We’re going to need a montage, Oh it takes a montage…
with all the parts coming in, we’re almost ready to build the pc part of the project!
on the other hand, we need to take the next step on the cabinet. mitch and i talked and we think that the best thing to do is to take measurements, disassemble, take the measurements we couldn’t get when it was in one piece, make plans, then revise them for accomodating a wider control panel, finalize the plans, and start building a new cabinet. unless anyone has a better idea (please speak up if you do, we’re just wingin’ it here), that’s what we’ll do as soon as we can.
as for the panel, i envisioned it working kind of like a jewelry box, where the sides and bottom are built as part of the cabinet, and then the lid (sticks and buttons) has an internal hinge and flips up so that we can get at the underbelly when necessary. this is just off the top of my head, so again — if anyone has any better ideas about how to engineer that part, let me know. we’ll obviously need something strong as a hinge and latching mechanism so that it can take the abuse of the joysticks being jerked around a lot. i’m open to ideas.
so that’s where we’re headed. i’m looking into the possiblity of using MDO (medium-density-overlay) instead of MDF for the cabinet body, since it’s less susceptible to weathering. it’s probably more expensive, but i’m not sure of the cost right now. we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. ^_^
