The Monitor Section

This morning, the case and the monitor section.

Just to finish off the case section, drilled some "intake" holes for the ventilation near the bottom of the front panel of the case, then a quick coat of MDF primer (I know it's chipboard, but it does a great job of lifting the loose fibres, so a quick sand, then paint, and you do get a really good finish on a really rough piece of wood) and 2 coats of black spray paint, and thus:

On to the monitor.

Another trip to the B&Q and another effort to find a "saw-dodger" (see previous post for the definition of a saw-dodger) and a 6'x2' sheet is cut into 2 x 30"x2' and a 12"x2' off-cut, thus:



Found the centre of one of the big panels by marking corner-to-corner, then accurately measured the visible area on the front of the monitor (the screen of the monitor if you will) and carefully measured and marked it onto the panel, thus:



WARNING - DON'T COPY THE NEXT PART - you'll see why in a bit.

Drilled the four corners to get the jigsaw in, thus:



Turned the jigsaw blade to 45 degrees, to give a better viewing angle on the screen, and a better finish on the panel, and tested with a small cut, thus:



Spot the problem? I want to bevel the sides, but I've drilled straight down.  Bugger.  The four edges will look good, but the corners are just wrong - no other word for it.  If I was dedicated and doing this for someone else, I'd start this panel again, but as I've said earlier, some sacrifices are being made, and I want this finished.  I want to say that this gives the thing character, these little problems, but I'm just in a bit more of a relaxed mood about these things nowadays.  So it looks like this:



I've trimmed the bottom edge at around 15 degrees so that the monitor panel "leans back" into the machine, so that taller users should get a better viewing experience.

TIP FOR THE FUTURE: I haven't leaned it back enough, that, or I haven't built it tall enough because I am having minor viewing issues with the finished box.

2 coats of MDF primer and 2 coats of black spray paint.

Propped the monitor panel on the top of the case and control panel and this is what I've got:



Is it just me, or is this starting to look like an arcade machine??? :-)

Sides for the monitor panel next.  Using one of the off-cuts, offered up the piece to the side of the monitor and marked out the size and shape of the sides for the monitor.  Cut them, and offered them up to check the fit:



Lay the monitor panel on the floor and glued and screwed to put it together:



That'll do for today - pick it up again in the morning when it's time to get the screen in, I reckon.

Building the case

On the 3rd August, I popped over to the B&Q, fetched a big sheet (8'x4') of 18mm Chipboard off the shelf, and set about finding someone to run the big saw to chop it into manageable pieces for me.  This proved harder than I expected, as it seems running the saw is a job to be dodged at my local B&Q.

Finally found someone, and got them to turn one sheet into this:



The idea is to make a 30" high by 30" wide case, so I got the man to cut it 3x30" parts, then cut the 30" by 4' down to 30" by 30".

So I ended up with 3 x 30" x 30" panels, 3 x 30" x 18" panels, and a 6" by 4' panel.

I want the finished case to have a single panel on the front, so when it's put together, I see only one panel from the front, without side or top "bits" so I split one of the 30's into 2 x 15"x30" for my sides, thus:



I did draw for some cut-outs on the side panels to give a more "arcade machine feel" to the design, but quickly realised that not only would it be harder to construct a front to fit the cut-outs, but the PC would have very little room inside the case.

DESIGN NOTES: It's worth pointing out at this point that I've decided to sacrifice a few aspects of the design.  It's important to me to get this finished now, so I will be cutting the odd corner here and there, but I still want something relatively authentic (nice?) to look at, so will try not to sacrifice too much.  I'm not going to have an access panel in the case section as per earlier designs - I'm going to screw the panel to the case unit, and unscrew when I need to fix/upgrade something.  Hopefully this will be rare.  Anything to do with software/files on the machine I can do remotely over the network.  Ubuntu/Linux gives me enormous flexibility and control that Windows simply doesn't provide

Trim 2 of the 18"x30" off-cuts down to 15" (minus the thickness of 2 sides = 36mm) and I now have two sides, a top, a bottom, a back and a front.

