4 Player Arcade Cabinet Plans Pdf

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Madelyn Westfall

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Aug 3, 2024, 6:14:20 PM8/3/24

to timmcardiwin

You can see a very, very rough mockup of what my final machine might kind of look like on the right here. The side art is obviously just a very early rough mockup and will have many more graphics than that. Looking forward to creating that art. The marquee will probably be lighter than this mockup too and also I will want to have some graphics on the control panel layout too. Not sure what yet. Might not have those stripes on the side either. Ooh, I really could spend ages designing the artwork for this. Bring it on.

Download all the files containing my cabinet design and measurements etc here (mix of PDFs, Illustrator files and Sketchup files). UPDATE: I now have some of the dimensions files saved as PDFs now too.

I would love to get a copy of the plans that you used as well. I have my retropi built and running and built an arcade stick. Everything went great and is working well. Now, I want to build a full size cabinet.
Thanks

I love the idea of doing work on an arcade. It is either terrible dark (doing work on a fun machine) or delightful (making your work setup more fun). I think I would have a hard time not just jumping right into the arcade game though.

So on the top, the large holes are for drink holders - yay. We have the 4 player controllers with less buttons for the 3/4 players as we decided it wasnt necessary for them to have a full set of 8 keys. We have a spinner, a roller ball thingy (cant think of the name) which is from Ultimarc also and a streamdeck. Will be resembling this layout:

lol. Ive had my fair share of magic smoke. I actually had a pair of metal DDR pads a few decades ago (the unbranded ones off eBay) and they did good, but did leave them unused for a good 5+ years and yeah on set up again they were no longer working. At that time I wasnt into electronics etc so ended up selling them off for cheap.

You could take any upright cabinet and find similarities, besides some rare examples that have radical designs. Most are designed relatively similarly. Besides the control panel, his and those do share some similarities for sure. However, that does not mean that he intentionally ripped them off. If I were to make a cabinet tomorrow without directly referring to a previous design, I would still end up designing something very generic and thus having an appearance akin to many before it.

Agreed and again he is not selling the plans. So he copied plans and giving them away free. I find it interesting is the company he copied the cabinet design from is selling arcade cabinets loaded with roms they have no legal right to sell / distribute. So which is a worse offense.

This will show you how I constructed my 4 player MAME pedestal cabinet. There are a lot of things you may want to customize to your liking. I will show you how i made mine, you can feel free to tweak it to your liking. This houses a standard windows PC to run the MAME arcade emulator, and outputs to a 42" LCD TV.

I designed this cabinet build around simplicity. I didn't want to try to haul full sheets of MDF in my minivan by myself, so I used pre-cut 2ft x 4ft pieces of MDF for the construction. This means that no panel is larger than 2ft x 4ft. also, this prevented me from having to cut a bunch of long straight cuts. the front, back and both sides are 24" wide, so there was very little cutting involved. I started off using Google SketchUp to design the unit, then tweaked it until it looked right. I was going for simple. I've included a diagram with the dimensions of the boars you will need to make it like mine.

You also need to plan out what type of controls you wish to have, and how many buttons per player. This can vary based on which types of games you want to be able to play. I personally wanted a 3" trackball for centipede and millipede, as well as bowling/golf games. If you are just using MAME, you only need a max of 4 buttons per player for 4 player games, but some of the 1 and 2 player games need more (mostly fighting games) i opted for 4 buttons for players 3 and 4, and 7 buttons for players 1 and 2. (player 3 and 4 are off to the sides because they aren't used as much, leaving players 1 and 2 in the center of the panel. Most fighting games only use 6 buttons, but the 7th button comes in handy. This way i have 4 buttons on the top row to simulate the Neo Geo layout. I also have a few none mame games that i play on here through steam, including Mortal Kombat 9, Injustice, and Street Fighter 4.

cut some 1x2 pine boards into strips and screw/glue them to the sides for bracing. they should be flush with the top edge, and set back 1.25" from the front and back edges. also stop about 4" from the bottom to allow room for the base you built earlier. I attached these with short wood screws and glue. (make sure the screws aren't too long, or they will break through the sides.

