The Design

It all started with this drawing.  It’s the plan for the size and scale of the cabinet I wanted to build.  It is much smaller than a full size pinball machine in both the height, width as well as depth.  Again, space was a consideration for this build.

Most TV’s I found matched the specs you see in the bottom left corner for 32″ TV’s with no base.  The Cab I wanted was built about 1/4 bigger than the 17″ width so that there would be some wiggle room just in case.

I found that there was a clear IR sensor piece of plastic that I tried to remove which caused issues.  It seems that the plastic acted like a channel for the signal and by removing and having the TV sit flush against the side, it blocked the IR sensor. So when shopping for a TV, look to ensure that the actual width you are measuring accounts for this piece as well, that almost turned into an issue for me.

The actual build is relatively simple.  I designed it to only use one piece of ply for the sides so I wouldn’t need 2.  the biggest width would be 12 inches (where the backglass sits) and the front would slope to 9 inches to give it a 3 inch slope.  For a normal table, the average, from what I read, of the slope is about 6°.

With the 3″ difference, the slope would have been about 6.5 degrees for a slope.  A lesson learned is that this is not a pinball machine and that a bigger slope for the playfield is actually better when looking down.  I ended up having to use 2×4 spacers on the back legs to prop it up higher in the back on my final build.

 

 

Cab Assembly

The first thing I did was cut and attach the front board to the side sloped panels using wood screws.  The front panel was cut to be 9″ tall and 17″ wide to fit the width of the LCD TV playfield. You can see the screw points on the side in the picture below.

After mounting the front piece, I then cut the base portion out of the crap plywood to be 17″ in width also to match the front piece. again because of the width of the TV.  I then used the long 2×2 boards and cut them to about the length of the cabinet and attached them to the side panels and the base crap plywood.

I then added a cross bar in the back out of the 2×2 17″ wide to keep the gap for the TV to fit.  I actually slid it higher than the picture below so that it would be a support for the cross piece that holds the backglass monitor.

After assembling to his point, I then added rails to the side of the cabinet with the 2×2 rails in order to hold the TV upright.  The TV was not uniformly straight in the back, so I had to attache the rails at different heights in order to level it with the slope of the cabinet sides.

Below is the first fit in the cab.  This wraps up what was needed for the main portion of the Cabinet, next was the backglass housing.

 

 

Backglass

In my design, I allowed for a 5″ Shelf to be used for the monitor.  I didn’t have the monitor at this time so guessed that 5″ was good.  To be safe, I ended up making it 5 1/2″ in width just in case.  After getting the 19″ monitor, I ended up short by about an inch.  The monitor was such a good price that I had not option to make it work.

As a result, part of the monitor sticks out of the back and a little hangs over the edge of the playfield, but doesn’t obstruct the view at all.

For the backglass box, I struggled on how to attach it to the base.  I ended up taking some 6″ planks and cutting them down to 5 1/2 inches.  I screwed them directly into the side of the cab and also attached a 2″ wide board across the back that would serve as a lip to keep the monitor in place.

Once attached, I added a 5 1/2″ thin piece of board to the top of the box.  I had this already available so you could use anything that’s about 1/4″ thick or even 1/2″ if you want for the top.  The final backglass box looked like the following.

In my final build, I opted to leave the back open on the backglass since it wouldn’t be seen.

Button Holes

I chose to use the following for buttons:

• 2 side buttons for the flippers
• 1 large light up launcher button to launch the ball or select games
• 1 white 1up player button for starting games
• 1 red button to exit the game
• 1 red light up coin for inserting coins

The buttons holes were all drilled using a 1 1/8″ drill bit.

The buttons then slide into the hole and are held on by the nut that screws on to the button threads inside the cabinet.

 

Cabinet Legs

The legs were bought and attached using the top plates which were attached to the underside of the cabinet on each of the 4 corners.  The legs have screw threads ready to be screwed into the plate which makes assembly/disassembly easy.

The legs were 28″ in length which was way too tall for my build (and looked like a giraffe about to fall over).  I ended up cutting about 6″ off the length so that the overall height of the cab was 31″ in the front which was a good height that I wanted.

Even with this shorter stature, the legs still seemed to have a little wobble.  I attached some 2×2 cross bar pieces to the front an back which really made it stable at this point.

 

 

Painting

Painting was pretty straight forward.  I chose the Metallic Blue color to give it a little bit of a shiny effect when light hits it.  I simply painted several coats on the body  until everything was painted.

For the legs, I ended up using a glossy white paint that’s used for baseboards or molding.

For the white trim I used 1/2″ electrical tape along the edges.

This was something I learned about from mods on the Arcade1up Machine on Reddit.  The tape has a nice glossy look and also fits perfectly on the 1/2″ edges of the wood.