For awhile now I have been working almost exclusively on this robot.  I was considering not posting anything about it here,  it has nothing to do with thirty-year-old video games.  Then I figured why not, this is really just a place for me to keep a journal of projects, and other silly things.  Besides, this is the "Spaceport Arcade" and what good is a spaceport without a robot or two.

I believe it was back in September or November that I really began.  The best reason I have for doing something like this was to force myself to learn a few new skills.  After a little research I learned that making a full size Astromech replica was a serious undertaking.   I could expect it to take a year or two, and be relatively expensive.   In the end however, I would have something totally unique, and a list of new skills as well.

This project started with a great deal of woodworking.  I'm no stranger to woodworking, but cutting circles and hoops to an exact size proved challenging.   Cutting out the pieces and assembling the frame that would eventually make the body of the droid forced me to use my router in ways that I never would've attempted, and I learned a great deal about what I was and wasn't capable of.

This is a frame designed by Mike Senna, one of the first people to ever build a working replica R2-D2.  Its a great design, very strong once assembled and surprisingly light weight.  I believe there are approximately 22 or 23 interlocking pieces.  

Then came the legs.  Cutting these from wood with a router would be enough of a challenge for most folks.  However that isn't good enough here, these have to be perfectly symmetrical and cut to exact dimensions.   Making a template from a paper pattern took me several tries and a few weekends.

The legs are made by cutting five layers of Baltic Birch of various shapes, then laminating those layers together to form the needed thickness.  Here are a few shots of the legs being assembled.

The piece you see above that has the channel down the middle is the inner most layer.  It will house the power cables that will eventually run down to the drive motors.

The barrel shaped Senna frame that I showed earlier gets wrapped in a styrene skin with a carefully cut pattern to match the design seen in the movies.  Cutting the skins out of plastic from the pattern was again, challenging, at least for me.  It was also very tedious and not something I want to do again in the near future.  There are four pieces that make up two layers for the front and back of the droid.  These are made by gluing a full sized pattern to a sheet of 0.04 inch thick styrene.  It took me several nights of careful work with a razor knife and ruler.

One last pic here of a test fit of the skins on the Senna frame.  This was done to hold the frame together for drying, and to be certain it was the correct size.

If you stumbled upon this blog and you're interested in building a replica R2-D2 or some other similar droid from the Star Wars Franchise, head on over to www.astromech.net.

For various reasons I've taken on the daunting task of building a full size astromech droid.  I haven't quite decided at this time if it's going to be a replica of the famous R2 or some other astromech from the Star Wars franchise.  Either way, it's going to force me to learn new things and work with various materials, many of which I have little to no previous experience.

Over the last few weeks I managed to bring together the parts necessary to build the dome logic displays. In the world of replica astromech droid builders, the Teeces are an array of boards and LED's controlled by an Arduino to reproduce the familiar logic displays mounted in the droid's dome.  The pcbs were from OSH Park, the leds from china, and the other components I ordered from Digikey. Here is a shot of the Teeces boards from OSH Park.

Last night I started adding the components to the rear logic display.  This required loading a bit of code up to an Arduino Pro Mini.  Then a few led driver chips were soldered to the main board and the Arduino was mounted on the back.  I started the process of adding the LED's to the board and testing each one. Everything was looking good, but I ran out of time.  It's a tedious task to add all these tiny LED's to the board and check each for polarity.  Hopefully tonight I can get them soldered in place.

More work on the multicades

I got bored with these jamma multicades.  It's been quite some time since I've done anything with them.  This weekend I picked up one of the control boards and tossed it on my drill press.  After making the button and joystick holes, I guess I was motivated enough to press on.

Here are a few pics of the progress.   As you can see the control panel looks nice.  I had the parts laying around from almost a year ago, so it was a simple matter of bolting everything in place and testing it out.

I tidied up the control panel wires and added a break connector.  A few zip ties later and it was looking nice and organized. 

For this project I ordered a Vision Pro LCD for the display.  The LED display allowed me to make the cabinet much shallower than a traditional arcade cabinet.  I think these cabinets will work very well for a home game room.  They are small enough to move around easily and have a small footprint.

For convenience I installed the service and test switches to the back of the machine at arms reach.  The power switch is also just to the top right of the back.  You can see in this photo I still have a bit of cleaning up to do with the cables.  Still it is all very straight forward.  All that is needed to play one of the thousands of early 80's jamma boards, is to remove the harness from the current board, and plug it in.

I've been hooked on playing Time Pilot on this game.  I'm not sure why, I never really liked it much back in the day. 

So that's it for now.  I plan to add a black paper bezel just underneath the glass to frame in the display nicely. Also the t-molding needs installed.  So far its looking nice, and it's great to see a clean new cabinet for once.

