This machine took about 4 months to complete. Myself and my brother worked on it every weekend and some weekdays when I had the time off work.

It all started with the purchase of 3 sheets of 2400 x 1200mm x 19mm MDF from the local Mitre 10 Hardware. I have wanted to build one of these ever since coming across a little site called Build Your Own Arcade Controls: BYOAC a few years ago. I hadn't done anything back then as I didn't really have the time nor money for a project such as this.

Anyway, years down the track and I finally decided to do it. The first step for me was to buy the wood. MDF seemed the best choice as it is strong, heavy but strong. I didn't want to end up with something flimsy.



As far as the design went, this took up a great deal of time for me. Trying to decide on how the machine should look was hard. I kept looking back to LuSid's plans wondering if it would just be easiest to use them and maybe if I ever build another cabinet I could design my own. As it turned out, this is the road I took. Going off LuSid's plans, my brother and I set about marking and cutting out pieces of MDF.





We did make a few slight modifications to the plan. By simply increasing the angle of the cuts down on the top edges (front edges parallel to the marquee) we gave the cabinet a slightly unique and more aggressive look. We also altered the speaker panel section. The plans seemed a little confusing to me here as I could not see why the speaker needed to be so huge. Instead of this we created a custom (smaller) speaker panel that is at the same angle as the bezel. This ended up looking really nice. I believe we altered the size of the control panel top to some degree also.





The whole thing is held together with about 20,000 screws. We didn't use any glue. WARNING: MDF dust is toxic, don't go cutting or sanding this stuff without a dust mask. We did quite a few times and it's nasty :(



The control panel box is attached with velcro to the cabinet. The same is true for the CP top to the CP box. This turned out to be the easiest and smartest option as I have needed to get in there a few times to fiddle with the wiring. The velcro strips were glued down and stapled into the wood. This has worked fine but you need to be really careful pulling the top off as it could easily pull the velcro off if you aren't careful.



Testing Day. I got anxious to play so I wired enough joysticks and buttons to play a few games once the cabinet had it's TV shelf installed.

Here is my brother disagreeing with what has just happened in PAC-MAN.











One of the trickiest sections to sort out was the speaker panel. I bought a set of Logitech X-230 2.1 Speakers and needed to figure out a way to actually mount the satellites into a panel. After many conversations over the topic we decided on what you see below. It is simply a small panel of the MDF with a textured vinyl cover. We cut rough holes out to match the speakers and then had to spend many hours sanding the edge of the holes to make the speakers fit snugly. Turned out really neat.




The marquee also took some time to nut out. We ended up using 2 strips of angled plastic trim and more of that same velcro to fix it to the cabinet. The panels of acrylic basically sit there and the two strips stop it from falling forward. Works well!


Some pics of the finished project. Well it's ALMOST finished. I am still needing to install a fluro light in the top for the marquee and also install the black wood trim around the bezel.


Aaah marquee not on!


The Control Panel



Whole lot of bad reflection in this one, sorry.
Bezel looks a hell of a lot nicer than this photo would suggest!