ROTATING CONTROL PANEL - Construction - STEP 2

You now have a finishd control panel "contraption". Now the fun part, attaching the actual arcade controls to the control panels. I have only dealt with buttons, joysticks, spinners, and trackballs - so that is all I can describe. Also, since everyone's idea of a control layout is different, I will just provide an overview out how to attach each type of control.



CONTROL PANEL LAYOUT

The first step is to come up with the layout for your controls for each of the three panels. As I mentioned earlier, I created a 1 player panel, a 2 player panel and a panel dedicated to Defender/Asteroids. Decide what you want each panel to look like. Start by making some mock layouts on paper until you have each layout perfected. Remeber that you need to leave enough room for the base parts of these controls (the parts underneath the panel). A good example is a trackball. A 3 inch trackball only takes up a 3 inch diameter circle on the top of the cabinet, but the base of that trackball is much larger - so you can't stick a button right next to the ball. I chose to make each one as simple as possible so I would not have clutter. That said I went with 6 buttons per player, which is more than you need for most games. I also tried to center everything as much as possible, especially the "taller" controls. When rotating the panels, the greatest clearance is found in the middle of the panel (from top to bottom). So on my 30" x 12" panels, the greatest spot of clearance is 6" in from each of the long sides. This is where you should put your joysticks. It also makes sense to put your joysticks in the center as well.



BUTTON INSTALLATION

Buttons are the easiest. I went with Happ Pushbuttons. For these you need to drill a 1 1/8 inch hole. That is probably the width of most pushbuttons. Look at the instructions that came with your button or just measure the diameter of the shaft. Get a 1 1/8 drill bit and go to town. To make things neat and get your buttons lined up, you should measure everything out aheard of time on the panel. What I did was draw straight lines on the panel, then put a mark when I wanted my first button. I then used the button collar and centered that over the mark to see how wide the top part fo the button is (the collar is wider than the 1 1/8" shaft). I then placed a second collar next to the first one, leaving a little space between and marked the center of that. I did that for all my buttons. I then drilled the 1 1/8" holes where all my marks were.



JOYSTICK INSTALLATION

Joysticks are a little harder than buttons. First figure out if you will need to route some wood off the bottom of your panel in order to counter-sink the joystick. You may have to do this based on the thickness of your panel and the length of your joystick. Many joysticks have two lengths you can set the shafts at. Read the instructions to see if and how to do that. I set my joysticks at the maximum length, but that was my preference. Then hold the joystick to the side of the panel, so that the base of the joystick rests against the bottom of the panel. By doing this you can se how much the joystick handle will stick up through the top of the control panel. If it sticks up enough, you are fine. If it sticks up too much (I doubt you would have this problem) then you should shorten the shaft (if your joystick has that option). If it does not stick up enough (this is common) then you will need to rout out some of the wood from the bottom of the control panel.

If you need to route: If the joystick hanlde does not stick up enough, then figure out how much wood you need to remove in order for the joystick to stick up enough. In my case my joystick handle was about 1/4 inch too short, so I had to rount 1/4 inch of wood. Remove the joystick shaft and place the base of the joystick on the bottom of the control panel where you want it. Once you have it perfectly centered/square, trace the outline of the base onto the panel. Thenuse a router with a plunge bit lowered to the length you just figured out (in my case 1/4 inch) to take out the wood within that outline.

Attaching the joystick: No matter if you had to route or not, put the base of the joystick (shaft removed) on the underside of the panel exactly where you want it to be and mark off where the middle/shaft is on the panel wood. Remove the base and drill a 1 1/8" hole in the middle. Replace the base and screw it into the wood. Some people like to bolt it through from the top of the control panel, but I do not like to see the bolts around the joystick. If your control panels are not thick enough you may need to do this. If your panels are thick enough (at least 1/2 inch of wood to screw into) then I recommend screwing in the joystick base from the bottom.



On to the Panels Cunstruction - Step 2.

Feel free to email me at doug@dgthompson.com