Control Panel

For the control panel I've choosen to give it a wood structure look. It's build of 2 layers the first of normal 12mm thick wood, the same as used for the kickplate and top of the cabinet where the marquee is placed.

The first layer is for stability of the panel.

The next layer is some piece of floor laminate. Very strong material not sensitve for scratches.

Another idea next time would be using a plastic laminate on the first layer and finnish it off with some plexi glas. That would look very cool as well and you can place some sticker art underneath the plexi.

Bizon Polymax kit/glue is use to glue both layers to eachother. The clamps hold its together for a few hours.

Next step: drilling the holes in the panel.

For this usefull information can be found at the slagcoin website, check here. It makes you think how to position the buttons and why. I drawed a raster on the panel and placed both hand on it to imagine how the postion of the buttons and joystick would be.

This is very important because if you just take a wild guess it might turn out very uncomfortable playing on the cabinet.

Once painted on the panel drill the holes with a spade bit.  Start slow and more presure during the drilling.

Now I realised both layers are too thick if you place the joystick under the first layer. The stick would popout only 2 cm! To solve this I had to cut out a square in the first layer with a chisel.

     Since the panel has buttons on top and on the frontside space can become very tight. For instance originally I had the player 1 button on the left side next infront of the joystick. But this did not fit because of the lengt of the button. It hits the joystick. For that reason P1 and P2 are moved to the right and the drilled hole is used for a credit button!

A green illuminated button, think it looks very nice. See here the endresult. In a next blog update the electronics are shown in more detail.