Day #3:Casebuilding

Sigh, better part of a month before I got a chance to work more on the box. I guess that's what happens when you have friends fly over here to Tasmania for a holiday, and find out you have to have butt surgery.


Hinge done and parts ready to screw

After putting some of the components in to ensure it would fit, we got into making some more pine structure reinforcement.


Extra pine reinforcement to ensure good structure

The pine skirting was added for something to screw then MDF to and to hold it all together rigidly. Thankfully, I had allowed enough for this in the plan to fit everything into it.


Assembled base component. Note metal to the left of the box for control panel.

After assembly, we added in the cam-action lock I had bought from http://www.jacksonssecurity.com.au/. Unfortunately this isn't keyed like a arcade circular security lock, I had to order one of those in. The camlock you see in the picture is the closest lock in a 'normal' key, which I will swap around when i get the proper lock.

We drilled a appropriate hole for this lock by drilling two 16mm holes slightly adjacent to each other to give it the elongated circular with flat sides shape [What a lousy description]. This ensures that it will not twist at all, even under force, whereas just drilling a circular hole would allow motion if twisted hard enough.

We also added a second layer to the joystick area, and then screwed the joystick in from the bottom. This avoids using ugly bolts at the top (we could countersink them, but screws are even neater) I'm not 100% sold on the MDF holding the joystick in place, however I figure if it fails we can then go with the bolt option.

Which leaves us with:


1 base box with a bad case of Acne. A pack of 100 wood screws disappeared into this.


Side view of box. Obvious sandmarks here where I've been getting the edges lined up.


Inside view of box. Here weve added the lock, two fans (with part of the grill on the other side of the box) and the joystick.


Base view of box (part that sits on the table). Ventilation port here (minus the top part of the grille) and 4 foam feet to protect whatever surface its on from all that awesome.


Back view (tilted sideways). One half a grill added here, didnt add the second grill due to lack of bolts.

Day #2:Casebuilding

Since all the parts were cut out last time, surely a finished base case and the top part cut out and sitting ready to assemble follows in this post right?

No. Stop asking. Im looking at you Jeremy.

I started the day by turning up over a hour late as I got half a hour out of Hobart before realising I had forgotten the continuous hinge. Turned around to go get it, and back again.

When I got there I immediately went to start on the angled upper control panel. Figured I could drill the holes out on it while Rod got working with the jigsaw on the cutout panel parts.

Unfortunately I Epic Failed with my measurements (Read 2mm back from 35mm instead of 2mm back from 40mm) so my control panel arcade buttons turned out a bit tighter than I wanted. Fortunately, I noticed immediately after I drilled so I was able to do the same on the other side to make the mistake symmetrical and therefore look planned.


Ready to assemble control panel. Notice the very tight grouping of the two sets of arcade buttons due to my eyesight. Spare hole is for volume control.

After drilling a 12mm hole for the barrel switch and Rod jigsawed out the holes for the push buttons, all was good after a little sanding. I ended up sanding out the second set of pushbuttons to match up with the mistake. The hole to the left is empty as it is where the potentiometer will go when I unsolder that from its motherboard (for volume control).

After a 'unacceptably' long lunch break which consisted of some awesome muffins, Coffee and toasted sandwiches, we resumed work.

Next up was the pinball button holes, which were also not centered correctly. Some more sanding fixed this up. We drilled a larger hole on the exterior of the case, and drilled the correct size hole on a piece of mdf on the inside. Apparently this is called doubleskinning.



1x Countersunk pushbutton for pinball games.

After that, there was a lot of jigsawing out and brainstorming how the heck were going to do xxx (mainly about the continuous hinge) We think we have a solution to the hinge problem, it will just have to show on the bottom of the box. And be bolted as nobody trusts screwing into 9mm MDF.


Yeah, lots of fiddly jigsawing/sanding. Rod insisted on following the curvature of the ventilation ports so they were completely flush, which looks awesome (see last pic) however fiddly with the sanding.



Yep, base part just sitting together again, however all drilled and ready to go. Put in all the buttons and crap for a good photo. Its looking incrediawesome. Here you can see the pinball pushbutton well.


Back view. Note how good the ventilation ports look as they fit well in to the mdf. You can can also see the motherboard I just stuck inside to ensure it all fits.