardware store. At 1pm we returned to my house and started to lay out the side design on one of the boards.

This process took longer than I expected because we had to readjust some of the measurements and dimensions once seeing them in real life size. After playing around with the measurements we finished drawing the design on the board and began to cut out the side around 2pm.

Numerous precautions were taken and with careful alignment of the straight edge we began to cut out the side of the cabinet with my circular saw. The cuts were horrible and the blade was smoking and burning the wood. My dad thought that the wood was just too dense so we tried numerous methods only to end up back at the hardware store to purchase newer sharper blades.

After shrinking the measurements down from the original size, because of the bad cuts, we finally cut out the first side around 6pm.



I stopped working around 9pm this evening after cutting out both sides and attaching the leads for the front and back.

Tomorrow I will cut out the front and back boards, assemble the whole cabinet, and primer a completed arcade cabinet...

[jemsic]

Wow, that's alot of progress for one day!

[xraydash]

Thanks for sharing. I'm dying to make a cabinet myself. Be sure to show us more pictures as you go.

[SpaceBooger]

After making a trip to the local hardware store to purchase some paint and some material to fix the piping to my sink I continued working on the arcade cabinet around 1pm.

Having a new box of screws I began attaching the left over leads to the left side. After the rest of the leads were attached it was time to move the project from the garage to the basement for final assembly.

Knowing that the completed cabinet would be to heavy to carry into the basement bar, my workout room was transformed into a work room where the two sides were connected with the front and rear braces.



After putting the braces in I added the floor, monitor shelf, and back panel. Around 3pm my father showed up with his reciprocating saw so that I could cut the nasty old galvanized pipe and replace it with a new pvc pipe… a whole other project. Once the plumbing project was complete my father stuck around cutting out the rest of the panels.



While my father cut all of the other pieces, I attached them and made the keyboard drawer completing the project shown above (minus the bottom door, it is not attached for painting purposes).

At about 8pm I added the casters and rolled it into the bar where I could add a coat of primer and clean up the workout room.



I removed the keyboard drawer and finished up this evening with a nice coat of primer. I did notice that I forgot to drill some more ventilation holes on the back panel, these along with the speaker and controller holes will be drilled before the final paint job.

Now I just need a cool marquee and side art to add after I paint the final black coat…

[Niode]

Sweet! Good work!

Is there any chance you can release your plans on the website? I'm sure there's quite a few interested parties looking to build one themselves!

I bet RB would love an article on how to build your own arcade cabinet on here too.

[peace4myheart]

You should be a carpenter like JESUS!!! SWEETNESS!!!

[fastbilly1]

Very awesome. I am currently converting one of my cabs to a mame cab. Most people do not find the Vs Tenttop a cannon arcade cab, I find it to be a brilliant Gauntlet cab. Mine is metal and Ive mostly worked with wood...Lets just say there are some major differences.

And before the purist cry foul - I have all of the original everything, tagged and stored so I can put it back together. The original powersupply is on its last legs however.

What are you getting for your interface and where are you ordering your arcade parts?

[SpaceBooger]

If you look at the control shelf there is about 4 inches between it and the monitor. One day I will create a controller, but for now I am using a PS2 to USB adapter with some arcade joysticks that rest on that shelf... baby steps my friend, baby steps.

Tonight or tomorrow I will work on the glass then it will be complete (except for side art and real controllers).

[raztat]

very nice, how much would it cost to make one of those?

[fastbilly1]

Ah. Arcade controls are no where near as hard as they use to be to make. No longer must you hack a keyboard matrix, there are cheating boxes that do that for you. As soon as you choose to upgrade, Ive got a guy who can sell you everything but the interface. Personally I like Happs concave buttons, but to each their own.

Also you might want to join Build Your Own Arcade Controls (BYOAC) - I have not frequented it in the past few months but the guys there know their stuff, and only a few are conceded.