Project Table

A few weeks back, I was in Harbor Freight and spotted a large plastic shop cart.  That got me to thinking I needed one of my own.  They're not cheap though, somewhere around $80.  At the same time I was tossing around the idea of making a heavy duty work bench.  The problem is I just don't have much room at the moment.  So somehow the two thoughts merged and I came up with the Project Workbench on Wheels.

I like the high top work tables you often see in magazines and I wanted something easy to work at, so I decided it should be on the tall side, around 40" tall should be about right.  Also I wanted it to be large enough to hold the new table top disk sander I just got for Christmas.  Sadly it's still in the box, because I just don't have anywhere to use it.  So I got out the graph paper and came up with this.  A table that was roughly 2 and a half feet wide by 4 feet.

I spent around $100 dollars on the materials.  Yes it could be done for much less, if I used scraps or if I did this and not that, but I wanted this to look nice and be easy to use.  Here's my list of materials.

• 2 six foot long 4x4's
• 3 eight foot long 2x4's
• one 4x8 sheet of plywood, I got the 3/4 inch 
• 4 of the 3 inch locking casters
• a box of Kreg 2 1/2 inch screws.

The 4x4's got cut roughly in half to make the corner posts.  I cut the rails and stringers for the frame of the table from the 2x4s.  I believe they were around 28" long for the four side rails and 15" for the ends.  The plywood got cut into three equal pieces because I wanted the table top to be approximately 2 1/2 feet wide by 4 feet long.  I had decided I wanted the table top to hang over roughly 4 inches on all sides to give me a good surface to use clamps on, and also to sit up under while doing detailed work like soldering.

When it came time to build the frame, I used the Kreg pocket hole jig.  If you don't already own one of these go and get one.  It will open up a whole new world of possibilities for you.  If your projects fall into the weekend warrior class, like mine, you'll soon be doing much more in less time and it will look better than ever before.  People will think you're some kind of woodworking master, but actually it's just a simple tool.
Check out their site here.

See how quickly that went together.  The pocket hole joints are very strong, and easy to do with the jig.  I screwed and glued each of these and it took less than 20 minutes.

I added the casters here then flipped the whole thing over to see how it rolled.

The height was exactly what I wanted.  Now to do the tabletop and bottom shelf.  I cut the plywood into three pieces.  I then squared the sides using a router to get them smooth and perfectly straight.

I wanted the corners to be rounded so as not to bang into things and myself, plus the plywood looked shabby on the corners.  For this I found a rounded scrap from another project and clamped it under the corners.  Then it was just a matter of using a tracing bit on the router to duplicate the shape on all four corners.

I then counter sunk screws into the top of the frame, and fastened a second sheet of plywood on top using wood glue and my staple gun.  Then I used the same tracing router bit to make the top piece flush with the first.  This gave me a very thick and sturdy tabletop that can take alot of abuse.

Then it was just a matter of  cutting out a few pieces to fit the bottom shelf.  These I did in two sections.  I wanted them to hang over a little to match up with the look of the top, so it was a little bit of a task figuring out just how this should be done.  I made a cutout from scrap that would fit the way I wanted in the corner then used it as a template to cut the real shelf.  It worked out pretty good and I looks the way I had planned.

After putting away almost every tool and measuring device I own, and sweeping up a butt load of saw dust and scrap I now had a rolling work table.

Then came the sanding which cleaned it all up pretty nice.  I'll be using this to do everything from spray painting to potting plants.  I can see it being used as a bar during parties, or an extra table on Thanksgiving day.  Either way, its versatile and built like a tank.

So here it is, ready to make any and all projects just a little less tedious, I hope anyway. =)

More HUO Jamma v1.0

My work on these two cabinets continues.  I haven't been posting everything, but I'll try to catch up here.  Last time I posted, I had only just assembled the cabinet shell.  It seems like this project is taking forever, but I'm only just working on it here and there, when I get the time.  It's actually been good, because it's allowed me to think through each new step before doing something rash.

I want these cabinets to be capable of playing vertical as well as horizontal games.  So it was with this in mind that I built the monitor display in a manner that will allow the owner to rotate the display without tools. It seems to work as I had planned.  The monitor mount is held in place, by the control panel, and after removing the glass, it is easy enough to slide out and rotate the panel.  It all goes back together, and since it's a square panel, the fit is exact.  I can thank the new table saw for this little miracle.

