Michael Bradley: Capstone - Arcade Cabnet

Design: The design of this project was inspired my numerous classic Arcade Cabinets.  The specific shape is mostly based on Centipede and Moon Patrol, taking small design elements from various other sources, however.  The dimensions of this project were almost entirely dictated by the lasercutting process using 2'x4' sheets of mdf, so the project stands about 6 feet tall, 2 feet wide, and 2 feet deep.  The artwork on the side is loosely inspired by the artwork found on the side of several UTD buses.  I also had the opportunity to help move several arcade cabinets several months ago, so many of my design choices were also based on my experiences physically handling these massive creations.

Reference 1 - Centipede

Reference 2 - Moon Patrol

Reference 3 - Concept Design

Reference 4 - UTD Bus

Techniques: For modeling this design, I pretty simply created the sides using curves, created square panel curves for each of the flat sections to connect the two sides, extruded all those curves to .22 inches, and then added tabs and subtracted tabs from each part, so that when they were cut out, everything would fit together perfectly.  To make the side art, I created it in Rhrino to the exact scale of the arcade, then converted those curves to Adobe Illustrator and colored them in preparation for printing.

Techniques 1 - Curves

Techniques 2 - Model Extrusion

Techniques 3 - Final Cutsheets

Techniques 4 - Side Art Curves

Techniques 5 - Side art color

Construction: To construct the Cabinet, I used wood glue and clamped the three layers together which made up the sides, and then all of the rest of the pieces fit in their designated slots.  These pieces were also glued, both before and after placement, to ensure rigidity.  To measure the hole for the tv, I traced it out on a large piece of paper, and then used some basic measurements to average the rough trace and find the approximate size of the hole.  This didn't help much, however.  I used cardboard to try out several test holes before cutting the final front bezel.

Construction 1 - Wiring

Construction 2 - Test Power

Construction 3 - Measuring the TV Bezel

Construction 4 - Printing Side Art

Construction 5 - Final Assembly

Materials: The materials used in this project are as follows.

Lots of .25 x 24 x 48 in MDF
Lots of paint
Lots of glue
Lots of tools
Peel and stick side art printed in the 3D studio
1 ~19inch CRT tv.
1 PC arcade usb kit
1 Steam controller
1 Gigabyte Brix PC running Windows 10
1 2 channel Amplifier
2 2 way Samsung speakers
1 Power Strip
2 Hinges
20 feet of orange t-molding
2 strong magnets (degaussing the tv is fun!)
2 sets of caster wheels
and a whole lotta' patience.

The only screws used in this project are to hold the tv and wheels in place.  Everything else is glued together in their predesigned slots.  This was to emphasize the precision of the digital fabrication process.

Final pictures coming soon.