Put all but the back together and we get this:



And with the front:



Under the control panel - open and closed:



You might see a little ledge at the back? I could claim it's deliberate but it's not.  I'd not taken into account how much room the control panel needed when opened, so it doesn't meet the back - that's not as important as you might think as I'll be fixing sides onto this beast that will hide these "redesign factors" but also, it gives me the opportunity to drill some holes in that little ledge for ventilation of the case compartment - more on this next

I've gone and done it!

I can't believe it's been March 23rd since I last posted.

I was in serious danger of letting this project lapse, again, possibly for the 3rd or 4th time, but a little prompting from my 5 yr old son, and I got up off my backside and started the project again.  I'm spending the next few days going at it like the clappers and hopefully it'll be pretty much done.

A custom PC case

The next stage is to build some kind of custom PC case to sit below the control panel section.

Considerations:

1. Size - at 30" width and anything up to about 3' height (although I'd rather build it shorter, and use some kind of final, dummy bottom section to get the overall cabinet height right), and I'm trying to keep the depth around the 8" mark so all these dimensions shouldn't be too much of a problem.

2. Access - I need to be able to access the PC fairly easily so that I can do upgrades, maintenance etc without too much stress.

3. Safety - never made a PC case out of wood, so I need to make sure I have everything well grounded.

4. Network - I know I'm going to stick a keyboard and mouse in the control panel section, but I'd rather solve as many issues, upgrade roms, ensure the OS is patched and updated over the network, so I'm thinking of dropping in an Ethernet port on the outside of the case section.

5. Power control - somehow need to turn this thing on by a switch of some sort, so unless the BIOS supports some kind of "power on keyboard press" through USB, I'm gonna need to put an external switch somewhere - probably best to do this regardless.

6. Wiring - need to get wires in and out of the case section, to and from the other sections (control panel yes, but I'm thinking of speakers, monitor, marquee, and all things above the control panel) so we'll we'd some big holes aligned between the panels.

Overall, I think I need some kind of fairly simple box with a "door" on another piano hinge, and have the computer mounted on the "back" of the door, so when the door opens the whole PC is presented - something like this maybe :

[caption id="attachment_226" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="PC: Sketch 1"][/caption]

A lot of time and patience

I was watching the footy (the Wolves winning for once) on the telly with Dad, so decided to be productive as well. I know you can buy some wire for pennies, but I have a load of cat5 cable lying around from a previous job, and I thought, "I'm sure that stripped out cat5 would be perfect as the cabling for the control panel" - so I spent the next 90 minutes shouting at the telly, and stripping/cutting a bunch of cat5.

An hour's soldering later (to solder on the female crimp connectors to slot onto the micro-switches) and I end up with this:

[caption id="attachment_210" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="wiring 1"][/caption]

I've daisy-chained all the ground wire together as there is only 1 ground screw connector on the IPAC to screw it into.

I know it's messy, and I'll tidy it up at some point, but this was the inside - just player 1 wired up for testing/debugging (i.e. finding that I'd wired the wrong wire into the connector block) :

[caption id="attachment_213" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="wiring: inside - early"][/caption]

That night, while the kids were asleep, I wired up 2UP, screwed the IPAC down, and tested it out on the 5 year old in the morning:

[caption id="attachment_212" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="his first test"][/caption]

As you can see, all good.

I now have to resist the temptation to leave the project for a bit - as you can see, it works, so I need to push on and make the rest of the cabinet - work's looking busy though - no idea when I'll have some more time????

I love the smell of spray paint in the morning

So, another visit to my dentist, and my tooth is fixed.

I have some MDF sealer and primer that I've used in the past on Chipboard and it works quite well - I like that it goes on a bit of a purple colour, then dries clear:

[caption id="attachment_207" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="sealer and primer"][/caption]

Two coats of primer, with a quick sanding with 800 grit paper in between to get a very smooth finish, then one coat of black spray paint and you get this - looking tasty! :

[caption id="attachment_208" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="control: 1 coat"][/caption]

A second coat of black spray, and the buttons installed:

[caption id="attachment_209" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="control: all painted"][/caption]

That'll do for today! Tomorrow - the wiring!!!

Something did happen...

...I broke a tooth. Ah well. Back to the dentist.