I mentioned before that I bought a barrel lock for the top of the door. That means, of course, that I need to drill a hole for it. The only bit that I have that is the correct size is an auger bit, so I got to do it the old-fashioned way.
I had a piece of scrap wood under the door to ensure a clean cut as the bit broke through, but I guess I should have clamped it. The back busted out a little. I added some glue and clamped it so the little pieces wouldn’t break off.
The outside of the door looks great!
I had to get a barrel that was a little thicker than the MDF, so I will need to add a piece of wood on the inside of the cabinet so that the lock holds the door completely closed.
I also wanted some handles/vent holes near the top of the door. For each of those, I drilled two holes and then connected the holes with a straight piece of wood and the template-following router blade.
The one on the left isn’t perfectly horizontal. Good thing this door is in the back!
The arcade cabinet is mostly open in the back, and that space will be covered by a removable door. This will simply be a rectangular piece of MDF with another piece attached to the bottom to act as a catch. The top will have a barrel lock to keep the whole thing in place. I will probably also cut a couple of holes near the top to act as handles and provide a little ventilation.
I used some nails to hold the catch in place while the glue dried.
Here is the view from the inside with the door installed. The shavings there are from carving a bit out of the board directly below the control panel to accommodate the wires connected to the GPIO.
The final home of the arcade machine will be my basement, so I decided to assemble it there instead of having to get the fully assembled cabinet down the stairs. I set one profile on its side and then started by connecting the floor to the back and the front pieces. I put glue in the dado cuts and also on some 1×1 boards along the seam, which I held in place with nails.
Then I put that assembly into the dado cuts in the profile (with some glue) and added the reinforcing 1x1s. I repeated the process for all the cross pieces, and then added the second profile.
I had forgotten that the 1x1s in the back should go top-to-bottom so that they would also create a ridge to support the door. So at the bottom I just did my best to line it up with the one I had cut.
Once I had both profiles on, I clamped it and left it to dry. I didn’t put any reinforcing 1x1s on the second profile because that’s much easier to do when you’re working with gravity instead of against it.
While I was waiting for the glue to dry, I added feet to the bottom, using furniture levelers attached to blocks of 2×4.
Once the glue had set, I flipped the cabinet to the other side and added the 1x1s. Once that glue had set, I stood the cabinet upright.
Because the dado cuts were such a tight fit and so close to the edge (I probably should have used at least a 13/16” bit instead of 3/4”), there was some cosmetic damage that occurred during assembly. I will need to repair these and also add filler to the seams on the front and top back before the cabinet can be painted.
Another issue is that when I measured and cut the cross pieces for the cabinet, I failed to account for the width of my saw blade. So now the control panel doesn’t quite fit.
To remedy this, I plan to cut away some of the wood under the cut for the angle aluminum that will hold down the panel.
I tried to see how well the marquee would fit, and that’s when I realized that I should have cut these slots all the way to the edge of the board.
Now that the cabinet is assembled, I don’t think the router will fit there, so I’ll likely extend those cuts with the reciprocating saw.
I had all of the pieces for the cabinet cut, but I needed to round off the top back corner of the roof piece, and the piece right above the front piece needed to be trimmed a bit.
I need the curve on the roof piece to be a 100-degree curve and not 90, so instead of using a router, I marked where I wanted the curve and used a file and sand paper.
I filed down the two ends first and made sure they fit.
Once I had the entire edge filed down, I went over it with some 120-grit sandpaper.
Once this was done, I trimmed up the piece above the front with my circular saw. Then I put all the pieces together to check the fit.
Some of the joints will need some filler, but it all fits pretty well. I added the control panel and TV just to see how it would look.
In the previous image, you can see that the wires connected to the GPIO on the Raspberry Pi are right up against the wood. I actually need the control panel to slide down a little further, so I will chisel out a notch for the GPIO connections after the cabinet is assembled.
The last step before beginning assembly is to cut a T-mold slot in the roof piece, as well as a slot for the top of the marquee. The marquee slot has to line up with the slots on the profiles, so I measured carefully and found that they were off from each other by 1/8”. No big deal; I just need to cut a slightly diagonal slot in the roof so it all lines up. Being off by 1/8” over 30” will not be noticeable.
The other issue with the slot in the roof is that it has to be 10 degrees off of perpendicular so that it will line up properly. To achieve this, I bought an adjustable angle base for my router. It has angle marks every 7.5 degrees, so it set it to about 1/3 of the way between 7.5 and 15, and did a test cut.
It was right on.
I also used this test cut to measure the fence distance I would need for the angle base. The notch lines up perfectly on one side, but is slightly off on the other.
I might just chisel a little out of the notch on the profile so that the marquee can easily slide into the roof notch.
The amplifier will be in the center of the front panel, a few inches below the control panel. I measured and marked the hole, and double-checked that the fit was good.
I used a drill and reciprocating saw to cut out the rectangle. I cut it a little small because the thin blade on the reciprocating saw doesn’t always cut straight, and I wanted room to clean it up. Once the main hole was cut, I slowly cut away bit by bit until the bracket fit.
Here it is with the amplifier in place
I will have to use some filler on the left side and maybe a little along the top, but once it’s all painted it should look pretty good.
While measuring the length for the MDF piece that goes under the control panel, I noticed that the two sides had not been chiseled to the same size
I chiseled more of the shorter side to make them even.
Here are the photos of the new piece fitting into place.
I noticed while testing out some of the fits that the from was longer on one side than the other. I marked the long edge, tacked down my fence, and used the template router bit to trim it up.
