Sanded down the plastic wood and mounted the two MDF layers with countersunk screws (I’m hoping the perspex will be held in place by the tight fit and the screw in buttons). I couldn’t resist putting the parts in place…
2 days off work has given me 2 days of Final Fantasy 12 (I’ll finish it one day, it’s only been 18 months and 70 hours so far!) and building the arcade stick.
An incident involving my jigsaw flying to pieces has ended up with me cutting the front and back pieces (again) by hand and sanding to fit! It didn’t take nearly as much extra time as I thought it would to be fair.
Having now got all of the main parts cut it seemed like the perfect time to order the arcade parts, a few days and a phone call chasing the order up and all the bits arrived along with some freebies 
(what i’m going to do with 4 extra buttons is yet to be decided but the bubble top is pretty cool)
After scouring all the tool shops in Malvern for a 30mm hole saw to cut the button holes i finally found one on ebay. I also picked up a few other bits like a plastic wood and a coping saw so that I can cut sections out of the middle now the panels now the jigsaw has been annihilated.
Some gluing and filling in with plastic wood later and the base was coming along nicely.
While that was all setting I drilled the holes for the buttons in the top 3 layers, unfortunately being an arcade stick some of the buttons are very close together and perspex being perspex it decided to crack in a couple of places… Remember I said cutting perspex was a pain in the backside? Guess what. It still is. But this time I did manage it better and ended up with a top layer which fits much more snugly than the previous one. Having learnt from the previous drilling experience I clamped the perspex between the two other (wood/MDF) layers and drilled it again this time ending up with a pristine set of button holes.
Then finished cutting out all the sections with the coping saw…
And put it all (loosely) together (in one blurry photo - a much better one is coming soon).
Following on from the previous post (only a couple of hours ago i know but i meant to write it days ago) I’ve actually started the build (on Sunday!). I bought a couple of different thicknesses of MDF and some perspex and after several issues with initally poor jigsawing (i don’t think i’d used a jigsaw before and i assumed it would be easier than it was!) I’ve cut our the two top sections and the left and right side. Though I still have the front and back to cut out. I’ve also managed to cut out the perspex which was a huge PITA! If anyone has a better method for getting a clean cut on perspex than scoring repeatedly with a stanley knife and then hitting it please let me know
Here’s some pictures:
Here’s the button layout I’ve chosen:
The reason for having two layers of MDF at the top of the stick (of different thicknesses) is that the arcade buttons have a screw thread which will only accept a thickness of around a centimetre (possibly one and a half at a push) and the joystick has a metal plate, the top of which needs to be as close to the top perspex layer as possible. The idea is that the buttons will screw into the top layer and the joystick will screw into the bottom layer. Here’s a sizing of the top plate of one of the possible choices of joystick so you can kind of make out what i mean:
While scouring the net I found an utterly fantastic resource for all this stuff, pretty much answers every question about it all.
I’ve been on the lookout for a server case for the MiniITX motherboard a few months but nothing of a suitable size came up, we happened to visit Ikea to pick up some stuff for the living room and I found a box that would do as a case!
I’ve not taken any pictures of the build as it’s just me drilling and sawing but it’s all finished and so here are the pics of the finished item…
Ok so i had this crazy idea to make a MAME based arcade machine years ago and as it turned out a million other people had the same thought. Unfortunately I just don’t have the space in our current home but the next house will have such a machine built for it!
The recent release of Soul Calibur 4 (and the ever nearing release of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo High Definition Remix - to use it’s full title) reminded me of this desire to build my own arcade machine. So as I can’t make a full size unit i decided the next best thing would be to be able to play these games on the PS3 with proper arcade controls, the way they were meant to be played!
As before it turns out a zillion other people have had the same idea, which is handy really as it means someone else has already solved a few major problems for me - such as how to wire a Playstation 3 controller to use other buttons. I intend to update the blog as the build progresses so that I can keep a record of what not to do when I build the full arcade machine 
With Soul Calibur 4, Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD on their way I intend to build an arcade style joystick for my PS3 using real Japanese arcade parts.
There’s some great web pages describing pretty much everything you could want to know and more! I’ve also found a couple of shops to buy the parts from (here and here).
I’ve picked up some MDF and perspex today, more coming as it happens…
P.S. If anyone spots any funky arcade/anime graphics i could put as a backing on the controller link me up!