Getting it Upstairs

Before I left UNT, I managed to rope two friends into promising to help me get this cabinet upstairs (thanks Chris and Drew!).
It was of course a mad rush home on Friday after midterms, and I spend the first few days just relaxing a little bit and also brought the cabinet into the garage, letting us avoid airplane wings on the big move-in day. I also worked on something else that I will get to in the next post.
 On Monday, Chris and Drew came over, and so it began. It was pretty much a nightmare trying to get it inside, as it barely fit through every doorway we had to go through. Once we got to the stairs though, is where it got really fun. I was at the top, and Chris and Drew were at the bottom; this was probably not the ideal arrangement in retrospect because Chris and I are close to the same height, and Drew is pretty darn short. Anyway, we managed to get it up to the landing, at which point, we all had the "What in the world are we doing?" moment. Once it was at the landing, we realized that we didn't have enough room to turn it to make the second corner, and nor was the stairway wide enough to take it up sideways. After deliberating for quite some time, we came up with the only possible solution (still haven't thought of a different one), and I wish so much that we had taken some pictures; it was surely a sight to behold! First, we laid they cabinet down on its back, and Drew crawled inside (told you he was small). There is a space in the back near the bottom if you remember, that's where Drew was. Keep in mind that the cabinet is 27.5" wide, and we probably had about 30" if that to work with; the clearances were approximately the same for the length as well. Once Drew was inside, we slowly and carefully proceeded to turn the cabinet upside down. Drew started by lifting it from the inside, since believe it or not, he had the most room at the moment. Once the bottom was a few feet off of the ground, Chris was able to get underneath, Drew got out, and they kept pushing it to upside down. I was on the other side, slowly moving it towards them so it wouldn't hit the wall. Now keep in mind that this cabinet weighs at least 200lbs, and is immensely bulky. Just go back to any picture of it if you need a refresher of the size of this. After this, we were able to maneuver the cabinet somewhat easily, if you discount the whole don't-let-the-top-heavy-200lb-arcade-machine-fall-over-and-destroy-something-and/or-itself factor. Anyways, we maneuvered the cabinet to the rail post, lifted the cabinet over the post and got it in line with the second flight of stairs. After managing to navigate the tight space to get on top to drag it up, we manged to get it up to the floor of my room.Getting it into the room was the easy bit, and and I slid the TV in, just to see kind of how it will look when it is done. Luckily, I did take a picture of that:

I think it looks great even just like that.

Approximately Five Months Overdue

No, I'm not talking about library books...

Anyways, when I came home for spring break, which I believe was late March, I managed to get extremely far along in the project. I should have been posting multiple times throughout the break, but I didn't, so I will be catching you up in several installments.

New TV!

Hopefully this one will actually work.

And the painting is done (again)!

I really hope so anyways! I put the last coat on the cabinet the other day, so now I just need the paint to cure. I also painted the control panel; I only had to put one more coat of paint on the top, because I decided to put a piece of polycarbonate (Lexan) on the top to protect it. I came to this decision because I wasn't sure how I wanted to not only make it easy to clean since it is white after all, but also make it durable enough to withstand the constant rubbing/touching that might make the paint wear through to the MDF. The problem I have been running into is that the only size big enough for the control panel is 36" x 48"! I can probably use the extra for the bezel for the TV, but it's pretty flexible, so I'm not sure how well that will work.

MAME Cabinet Status Update

Last Friday, we started to clean out the shop to make room for a new tablesaw and get rid of all the sawdust so I could paint the MAME cabinet. We finally finished cleaning it yesterday, and I put the first coat of new paint on the cabinet today. A lot of the paint soaked in, but it shouldn't take too many more coats.

Look, it has paint!

This time I am using an oil-based enamel for all of the coats, so it will be a lot tougher, but it takes 24 hours between coats. I need more paint anyway, so I will go to Home Depot to get more paint while it dries tomorrow, and add another coat at 2:00.

Soldering Vent Part 2

Now that I'm back from college, I finally got time to finish my soldering vent. I started where I left off, which was wiring the whole thing up. I also had to glue the front on, so once I had everything going to the switch box, I glued, clamped, and while that dried, I finished wiring it up. It was all fairly simple, I just had to follow the directions. Once everything was wired up, I fastened the switch and box in place. I may have just done something wrong, but the holes for the switch didn't line with the holes in the switch box, so I just decided to use a 3/4" screw. It isn't the best I could have done, but it worked.

After that, I decided it was time to test it. I wasn't completely confident of my wiring job, so I put it in the middle of my driveway just to make sure. Well, nothing bad happened, and it worked, so I finished it up. This didn't require a whole lot, all I had to do was put the cover plate for the switch and vent on. For kicks, I also decided to add a handle to the top. This was one we just had laying around, but if I was to make this again, I would probably have taken the time to go to a hardware store, and tried to find something that I could have wrapped the power cord around.

 The finished product. I think it turned out quite well.

And now for something completely different:

All Monty Python references aside, I thought I would take a break from talking about the MAME cabinet and instead show a different thing I have been working on.
As I am sure you already know, and have for some time now, I am at college staying in a dorm. I have had different arrangements of my desk, and my current arrangement leaves my desk directly under the smoke detector. I plan to be soldering at my desk, and that produces smoke. Now I don't know if it would be enough to set it off or not, but I would just as soon not find out. With that in mind, I set out to make a solder filter. I had remembered seeing this instructable a long time ago. I went on the Home Depot website and started pricing out different fans, hoping for one with a square case. After a while, I found this bathroom vent, and decided to go with it. Once I got it home, I realized that it didn't have an AC plug, so I had to do some more work. I went back to Home Depot, and got a replacement power tool cable, along with a light switch, switch plate, and switch box. It was only after I got all that stuff that I realized that I would need a housing to put everything in. I started sketching out a design on paper, and once I had a satisfactory design, I put it into Sketchup.

My finished design

An idea of what it will look like finished

With it completely designed, it was off to my house to work on it over Thanksgiving break.
For this project, I decided to use plywood; I figured it would look good enough without doing anything to it. I bought some 3/4" plywood at the local Lowe's, but I couldn't find any satisfactory 1/2" plywood there. I decided to use my Baltic birch plywood that I had bought for a different project, but I can just buy more when I get back to that project. First I glued the two top pieces together; while those were drying, I cut the exhaust port holes in the side piece, and glued those together as well. Once everything was dry, I glued the frame together. Before I applied the glue, I realized it would be impossible to get the fan in there if I had the middle piece, so that's why you don't see it in the picture of the glueup.

I checked all the corners for squareness once everything was clamped and they still managed to get out of square. Ah well, you do what you can.
The back is inset in the frame, but when I didn't put the middle piece in, it made it impossibly difficult to position the back piece correctly. The quick fix for this is to glue a couple of support pieces to the inside, so the back won't fall in.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get much more done, and I didn't take any pictures, but not much more was done. Next time I go down there, I will probably be able to finish it, and I will take more pictures.