DIY ROM Arcade Blog Build Your Own Arcade Machine

Home Built MAME Arcade Machine Project – Part 6

Building Your Own DIY Arcade Machine - Pictures

Hey guys. Sorry for the delay in my latest post. A lot has been happening in real life lately so I have been a little behind. We got some work done of the system this past Friday but then on Sunday my friend text messaged me with some big news…

His son was born!

I want to congratulate him on his first kid, and I know he’ll be a great dad. That kid is going to know how to build the hell outta stuff!

Anyway, because he is preoccupied with his first child, we are going to be taking a week or two off of building the Arcade Machine. It’s ironic because the timing couldn’t be better.

The last time we worked on the system we did surface work, priming and painting. Short of a little paint here and there, and a few small drill holes and additions that need to be added the system is almost completely done.

In the interim I will be using the extra time to start working on designing the Arcade Artwork for the system. I had been procrastinating about doing this, and now with the kid being born I will have some extra time to get this done right without feeling rushed.

With that being said I will be writing some follow-up articles soon about doing Artwork for an Arcade Machine from the Marquee and Side Panel Artwork to the Arcade Control panel artwork.

But before we do all that, let’s take another look at where we are with the Arcade Machine.

Below I have shots of a latest progress on my home made Arcade Machine along with captions for each picture with information and building tips I have been learning from the project. As always if you would like to see all my pictures for the project you can find them on my Flickr account here: DIY ROM Arcade on Flickr

[Sorry the latest pictures are a little grainy. I had to use my camera phone to take them.]

Home Built Arcade Machine Pictures & Guide - Part 6

We picked up where we left off last week and finished up Priming the system in any spots we are going to paint. We used Auto-body Primer and Filler since it goes on pretty thick and does a nice job of leveling any imperfections in the surface of your Arcade Machine.

You can see in the picture that we also started priming the Arcade Controls. Make sure you do surface work and sanding prior to priming and painting so that you get as smooth a surface as possible. 

While the Primer was drying we did some work on the Arcade Controls. In previous week we drilled out holes for where the Arcade Buttons and Joystick will go. Now we needed to start soldering the wires to the USB gamepad we are using so it can be connected to the Arcade Controls.

It helps to have a device like the one we are using in the picture. It holds your circuit board (PCB) in place and makes it easier for soldering connections to it.

We didn’t do the best job of sanding the Arcade Controls down before we Primed the piece and it showed. Once we noticed this we waited for the Primer to dry and went back and sanded down the Arcade Control panel.

As I mentioned before make sure you do a job of sanding and filling any gaps or cracks on the surface of your Arcade Machine before Priming. Using Grey Primer is good because it can be painted white, or black very easily but also does a great job of exposing areas that need work. These areas are much harder to spot if you are using a black primer.

Once the Primer has dried it gets pretty hard and can be sanded down to correct problems without gumming up your sandpaper. (Unlike paint, which is much more of a mess to sand.) 

Here my friend is filling some of the gaps and cracks we noticed on the Arcade Controls after we applied the primer. We had used Bondo to fill a lot of gaps on the surface prior to priming but there were still some spots that needed work.

We were trying a couple things out to see how different surface fillers would work on the system. Here we are using a very light weight spackle to fill in very small holes along the beveled edge. Adding the bevel to the MDF resulted in small holes along the rounded edge.

This is a shot of the rear grill we will be using on the system. We are adding a top or rear fan (Haven’t decided on placement yet.) to exhaust any heat that may build up in the Arcade Machine.

We cut this piece out of the PC Case we cut apart to use for mounts inside the system. As you can see we are priming and painting any parts that will be used on the outside of the system.

Here you can see we have Painted the outside of the system and I took a picture of some of the areas inside the Arcade Machine. Once the parts are reinstalled into the system many of the unpainted areas you can see in this picture will be covered.