To start the day, I decided it was time to get a bracket to hold the bottom of the glass in place should the arcade be tipped; so off to Mitre 10 we went... A 600mm metal rule, metal saw, and a 20mm by 20mm by 1000mm L plate later and we're headed home again! I still have enough vinyl to cover brackets and the like, so I made the 600mm bracket from the 1000mm sheet, having 400mm left over to do whatever with. Test fit is good, covered in vinyl, as are other detail parts now.
The big part of today's project was removing that front plate from the old control panel, this proved to be much more difficult than I had envisioned, as I could only see two screws that had been filled over, and I had assumed (given the overall construction) that this would be all there was and maybe some glue along the bottom; oh how wrong I was! I don't think I have ever been so wrong before!!
For starters the filler may as well have been cement, and in the first side, when I managed to cut away enough to see if I could unscrew it; nope, not a chance! Screw was cemented in there good. Next effort = let's just drill the screws out, so away we go in true gung ho style, one broken drill bit later; I learned a valuable lesson not to try and go to hard straight away! Eventually, I managed to drill out the old broken useless screws, but still no movement. Frustration sets in, as there are no other visible attachments, so I broke out the chisel to see if I could just knock out the piece of wood; about 10 minutes later, and surpringly little damage, I had the right hand side free, and found to my disgust 4 u nails were holding it down, and the same had been used all along the bottom to hold it in place! So a lot of levering later; it was now free. Unfortunately the left side didn't fair as well, and that will require some filler to fix, the rest just needs a sand down and is ready to take the controller.
So a quick recap on today: Fitted the outer bezel, created a new L bracket to make sure glass doesn't fall out if machine is tipped, removed front panel from old controller (at least now I know why arcade selling guy didn't take that with him... I think it needs to be burnt in some kind of ritual to cleanse the arcade of filth as that was the last remaining remnant of the "old" before starting fully on making over the graphics.
That meant we got to quickly test fit the control panel; somewhere along the lines, I measured an extra inch, even with all my careful maths, but that's okay, because it actually looked really good when it was all in, and it holds the L bracket perfectly like this, so the perfect mistake! It's a little over sized, but I like it so it stays! Glad I over engineered it now, and only a couple of modifications left until the control panel finds a permanent home... So, the real reason why you're here... Pictures of the day:
Looks really good, but spot the mistake, hopefully should get a reprint shortly:
It's a bit of a shame, as we could have had complete bezel / marquee installation today, but not to worry, Scott from GameonGraphix is on the job hopefully.
Bezel looks spectactular though, as did the test fit...
As you can see, slight modification needed in that I wasn't expecting the CP to be visible at all, so hadn't done complete side coverage (just that 10mm or so, shocking, should have just covered it!) so now I have to recover the whole thing. Might take the opportunity to get a heavier grade vinyl to be honest, but you can see in the photo how well it holds the glass in place, and the outer Bezel just looks so good, with the grid just focusing the attention into the monitor from the control panel! Just need to do some minor repairs to make it ready to take the CP permanetly, and prep the sides for art now, then once I have a computer in there; it's all systems go!
That is all.
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