Basic cabinet is begun

I started with the “RKD Custom Classic” cabinet plans, which I purchased from arcadeengine.com (which sadly is no longer in service) for $15.00. I followed their plans only for the "box" itself. For the CP, monitor shelf, and bezel, I deviated from thier plans and started down unchartered waters. Also, unlike their plans which called for paint, I chose to use black formica laminate from Lowes to give it a more professional polished look. Now that I think about it, they also called for fixed-wheel casters. Considering this thing weights more than a refrigerator, I'm glad I spent the extra $2 for casters that steer, because this bus isn't easy to push around when assembled. What the RKD plans also didn’t have that I wanted was a rotating control panel. On the net I found many examples to inspire me: Frosty's Arcade,PacMamea, Mametrix, Rebirth, and Rototron among others. Worth noting is the first two both used PacMamea's plans, which used to be available online, but no more. The PacMamea had a clever animated .gif from a CG model of his cab with the control panel endlessly rotating in one direction, which of course it didn't do in real life.

You can also see, in this snapshot to the left, the steering yoke (and in other

 frames the Tron stick) is about to bash the bezel, then suddenly in the next frame, pop, it's gone and fits under! It's too bad he didn't make that animated .gif using his actual cab, not a CG version of it, so we could see what it really could do. While not accurate, the Pacmamea.gif is still a fun cartoon, and

 no doubt contributed to its fame. The Mametrix over-came some of Pacmamea's limitations by adding a flip-up portion to the bezel to let the taller Tron-sticks pass under without getting decapitated, and Rototron over came the same limitations by having his panel rotate sideways with flip-up panels as well. For my cab, I wanted to avoid the extra flip-up details, but I didn't want to omit tall items like Tron sticks and steering yokes either. I set to work planning, knowing there had to be a way to make this work in reality, not just in a cartoon .gif. The hardest part was the whole damn thing. I spent weeks on the concept alone (because I’m not 

an engineer and didn’t have design software). I used cardboard models to get the design right.

My biggest problems were:
1. The Tron stick stands up a mile, and so will the steering yoke.
2. I didn’t want to raise my monitor up to the heavens to make room for problem #1.
3. I still didn’t have my Starwars yoke yet, so I had no idea what its d

imension requirements were except based on estimates using my other cab's yolk.
4. You can’t let the wires inside get all twisted to shit and break. There has to be a rotational limit.

My first big breakthrough was abandoning the idea of perfect symmetry. Making the drum three sided but with an offset axis actually allowed me to raise the monitor only 3 inches to clear an 8 inch high Tron stick, because the Tron panel drops more quickly as it rotates out of position, compensated by the Starwars yoke panel which raises as it rotates into position. The Starwars yoke panel raising as it rotates causes it to definetly NOT clear under the monitor

 bezel, which turns out is a good thing. This requires that it only rotate the opposite direction to be stowed away, which limits the maximum rotation of the drum to 240 degrees; plenty of rotation to expose each of three panels, and also limits the wire twist to a maximum of 120 degrees one way or the other. This also solves the problem of not knowing the yoke dimensions yet, since that is essentially irrelevant now. It doesn’t need to clear anything except fit inside

 the cabinet, which I was confident it would. Happy with this plan I moved on to construction.

Some fun projects...