Building Arcade Hyperspin/Mame cabinet - Part 1

About 5 years ago I had a project on the back of my mind to build an Arcade cabinet for home. At the time I looked into buying a build it yourself kit, however I could only find a company in Texas that did the parts and it would have been thousands to have it built and shipped to Australia. The other parts were also expensive so I let the dream slide.

Enter ArcadeWorx. Recommended to me by a guy in the office who has been looking at building his own cabinet. Troy at ArcadeWorx is a great guy to work with and cuts a variety of designs from MDF.

I found the Viewlix 32" Clone cabinet on their site and then emailed Troy with a couple of design changes I wanted - extra buttons and speaker layout. These weren't a problem however there were some restrictions on the TV to use so I started researching on-line and ordering parts.

The inside parts of the machine

Initial Parts list: 

TV - 32" LG 32LS4600. Fit the cabinet and supported 1080P which I was after not that easy to find in an afforable screen. Bought from Bing Lee online.

Speakers - 4" Polk DXi400 car speakers bought from Amazon. I love Polk stuff.

AMP - 2 Channel LP 2020A Lepai amplifer order from HK on eBay. Small unit I found recommended on AussieArcade forums.

It took a couple of weeks for the Viewlix clone to arrive. The shipment arrived in three flat pack boxes.

Sides and Back

Control Panel

Lots of pieces!

Initially I wanted to get the cabinet professionally painted. I visited an Auto Paint and Panel place across the road but they wouldn't have been able to start until the new year (for ~$700!) and my target is to have this done by New Years Eve.

I have never used a paint spray gun before so I watched a bunch of YouTube videos online and then obviously a qualified expert went to the Bunnings. 

It turns out that Bunnings doesn't sell Two Pack paint (used on cars). Being new to spray painting I was a bit nervous and was talked into trying the water based Dulux Aquanamel Gloss paint normally used for Trim and Window frames. This type of paint apparently "won't yellow" and should provide a good result.

I figured Water based would also be a safer option and would make it easier to clean up mistakes.

Primer and Aquanamel paint and paint mask

From the wall of colours, I chose Wing Commander Blue - seemed fitting. It will be interesting to see how it looks in gloss when it goes on.

While in Bunnings I also bought a Wagner W550 Fine Spray gun ($129), drop sheets, masking tape and simple paint masks. I then went home and prepared my "Dexter shed" for paining.

Dexter Shed

The Wagner W550 is an electric all-in-one unit which is very simple to setup and clean, however on a test piece I found it was spattering the paint too much, and using too much for an even coat. I tried making a few adjustments but I was not getting a good finish.

Wagner W550

The box showed people painting fences and kitchen cabinets. I'd recommend maybe for a picket fence or similar however I don't think I would have been happy with the result.

On the weekend my Dad came round to help with the Wagner and after giving it another go we decided to go buy a proper air spray gun kit. Off to SuperCheap Auto where we bought a SCA Gravity Feed Pro spray gun ($99) and a Black Ridge 2HP/21L air compressor ($119) and a hose. We were flying a bit blind here and the staff weren't very helpful, but everything seemed to come together.

Air Compressor

Serious Spray Gun

The difference between the Air Spray Gun and the Wagner was night and day. I was also using a LOT less paint with a much better result. I painted the primer on most of the outward facing pieces over a couple of hours and called it a day.

Drying parts inside the shed.

Storing dried parts outside.

The plan over the next couple of days is to sand back the primer and prime again - I will have to buy another tin of primer as the small tins are a bit small and the edges of the MDF where it was cut is very thirsty.

I will also have to go an buy a real paint mask. The simple masks aren't good enough - the hair in my nose was white!

Stay tuned for updates over the next couple of days.