Today I spent a great deal of time trying to design an effective control panel.  I purchased a printed control panel overlay from Phoenix Arcade.  Having the control panel artwork already designed will require me to have the buttons and controls in the exact location as the overlay.  Also the control panel is going to have a trackball so that will require some extra attention.  I ended up making a small two part jig that allows me to cut both the opening for the trackball to mount under the control panel, and also the recessed area for the trackball plate that will rest above.  This took me almost two hours, that's crazy.  Although now that I have the jig, I can cut these in about three minutes.

Project Pacman Begins

Ok, so every arcade collector must own a Pacman, or a Ms. Pacman. Why?  Because every time we have a party or get together, and I show people the game room, the first question is " Do you have Pacman"?  It's a great game anyway, it's one of those approachable games, that anyone, of any age can enjoy.  It's arguably the most popular coin-op game of all time.

This project came to me from a collector on the Village forum.  I can't remember exactly at this time, but I drove somewhere down in South Florida for this one, I'm thinking somewhere near Boca Raton.  I can't claim total restoration rights on this one.  Most of the hard work had already been done.  The control panel and coin door had already been stripped and powder coated.  The cabinet was sanded to bare wood, and the previous owner even made a new back door.

I touched up some of the cabinet with Bondo and gave it a good covering of primer.  After sanding that down I tried using spray paint to get a nice smooth finish. That was a mistake, I never quite found a color that could match the original.  So I took a piece of the side art down to Lowe's and had them match the color on their scanner.  I ordered a quart of semi-gloss oil base.  My daughter Kylie was here so I handed her the roller, teenagers are fun like that.

The original Pacman and Ms. Pacman cabinets were painted using a stencil.  I'd like to try that someday, but for now I opted to use full vinyl printed side art.  The whole kit which includes both sides and the front kick plate costs about $240 shipped.

Rich at This Old Game made a very helpful video that describes in great detail how to install side art.  After watching it, I'm quite glad I did.  I lightly sanded the cabinet down and got to work installing the vinyl.

Following Rich's instructions made the process quite simple.  It was a little nerve racking at first, I didn't want to ruin a $100 giant sticker.  I used the heat, tuck under technique.  Oh, notice the hair dryer, I have yet to lay out the cash for a heat gun.  After installing the t-molding, the whole thing started to look great, and the paint match was nearly perfect.

A few minor points I'd like to add.  If you're doing this for the first time, and you want the vinyl to look perfectly smooth, then the surface must also be perfectly smooth.  My thinking was the vinyl would hide some of the roller marks, but that wasn't what happened.  I lightly sanded the cabinet down after it dried, and there are only minor roller marks showing through the vinyl, but they are there if you look closely.  It actually looks natural, almost as if the vinyl art has been painted on, because you can see some "orange peel" through the vinyl.  

I used a foam roller, and there are different types of those, so look for the ones made for painting cabinet doors.  They are common at hardware and paint stores.

It really does look excellent.  If you're not sure about doing the stencil, or just don't have the space to paint, go for the vinyl side art.

Jetson's Clock & Steve Ramsey

A few posts back I mentioned a new table saw.  Like most people these days, before I make any major purchase, I try to find a decent review of the item.  I had my eye set on a Porter Cable table saw, and a quick search pulled up not just a review, but a video review of the model I was thinking about getting.  That's where Steve Ramsey comes in with his video blog "Woodworking for Mere Mortals".  Steve reviewed the Porter Cable PC270.

After watching that one video I wanted to know more about "Woodworking for Mere Mortals".  I started thinking about all the woodworking programs I grew up watching, like Norm Abram's  "The New Yankee Workshop" and Roy Underhill's "Woodright's Shop".  Those were great programs, and those guys are very talented, perhaps too talented at times.  I wondered if that's what Steve was getting at, trying to make woodworking accessible to the average guy with an average budget.  I'm hooked on Steve's blog now, it's an amazing site, full of great masses of practical knowledge on woodworking and Steve's sense of humor is equally rewarding.

For some time now I've been fascinated by what some people are calling Googie.  It's a type of architecture that originated in the early fifties and flourished in the early sixties in America.  I think it had a great deal to do with post war optimism.  So when I started putting together my office I decided to go with a Googie theme.  Sure, no one there would understand, but I'm the IT guy so, I can get away with being a bit odd.  Stay with me, this isn't totally random.

This weekend my daughter Kylie and I took on one of Steve's projects.  It was the Jetson's Wall Clock.  Since we both wanted one, we worked together to make two of everything.  It was exhausting work believe it or not.  We managed to get it done by working most of Saturday night and then again Sunday afternoon.  Here are a few shot's Kylie took during the work.

We made quite a mess, but we both ended up with a fine Googie clock. George Jetson and maybe even Steve Ramsey would be proud.  Here's a couple fetching shots of mine at work.  I'm quite proud of my little office, and it's Googie look, now I just need a small Tiki or two.