The Arcade Project!

In my previous post, I outlined a high-level breakdown of what we’d need to do to see our project through to completion.  The first (and most obvious) step of the process would be to construct the wood cabinet that would house the inner workings of the arcade, and ultimately define the final product.  On we go!

We decided that it made the most sense to cut as many of the pieces as we could before beginning assembly, and started with the cabinet sides.  Using a plan hand-transferred to a piece of paper (damn you, Google Sketchup, for not having a simple print-out-plans feature!), we drew out the cuts we needed to make on the 3/4″ sheet of MDF.  Most rips were made with the circular saw (using the clamp-on fence as a guide), finishing the smaller cuts that the circular saw couldn’t make with a jigsaw.  For the most part this worked out well: we messed up a couple of the cuts mainly due to inexperience and simple measuring errors, but by the third piece we had a good system going and were making good progress.  Even so, after finishing the cuts for the fourth (and final) cabinet side, we discovered that when laying them on top of one another they were not exact.  Our initial thought was to clamp the pieces together and sand the pieces flush, but knew that this would consume a great deal of sandpaper and time (not to mention make a sizeable mess).  The better solution was to use our router coupled with a flush trim bit to make the sides symmetrical.  The bit has a bearing above the cutting edge to act as a guide, and worked great!  It worked so well that we decided that we would cut two more sides to replace those that were flawed due to our earlier cutting mistakes.  This time around we made our cuts slightly larger than the final dimensions, and used the flush trim but to work them to proper size.  This was much quicker and more accurate than just cutting, as before.

After the routing was complete, we finish-sanded the sides while still clamped together:

After we were satisfied with the sides, we moved on to the base.  Using 2×4s, we framed the base and wrapped it in 3/4″ MDF.  After some glue, screws, and more sanding, the bases were done:

The rest of the cuts were fairly straight-forward.  We spent another half day or so (yes, we are still a bit slow) cutting the top, speaker shelf, back, admin panel, drawer, and front door.  It was nice to see the full sheets of MDF reduced to neat stacks of nicely cut pieces in JC’s garage.

That’ll do it for this post; I need to take a shower to get all this MDF dust off of me!  Next post we’ll continue to attack Phase One by cutting up the control panel pieces and than start with assembly!

I’ll be honest, when JC first suggested the idea of putting together some arcade cabs, I wasn’t too excited about it.  I mean, hell, the only wordworking tasks I’ve ever conquered were fixing a fence (crashed through it in my truck) and making a small baseball bat on a lathe in woodshop.  So with my little experience, you can imagine what I pictured as the end result of taking on such a grand task: an uneven, out-of-square, jagged-edged cabinet that I would probably end up using as firewood (MDF burns pretty hot, and the smell is great!).  After having a look at the extremely detailed plans JC drafted up, though, my confidence heightened.  After all, who would have trouble measuring, marking, cutting, and nailing some boards together? I’m always up for learning new things, plus I figured an arcade cab of my very own would curb my drinking, so, “Let’s do it,” I said.

As I saw it, there would be four phases to our project:

1. Constructing the raw cabinets - the basic assembly of the raw materials
2. Cabinet finishwork - all of the filling, sanding, and laminating of the MDF cabinet
3. Electronics - mounting the monitor, deciding on and installing the controls, monitor, computer, and software
4. Artwork - the marquee, control panel, and possibly side-panel artwork

On to Phase One we go!

First, JC and I determined what we needed to get rolling on the initial cabinet assembly.

Raw Materials:

• 6 sheets of 3/4″ MDF (remember, we’re building two!)
• 1 sheet of 5/8″ MDF, for the control panels
• 2 sticks of 2×4’s, for the base
• 2 sticks of 2X2’s, for bracing

Other:

• box of 2″ wood screws
• wood glue
• sandpaper, assorted grits (we went with 80, 100, and 150)
• earplugs
• dustmasks
• beer! (just kidding - JC doesn’t allow me to drink on the job)

With the materials in hand, we needed to figure out what tools we needed to make it all come together.  I already had a drill, jigsaw, finishing sander, and various measuring tools, but we still needed to figure out what we were going to use for a fundamental part of this phase: cutting the MDF into the pieces JC dreamed up.  JC suggested we invest in a handsaw, citing his fear of power tools.  Okay, so that’s not entirely true.  We knew the cuts had to be straight, so it seemed the logical means to accomplish this was to use a table saw.  After doing our research, however, we found that a table saw capable of making the 24″ rips we needed was out of our means.  Even renting one would set us back as much as purchasing a quality circular saw.  So that’s what we did.  Enter the Craftsman 7-1/4 in. Circular Saw with Laser Trac® Laser and LED work light!  This saw, coupled with a fence that we could clamp to the cutting surface should work fine, albeit take a bit longer than if we had used a table saw.  More on that later.

We would also need a router to make the slots for the t-molding and the control panel holes, and I was lucky enough to find a brand new Porter Cable variable speed router on Craig’s List for $50.  This thing is awesome - look forward to a post dedicated to this thing.

We picked up the rest of the tools we needed at the local Harbor Freight: sawhorses, clamps, carpenter’s square, etc.  You can find some amazing deals at Harbor Freight, but I wouldn’t purchase anything and expect it to last forever (as of this writing, one of the quick-clamps has already bit the dust).

With everything we (thought) we needed, we set out with much excitement and determination to build some arcade cabinets!

Here are two pictures of the cabinet plans I drew up for our project:

I created the plans from scratch using Google Sketchup, which I found to be a pretty fantastic tool once I learned to work with it. Sketchup ships with a woodworking template that makes it a snap to work with inches and feet, which was crucial for me because the imperial units make my brain hurt. Now that we our plans in Sketchup, we can get any angle or measurement in a matter of seconds. I can’t see working on this project without it.

The cabinet design is heavily inspired by Knievel’s “Arcade Mania” and other similar cabinets. One of my main design objectives was to create a cabinet that had as little footprint as possible. I’m hoping to place the finished cabinet in our living room (pending my wife’s approval… wish me luck with that!); building a bulky cabinet was therefore out of the question. As you can see above, our design is very thin; the base of the cabinet measures only 18″ in depth. Hopefully this won’t cause any stability issues; MDF is pretty heavy stuff, so we should be OK. When (if?) the project turns out successful, I’ll post the plans so that others may use it as well.

I remember the first time I played Street Fighter II. I was ten or eleven years old, and we lived in the Parisian suburbs. My mother and I were on our way to the store when we walked by an open bar that featured a single arcade cabinet. The colorful glow of the arcade monitor caught my eye, and I strode over to the machine. After some pleading on my part, mom gave me a 5 FR coin so I could play a single game. I can still recall the murky light in that room, the prickle in my nose from the cigarette smoke… once the game started though, everything else around me became a blur.

It was glorious. The lush parallax scrolling backgrounds, the huge sprites animated with superb fluidity, the unique characters with a seemingly endless variety of moves… none of this was possible on our family’s trusty NES.

I lost those two rounds fairly quickly. I really had no idea what I was doing and just mashed buttons left and right. But despite my crushing defeat, the game made an indelible impression on me. It blew me away… and ever since that day, I’ve yearned for my very own arcade cabinet.

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