Arcade & Retro Repairs & Mods, all new recipe, with no added MSG...

Steve X2

Trying out more complex stuff now, combining engraving and cutting in one job.
So far so good, few minor inaccuracies but I'm working on it.


Millennium Falcon in 4mm clear acrylic.
Engraving took about 30-40 mins as i wanted it to have fairly deep grooves, and the cutting about 30-40 seconds.

Star Lord

That's gorgeous Steve! Would probably look great lit from the show or the bottom, sees lots of etched acrylic lights like that in gadget shops.

Steve X2

Star Lord wrote: »

That's gorgeous Steve! Would probably look great lit from the show or the bottom, sees lots of etched acrylic lights like that in gadget shops.

Yeah, someone has already done it with a slightly different version of this.

Steve X2

So, eh, never clean acrylic with alcohol based cleaners. It does a great job of cleaning up the plastic and removes all the "fog" that settles on the plastic during engraving.
But, after a few mins to an hour the acrylic starts to get micro fractures, and then much larger cracks, it ruins the whole piece!

Lesson learned

BGOllie

Fixed marquee lights on Outrun and coin mech lights on galaga (just fuses and bulbs gone, redone connections on the coin mech , all voltages good )
Fixed missing sounds and sprite flicker issues on galaga (fixed is a big word though,a few socketed chips just needed a clean and re-socket )
Also cleaned, sanded,re-sprayed and clear coated rusted bits on the galaga cab and coin panel.
Just need to fix the coin mech on the outrun now .
but man does it look good all lit up

Andrew76

BGOllie wrote: »

but man does it look good all lit up

Yeah it's hard to capture in a picture (although the above does a good job of it!) how nice the lighting can be that you get from cabs/CRT Tvs. Whether it's from the marquee or screen itself, that warm glow is just great, really adds to the experience.

Lovely setup Ollie. :cool:

The Last Bandit

Very jealous of that setup !! And a fix is a fix regardless of how its achieved

I always say the games are great but its the arcade that makes it!
3 machines is definitely an arcade !

Steve X2

I'd highly recommend a couple of Philips Hue RGB lights and or lamps in the room your using for the arcade. You can really set that 80's/90's arcade feel by playing with the colours and intensity.

BGOllie

BrownFinger wrote: »

I always say the games are great but its the arcade that makes it!
3 machines is definitely an arcade !

4 When I'm done with these 3, I'll look into converting that neo geo mame cab I got of you into a proper crt & multi jamma switcher cab

BGOllie

Steve X2 wrote: »

I'd highly recommend a couple of Philips Hue RGB lights and or lamps in the room your using for the arcade. You can really set that 80's/90's arcade feel by playing with the colours and intensity.

noted. This isn't their final resting place. Once I've converted the shed room I'll look into the lighting and sound system set up

o1s1n

Setup is looking gorgeous alright.

Have the monitors had work done do you know? Picture on them really looks great.

The Last Bandit

Had a quick look at the Donkey Kong bootleg I got and started the process of figuring out whats what.

Its none Jamma and a bootleg so the pinout is unknown, so where the best place to find out some info on it ? You could trawl forum and google pics looks for a match but a great place to start is with the Mame source code.

So dumped a couple of ROMS and ran them through romident and this identified the board as the bootleg 'Donkey King' so looking up the driver source for 'Donkey Kong' reveals absolutely nothing, no mention of this board as all. Bugger.

Looking at romident again show this board is actually a clone of 'Crazy Kong' (so its a bootleg of a bootleg) and 'Crazy Kong' does have its own mame driver. So sure enough looking at the correct mame driver, all the info needed was nicely documented - full pinout, memory map etc

Still not working but now at least I can wire it up

Crazy kong is actually licenced by the way !
so not a bootleg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Kong

The Last Bandit

Never knew it was licensed, all I remember from it is the awful colour scheme

BGOllie

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Never knew it was licensed, all I remember from it is the awful colour scheme

loved the sound on crazy kong though. I actually prefer it to donkey kong
it's purely based on nostalgia though, since the arcade I first went to had crazy kong

Steve X2

I’ve become one of those people who add some clear acrylic to bare electronics and thinks it improves it!
It does though

Steve X2

My last post about non retro uses for this laser engraver.

Tested out a full A4 sheet engraving last night. It came out ok considering the image was just a jpg and not a vector file.

Does anyone know how to clean acrylic? Alcohol does a great job removing the "fog" which you can see around some parts. But it cracks some acrylic so i need to find something better. I've tried glass cleaner, baby wipes, dettol wipes, washing up liquid and the fog remains.

geotrig

I'm not an any type of expert on this at all :pac: but i always thought you had to use an abrasive to clean acrylic and buff out think like car lens etc .
Something like novus ( lightest one ) .

Have you got air assist on that machine?
If you do I'd be speeding up the engraving.
or it could be your material ?

Steve X2

geotrig wrote: »

I'm not an any type of expert on this at all :pac: but i always thought you had to use an abrasive to clean acrylic and buff out think like car lens etc .
Something like novus ( lightest one ) .

I see Amazon have that Novus stuff so I'll grab a batch of it a bit later today and see how it goes. Seems like its the right stuff from the description.
cheers

BrownFinger wrote: »

Have you got air assist on that machine?
If you do I'd be speeding up the engraving.
or it could be your material ?

No air assist yet, that will be next month when I get that hang of the basics.
Upgrading the controller board to an X7 kit from lightobject next month. I already have a new laser head coming that does have the connector for the air, but I don't have the compressor or tubing yet. So much to do

I did this same engraving on some new red cast acrylic I got yesterday and the alcohol cleaned it up perfect without any cracks. Cast acrylic does seem higher quality than extruded, from my short time using this thing at least.

Steve X2

A lot less "fog" on these tinted cast Acrylic sheets. And it seems to clean off pretty good without cracking the sheet.

Decided to do a few retro logos and things like that, Dreamcast looked best in amber.

Jack burton

very slick looking steve

Steve X2

My laser cutter works by bouncing the bean off two mirrors onto a third and then through a lens. My brain forgot this last night while tweaking something during a cut and I put my hand in the open space between two of the mirrors

Feeling quite stupid today I have to admit. It was only at 30 percent power, but very ouchy none the less :0/
Lesson learned.

o1s1n

Well at least it made for a pretty cool photo!

Andrew76

o1s1n wrote: »

Well at least it made for a pretty cool photo!

Google Image search says otherwise.

o1s1n

Probably for the best. If if created images like that he may be tempted to burn his hand again :pac:

Steve X2

If i could see the laser like in that pic I'd probably not be sticking my hands anywhere near it, damn invisible lasers

The plasma in the laser tube itself is very cool looking though (when firing).

CiDeRmAn

o1s1n wrote: »

Probably for the best. If if created images like that he may be tempted to burn his hand again :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTjUzT-xto4

BGOllie

rigged myself a small jamma test setup. All in one unit, no messing about looking for bits.