Island-Cocktail Build

[gryhnd]

Sorry, this thread isn't about pina coladas or daiquiris!

I thought I'd throw out some of my progress on my Gameex cocktail cab build.

It's not going to be in the traditional style.

Recent parties in our new media room (80% complete) made us realize we needed more surfaces for placing drinks, snacks, etc. when we have a large crowd. We decided a small island would be the best option. *I* decided building in the cocktail arcade would be the b@lls, and that it would be set up for vertical games (already having two upright horizontals).

Thank goodness I have an understanding wife.

Since we wanted this to look as much like a proper kitchen island as possible, and not your classic vinyl-wood and be-stickered cocktail cab, I decided to use a few left overs from the cherry kitchen cabinets I installed in the media room earlier: an over-the-fridge cabinet, two tall fridge side panels, and an upper and lower Z-shaped cabinet. The side panels were cut down and used to build up the sides of the fridge cabinet. The upper z-cab sacrificed its door to to be redesigned into a flat panel. All the cabinetry came from a kitchen design showroom when they sold off a discontinued line's floor models for next to nothing. I found a butcher block style table top on Craigslist for the island surface.

Arcade parts came far and wide: Craigslist for a beauty of a 22" CRT, Groovy Game Gear for buttons, encoder, joys and spinner, eBay for other goodies. Xgaming for the trackball.

Build pics to follow...

[gryhnd]

Step 1 was to build up the carcass of the over-fridge cabinet vertically using the fridge side panels:

(oops...doors on upside down here!)

[gryhnd]

Step 2 was to construct a door-like panel to fill in the space above the existing doors. The extra Z-cabinets were sacrificed. I ripped down their doors, resized and reassembled them:

The doors on these z-cabinets to the right of the old store-bought arcade:

were transformed into:

The panel will be held on using super strong magnets so it can be removed completely for free access to the space where the monitor, CP wiring and encoder, etc will be.

The two holes upper left are from the original door hardware. They'll be mostly hidden by the top overhang, and I'll fill them in at some point anyway.

[gryhnd]

Step 3 was to build a dolly and attach the island to it. We want the island to be mobile for various reasons. Two lockable swivel casters and two fixed casters.

and now with the butcher block top sitting on top for a quick check.

The top will be cut down soon to be rectangular.

[gryhnd]

Step 4: strip the monitor of its cover and bezel. Was a bit more complicated that originally planned thanks to hidden screws that necessitated removing some of the shielding in order to locate.

And a quick power-check to be sure I didn't mess anything up during disassembly:

[gryhnd]

Step 5: cut the top of the original cabinet to allow the monitor electron gun to pass through. Eventually the monitor will be supported and height adjusted by either-or-both attaching to the butcher block, or building a support structure underneath.

Template for the cutout:

And the dry fit (doors on right-side up now!):

Because the monitor protrudes into this easily accessible space, I opted to leave all the shielding on.

[gryhnd]

Next up will be cutting and routing the table top for the monitor. Hopefully sometime this week.

[emphatic]

Nice "compromise" with the wife there. You've got skills.

Emph

[Endaar]

Beautiful work. Looking forward to seeing more progress.

[chriss]

nice project, man! can't wait to see more pics

[gryhnd]

Thanks for the kudos guys.

Last night I managed to cut out the display zone, and route out a recessed area for the non-display part of the monitor to nestle in to. This means these pics are of the underneath of the butcher block surface. Later I'll route out another smaller recess 1/4" deep on the top side for the glass to set flush in (I'm not covering the whole surface in glass).

These are rough cuts...no sanding, filing or other work done yet.

[gryhnd]

Picked away at a few things this morning before the family arose.

Started with trimming off the excess table surface to make it rectangular, and used the trimmed portion as a template to round the corners:

A test fit of the monitor showed I was a little tight on the tolerances for the recessed area, so I had to reroute it a bit bigger. Easier to take material off than have it be too big!

And now she fits nicely:

I did discover yesterday that the table top was starting to cup a little bit due to removing the material for the monitor. I'll be stabilizing that with some strips of T3 plywood which will also help with the weight the hanging monitor will add.

Last thing I did for the morning was to rip 4 corner blocks for the monitor mounts, recess their bolt heads, and epoxy those bolts. Once they dry the block+bolt assemblies will be glued and screwed into position.

[gryhnd]

I'm having second thoughts about gluing T3 strips to the B.B. top. I'm concerned that the strips will lock down the top from normal expansion and contraction due to humidity changes, causing more problems. Now I'm pondering the idea of just taming any potential cupping by building a supporting frame around the monitor which is screwed into the top, and then the cabinet surface underneath. That should keep any vertical movement to a minimum, and allow horizontal movement by slotting for the screws.

Sorry...thinking out loud.

So I've now attached the monitor mounts, and I'll let them glue up overnight at least before I get to anything else.

[gryhnd]

The bolts glued up overnight, and I decided a few minutes ago it was time for the acid test.

I bolted the monitor down:

Prayed, and with the help of my 9 year old to shout directions to guide the monitor into the cutout, I flipped her over. At which point the shielding, which I couldn't budge when I wanted it to, began slipping right off the whole damn thing. Flipped it back over, two carefully applied screws, another prayer and....

Voila! Nothing other than the 4 corner tabs on the monitor are holding it in place. They are much stronger than I anticipated. Never having done this with a monitor before, are they designed to be able to hold the entire weight? Anyone? Bueller?

And finally a shot of it from inside. I intend to leave it like this most likely for the next 24-48 hours and just see what happens to the butcher block top (warp?), the bolt-blocks, and the monitor tabs.

PS - If my updates are too numerous, I'll cut back for a while.

