Progress on my DIY Full Sized Arcade Cabinet

Although a lot of family stuff used up most of my spare time today, there is a little progress on my Arcade Cabinet project.

You see, I read a lot about working with MDF boards and there's a lot of tutorials out there. The thing that actually convinced me to invest (a lot of) time into "doing it right", was the fact that this stuff indeed consists of fibers... that actually soak in paint if you let it. And since I plan to coat everything with paint, I didn't want the boards to soak it through and through.

This is why I started with the controller board today I used a primer sealer on it... top side and all four corners. Before, I sanded the surface, then primed it, let it dry, sand it again, primed it again... now it dries and after another sanding tomorrow... I can work on the bottom part, lol.

Of course I could also skip painting the bottom part, because it is rarely seen by anyone... but in this context, I do actualy think the same way, Steve Jobs used to think about the design of mainboards and the hardware placement within the Mac... First, I know what it looks like inside. Seconds, I get reminded everytime, I take something apart, open the door or whatever. So I will have to invest A LOT of time for all 14 MDF boards...

Because I will have to coat it multiple times as well and then even add a layer of clearcoard as a finish.

Also, I was finally able to cut out the side panels. I actually had a template for this... but instead of glueing it to one board and then sandwich both boards together and use a jigsaw on it, I actually cut out the template, put it on one of the boards and traced the lines with a long ruler and a marker directly on the board.. AND THEN sandwiched both boards with clamps before using my jigsaw.

The result is okay... I just need to sand the fronts a little though to smoothen them a bit.

Next thing is about the Zero Delay ARC Controllers.

You know... it's just two small PCBs with a lot of connectors on one side and four little screwholes in the corners. I had it screwed on the back of the control panel tightly... however, theres a small IC on the backside secured by a blob. But I don't think that it is a good idea to directly fasten that thing onto the panel.

Which is why I am about to design a PCB mount specifically for these ARC Controllers so that I have a reasonable possibility of mounting them onto the backside of the control panel.