I cut a new piece for the floor, because I could never get the first one I cut to fit into the dado cuts. I also cut out both back pieces, made dado cuts in the front and lower back pieces, cut out the roof piece, and the two skinny pieces that go above and below the TV. The only piece left to cut before I can start assembling the cabinet is the one that goes behind the marquee which will have the LEDs on it. I will also cut out the hole for the amplifier before assembling it all. Here are some photos of the various pieces being fit together:
The back of the roof piece needs to be rounded off
And it looks like I did a little damage while fitting in the back piece.
As can be seen in the previous photos, I also added the supports for the control panel, TV, and speaker board to the profiles.
In the previous post, I said that the front piece was 2” too long, and it was because I forgot to subtract the 2” from the tape measure. But when I went to cut off the excess today, I saw that it was actually 1-3/8” too long. Weird. Anyway, I measured, tacked down the 1×2, and cut off the excess.
Next it was time for another miter cut. To match up to the front piece, I can use the same cut that I already made, and flip it around so it matches up. So I need the angle of the next corner.
This one turned out to be pretty much exactly 45 degrees.
The piece that the front was cut off of already has the angle I need to match up to the front, as I already mentioned, but the edge did get trimmed a little when I made the cut because I didn’t let the saw blade stop spinning before lifting it up after making the cut.
Luckily, most of that will be in the dado cut, and I can just fill in the rest. I set my saw up for a 22.5-degree angle, and measured the length I needed.
I calculated the distance I needed for the fence, and tacked it down. Since I was cutting a small section, I put the 1×2 on supports at the ends so the piece would not drop.
But the piece was too long by 1-3/8”! I was trying to figure out what had gone wrong (twice), and I realized that when I put the fence down, I measured to the first edge, but then used the other edge as the fence. The 1×2 is 1-1/2” wide, which mostly explains it, but I still haven’t figured out why the pieces were 1-3/8” too long instead of 1-1/2”. I’m sure it has something to do with the blade making a 1/8″-wide cut, but it doesn’t make sense to me.
I trimmed the newly cut piece. It was challenging to keep the saw level because of how little I was trimming off. I had to do a second pass for half of it, as you can see in the following photos. One end was fitting, but the other was still a bit too big.
With this piece finally fitting, I put the front in to see how well they match up. And they matched up to a much lesser degree than I had hoped. My best guess for why this is the case that maybe I’m not holding the circular saw as steady as I think I am, or there is some imperceptible blade wobble, or both. I will definitely need to fill this joint with something.
The squaring up of the dado cuts with a chisel is done.
The top, bottom, back and front pieces will be 30.5” wide, since the control panel is 30”, and the dado cuts are .25” on each side. I ripped a 30.5” wide piece of MDF from a 4’x8’ sheet. Since I don’t have a table saw, I used the same 1×2 that I have been using as a fence for the router, so that I could get a straight cut with a circular saw. First, I used my scrap piece to measure how far to put the fence from the desired cut.
I made sure to clamp down the MDF so it would be secure to cut and so that no pieces would put extra stress as the cut was made.
Once I had the 30.5” wide strip, I cut a piece for the bottom. I made it 1/2” longer front-to-back than the distance between the front and back pieces, because I plan to also make dado cuts in the front and back to really secure the bottom piece. This is important because the feet will be attached to the bottom piece, so it will bear the weight of the entire cabinet.
I tested to see it the bottom piece fit into the dado cut, and it looks like the MDF that I cut the bottom piece from is slightly bowed. You can see that when it’s lined up on one side, it is off by a bit on the other side. I’m not sure if I’ll try to figure out how to make that fit or just cut a new piece.
Next, I cut the front piece. The top end of the front piece needed a miter cut, since the angle of the next piece is not 90. First, I measured the angle.
Since the angle is 47.5, the angle of the miter cut needs to be half that, or 23.75. Although I probably don’t need precision down to a quarter of a degree.
My circular saw has angle markers for miter cuts every five degrees. So I set it for what looked close to the correct angle and then did a test cut on my scrap piece.
When I measured the actual angle of the cut, it wasn’t even close to correct.
So I set the protractor to the correct angle and used it to eyeball the angle of the saw as I readjusted it. When I measured the resulting cut, it was much better.
Interstingly, although the cut is almost exactly 23.75, the marker on the saw seems to indicate that it’s more like 28.
I cut the front piece, and was very pleased with how well the miter cut fit.
The only issue with the front piece is that when I was measuring its height on the profile, I used a tape measure. Since it’s hard to be sure exaclty where zero is on a tape measure, I used the two-inch mark as the start of my measurement. Then I forgot to subtract the 2” from my measurement. So now I need to cut 2” off of the bottom of the front piece.
I bought a small amplifier for the video game audio. I want the controls of the amplifier to be accessible from the outside of the arcade machine so that the volume can be adjusted, and so that you can plug in headphones. I decided to locate it in the panel below the control panel, roughly where the coin slot was in vintage games.
I needed a way to way to mount it, and I came up with a design in Open SCAD.
This design allows me to cut a hole in the panel that is only slightly larger than the amplifier, and screw the bracket in from the inside of the cabinet. In order for this design to work, I needed to remove the rubber feet on the amplifier.
Luckily, those were just stuck on with some adhesive. Here are some photos of the printed bracket and amplifier.
The bracket covers the “line out” connection on the back of the amplifier, but I won’t be using that, so it’s not an issue.
This is just a small update to say that I have done all the router/dado cuts on the two profile pieces.
I decided to go with 1/8” polycarbonate for the shield in front of the TV. I may have to add something to the thin MDF piece that will go across the top of the TV so that the polycarbonate has more support.
The cuts are still rounded on the ends, so I still have to chisel out the corners.
My Arcade Machine Build 