[emphatic]

PS - If my updates are too numerous, I'll cut back for a while.

Au contraire, keep those sweet pictures comin'. Looking very nice, but why is the monitor not centered? Do you plan to implement controls directly into the table itself?

Emph

[gryhnd]

Thanks.

The surface is offset with an extra 10" overhang extending over the doors of the cabinet (what I call the front). This is so there's enough room to "belly up" with bar stools, watch the games, eat, use as a desk of sorts when needed, hold food during parties, etc. This set up will be for vertical games, so each gamer will be sitting on the L/R of the cabinet where the control panels will be installed.

Clear as mud?

edit: controls not installed into the surface, they'll be traditional style coming out the sides.

[gryhnd]

Haven't accomplished much this weekend. The weather has been nice and we had a BBQ at our friends house last night. Woke up a shade too hungover this morning to feel useful. But, while the kid was away at a birthday party, I started thinking about the control panels some more.

Here's the goods I'll be using:

Two Happ joys, Turbo Twist 2, and an X-Arcade track ball.

So here's my plan:

Each player will have a smaller panel above and at an angel to the main CP. In this panel will be (P1) (P2) (credit) ( P ) ( Q )

The blue and red buttons are for MAME Pause and Quit (following the color scheme of my upright cabinet).

The two control panels will each have a joystick and 3 buttons. One CP will have the trackball, and the other the spinner. One of the two will have buttons on the side for pinball games.

The X-Arcade will supply the rest of my button needs. It has 9 of them and I need 8.

So the next order of business was to take it apart. First, pop the back off:

Easy enough to disassemble, but the USB plug is too big to pass through the hole for the cord. X-Arcade, meet miter saw:

And now everything is out:

And that's where I'm at for now.

[gryhnd]

Looks like I won't be able to get back to this for a while. At the earliest next week, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope. Life just got too busy all of a sudden :-D

Dammit

On the plus side, the monitor still appears to be firmly attached. Although I am still interested in comments WRT:

Never having done this with a monitor before, are they designed to be able to hold the entire weight? Anyone? Bueller?

They being the four corner brackets.

[kezza]

looking good man, love it!!!!

[gryhnd]

I've been away from this project for a while, but am slowly circling my way back towards the shop.

Good news: the monitor is still firmly attached to the underside of the table surface, and there's been no warping of the butcher block either.

I spent some time Sunday creating a mock up of a control panel out of Styrofoam sheets. I'm glad I did...it revealed some problems.

My original intent was to have the CPs "traditional" cocktail style. IOW, protruding from the ends of the cabinet. However this posed two issues:

1. Size: the two CPs were going to add a total of two feet to the width of the cab. This was way too much for the space where it will live.
   
2. Viewing: the CPs pushed the user seating out too far from the screen for anyone shorter than me (6'5") to have a comfortable view of the action. Throw in the space issue above and I've got no where to put the seats either!
   

What I decided on (and it passed the "Boss's" approval), is to embed the controls into the butcher block surface. When seated on the stools already at the other game machines the height seems comfortable, and because the cab is taller than usual (remember, it's also doubling as an island), you can stand and play quite comfortably too.

One downside is I'm losing the ideal placement for my Future Pinball flipper buttons (on the sides). They too will have to be on the surface. Oh well, if you try to be everything, you usually end up not doing anything right.

[Paul O'Nolan]

Wow. It's amazing what you can do with enough money, hard work, knowledge, and some good frontend software.

[gryhnd]

I've been hunting high and low locally trying to find a 2 7/8" hole saw to cut the opening for my X-Arcade trackball. It seems to not be a stockable size at the big box stores: 2 3/4" and 3", however, are common. My local woodworker shop isn't quite so local, but I've located one via Amazon. It looks like it will fit the arbor I have now.

I thought of rigging up a jig to use with my Roto Zip, but that's a heck of a lot more work (and room for error) vs just ordering a $10 bit :-)

I'm hoping to get back to this the latter half of next week when I have some vacation time.

[gryhnd]

Here's my planned layout for the P1 end of things. P2 will have just a joy and buttons for now. When finances are better in the future, I'll still have room for another spinner and trackball.

I might change the 4 button layout to be in a Vanguard diamond pattern, however.

The top-most L/R buttons are for pinball. The center button is for credits, and the white ones obviously are the PI/PII selectors.

[gryhnd]

Sent the kid off to a 3 day camp today, and used the afternoon to pick up again on the build. Unfortunately my inlaws gave me a wonderful gift this week: a nasty head cold, so my energy wore out a short time ago (the same time I ran out of Comtrex).

Today I took the plunge and cut everything out in the CP ends. My 2 7/8" dewalt hole saw (for the trackball) arrived from Amazon yesterday just in time.

Started by laying everything out and marking it up, then cutting the hole for the trackball.

Countersunk all the buttons on the backside with a forstner bit so the button nuts could thread on.

Speedbore took care of the topside button holes.

Quick test fit of a few buttons.

Sketch the outline of the trackball assembly on the backside.

And finally did a freehand routing to recess the trackball to the proper depth. The lines are wobbly (couldn't see a darn thing with the chips flying), but it doesn't matter as it won't be visible. The important part was the depth.

[gryhnd]

I realized this morning I forgot to cut out the pause and quit button holes. Fixed that, routed out the monitor area to recess the top glass, sanded the table top, and then did a dry fit with everything.

The joys are sitting low because their boxes aren't installed, however they won't be too much higher as I am keeping this as low profile as possible. The joys and the main fire button are color coordinated to their respective player ends. I might swap it around so it's all blue at the P1 position (to match the spinner knob), not sure yet though.