Since the cabinet turned out to be slightly narrower than I had planned, I trimmed out the left profile so the control panel would fit. I also carved some notches in the front MDF piece to accommodate the GPIO connections.
The angle aluminum I bought to support the bottom of the ci trol panel was 36” long. I bought that size because it cost less than having them cut it to a 30” piece. And now that the cabinet is slightly narrower than I had planned, I would have had to trim it anyway.
I put the piece of angle aluminum on the cabinet and marked where I wanted screw holes. I drilled small pilot holes and used those as guides to make pilot holes in the MDF. Then I drilled out the holes to the proper size and used a countersink bit on the aluminum. Then I screwed the aluminum in place.
The bottom and both sides of the control panel are now really well-supported. I decided to use the piece of aluminum that I had cut off of the long piece to add some support to the top. Since the circuit board goes all the way to the top of the control panel, I positioned the aluminum between two mounting screws so it could fit between the circuit board and the control panel base. Since the narrow piece of MDF behind the control panel was now being used for support, I reinforced it with some shelf brackets.
My Arcade Machine Build 