Before assembling the cabinet, now would be a good time to cut the slots for the T molding. Use your router with a 1/16" slot cutter bit for this, make sure it is centered in the MDF. I cut the slot along the front, bottom and back sides, it is not necessary on the top.

I cut my bottom panel from some scrap OSB i had lying around. If I had it to do over again, i'd use MDF. i cut it to fit inside the bottom of the cabinet, and screwed it to the 2x4 base. I used a 1" spade bit to drill some air vents in the bottom.

I also cut the bottom rear panel and attached it. It is 8" high and 24" wide. I used a 3" hole saw to make a hole. This hole is for the power/video cables. This panel is attached only using wood glue. the top edge of this board is beveled to match the angle of the back panel. this way the back door panel can sit flush on top of it.

Using some 1x4 pine boards and the measurements form the included diagram, build a base for the control panel and glue it together. it should be slightly smaller than the top of the panel so that there will be some overhang. The bottom of mine is made from OSB again, but it would be better with MDF. Once the box is complete, screw or bolt it to the base.

Cut out the shape of your control panel, making sure there is an overhang over your box you just built. Mark the locations of your controls. Take lots of time planning this, you will be stuck with it for a while. I drilled small pilot holes at each button/joystick location. Then drill out all button holes and joystick holes with a 1 1/8" Forstner bit. Take your time and do it right. I used a drill guide i picked up at harbor freight to keep the drill at a right angle to the wood.

I wanted to mount my joysticks from below, with no visible bolts. I used some japanese sticks (Sanwa JLW) because they can easily be switched from 8 way to 4 way mode. (i didn't want the clutter of a dedicated 4 way stick). when undermounted on a 3/4" panel, the sticks were just too short. To fix this, i used the router to recess a pocket for the joysticks to sit in. i routed away about half the thickness of the panel in these areas.

I didn't want any visible bolts in the panel, so i had to use a trackball mounting plate. I also didn't want this to be visible. It will be flush mounted under the plexiglass and artwork. Before i could do that, i had to cut the trackball hole in the plexiglass. This was done by clamping the plexiglass to the panel so that there was a small overlap on all sides. then using the 3" hole as a template, i used the router with a flush trim bit to cut the 3" hole in the plexiglass.

now that the plexiglass is cut, remove it and set it aside for later. now lining up the hole in the trackball plate with the hole in the wood, trace around the trackball mounting plate...and remove it. then insert the trackball in the hole, upside down, and trace around it's footprint....then remove it

once again, we dont want any mounting hardware visible through the panel, so we are using T-nuts to mount them. use a spade bit to create a recess for each of the t-nuts so that they sit flush with the top of the panel.

Place your plexiglass back onto your panel, being sure to line up the trackball hole and making sure there is an overlap on all sides, then clamp it in place. i placed my hole saw in the hole just to help keep it lined up.

This part requires patience, take your time so you don't crack your plexiglass. I do this in two parts. the first part is to create a pilot hole. i use a V-groove bit and slowly lower it down into each of the button holes. take your time and it will cut through the plexiglass like a hot knife through butter.

once you have your pilot holes, switch to the flush trim bit in your router. the bearing will roll around the button hole, making perfect holes in your plexiglass. you can insert a few pushbuttons in the holes to help keep everything from sliding around.

now you will cut the slot for your t-molding. Standard molding is 3/4" thick, the same as your MDF. However you want the molding to sit flush with the plexiglass. To do this, you need to offset your slot by the thickness of your plexiglass. This will mean that some of the MDF will stick out below the molding, to eliminate that, i used a roundover bit on the bottom side of the panel, which hides the excess.

i also mounted a barrel lock in the front center. this is mounted so that it is hanging straight down in it's resting state, when you turn the key, the lock portion activates a microswitch which is wired to the PC power button. this step is not necessary, but makes for a nice way to turn the cabinet on.

I designed the control panel artwork in photoshop. Take your time and make sure it looks good when viewing it at full size. I made that image at 48 x 20" at 300dpi...it was a huge file. I had a photographer friend print it off on his big awesome printer on premium lustre photo paper. You will want to make sure the artwork is slightly larger than your panel so you don't have to worry about the edges. (If you dont' have access to a large format printer, staples can do it, or there are places online that specialize this this kind of thing, some that will even print on adhesive vinyl)