Here is the story itself:
“A couple of months ago I was asked to help with the project of an arcade machine for one institution. The idea seemed extremely amusing to me, and indeed in strength. Naturally, I asked to order the basic components for the heart of the future car - buttons and a joystick. I had to measure them and draw a panel under them. We ordered for trial the cheapest kit with Ali, which included a rather primitive board, wires (for connecting buttons and a joystick, as well as for connecting the board to a computer / PS3), and, of course, the buttons themselves with a joystick.
When the components reached, I remembered that, it turns out, I still had to draw an automaton, but still, at first I slowly opened the components and connected them to the board, and the board to the computer. And so I already held in my hands buttons and a joystick, not installed in any building.
In the end, I decided to choose a game where you can get by with a joystick and one button. The emulator started, and, my God ... I have never seen such an unusual and cool control. And so, having arrived at that very friend whom he promised to draw everything, we sat down to play bomberman, holding an armful of wires with a joystick and button.
By the way, I want to note that I had no idea that sticks for arcade machines have digital output. That is, this, in essence, is a d-pad of four buttons that are activated when the back of the lever is pressed on them.
As a result, the project ended and never started, but the idea to create a convenient building for the whole thing had already settled on its head. Without thinking twice, I looked for ready-made solutions in the market. But there are two chairs on the market: on one arcade machines that are, say, not cheap at all, and there is a lot of room for them; in another chair there are already much more attractive arcade sticks. But it so happened that many of them were not so attractive in appearance. Most are pieces of plastic of a dubious assembly with buttons and a joystick from unknown companies that mow under sanwa or seimitsu, or the same cheap ones from aliexpress that I ordered for the test. Something cool costs quite a lot of money ... In addition, what I imagined for myself, and what I wanted so badly, was not on the market. I perfectly understood what I want to do. The idea was clear - I want to teleport to the past, with which I can play old arcade bitmaps, fighting games and other pixel fun, as well as modern fighting games and platformers like Mortal kombat, Tekken, BlazBlue, Hollow knight, Cuphead, etc. d. on your computer or current consoles. But functionality was not enough for me - I wanted to have an accessory, with one glance at which I would like to reach out to him. Of course, outwardly he should be a conductor in the era of arcade halls, the era of one-voice translations on rewritten tapes, new wave and analog synthesizers. Anyone who has ever seen the synthesizers Moog, Polivox, Electronics M-25, Yamaha CS-80 or something like that - I will understand what I mean.
With the knowledge of all this, I discovered CAD and set about designing the body of my dreams. About two days of work and my building was drawn (it seemed to me then). The design was a sheet metal, which must be cut with plasma on a CNC, bent and painted with paint, which will protect the material from corrosion and will have a pleasant texture.
Due to the capabilities of design programs (in my case, it was AutodeskFusion360), turning a part from a bent sheet metal into a flat pattern and creating on the basis of its two-dimensional drawing made no problems.
It remains to find where this can be done. I quickly found a workshop for making wooden parts myself on the recommendation of a good friend. But with the production of the metal part of the case, everything turned out to be much more complicated. I faced a lot of problems. Few of the industries working with sheet metals work with small runs or one-time items. I sent a request for the cost of production to 20-30 offices (which I, of course, will not name) and .... Oh my God ... The hellish service that most of them offer is material for a separate article or a book on how to not work with clients. But, thank God, at least 5 companies were quite friendly. Two of them offered a price tag, upon hearing which I thought that they were going to cast a case for me from gold. Two more were located in rather remote places, delivery of which costs about the same as gold cases from previous manufacturers. However, there was only one company left that nevertheless agreed to manufacture at the price that satisfied me. It would seem that all, happy end! But not so simple in the world of production. Still, I had to order 20 buildings in order to meet the minimum order amount (I really didn’t know what to do with them, I thought I would sell them to friends, I would give them), but before that there was a long period of approvals, drafting contracts, re-writing the draft, changing it geometry and then the languid expectation of delivery of finished copies, during which I began to think, why not offer this product to other people?
With these thoughts, I ran to draw a logo. Yes, I didn’t know how to draw, since I did not know how to work with editors of vector graphics.
Ordered cutting, engraving metal plates with my logo. By the way, in order to find a company that could cut and engrave, I also had to sweat, because some cut, but not engrave, others engrave, but not cut. And if we talk about any production, the alignment of the engraving relative to the plates is very critical. Ideally, of course, first engrave the logos on a sheet of material, and then on the same sheet, without shifting it relative to the desktop, cut it. But since I never worked with cnc machines that process metal, I could be wrong. You me, if that, correct in the comments. Nevertheless, I was lucky to find another great person who scolded me at the meeting for errors in the layout and, more importantly, explained how not to repeat them (in short, I incorrectly converted the drawing lines to splines, which is why parallelism and perpendicularity lines moved a little bit).
Day X came. They call me from the warehouse and say they say my order has arrived, come. And then I jerked to ask the weight of the parcel. I heard a number that made me go pale. 76 kilograms. Divide by the number of products and get almost 4 kg per case ... Mentally, I was transported that day when I designed the case and did NOT check the predicted mass of the part in the box. In the end, I asked my brother to help bring the whole thing by car, which he was unspeakably “happy.” But, having arrived at the warehouse, it turned out that not only I messed up during the design, choosing the thickness of the material.
The manufacturer screwed up with geometry, or rather with bending radii. Despite this, all other dimensions coincided, which means that they carried out a complete recalculation of the part so that it corresponded to the possibilities of their production, but for some reason they did not inform me. I thought that it would be possible to send back and correct not only the geometry, but also change the thickness of the material to another. One fig - the details are not corrected, but redone. But no, the manufacturer immediately told me that they under the contract have the right only to correct the moments that do not correspond to my TK, and the thickness corresponds to the TK and, unfortunately, it is no longer possible to change it, because it will be a violation of the contract, etc., etc. ... In short, it was not possible to save. Having lost money and wasted time, having received 76 kilograms of plates, I still tried to collect a trial copy. Arriving home, I installed the filling in the case, and began to test.
The first thing I realized was that the layout, which visually seemed the most convenient, was far from the most convenient, since pressing the buttons with the ring finger and little finger in a bent state is rather inconvenient. As a result, I immediately changed it in the project file and drawings to a new one, simultaneously changing the thickness of the material (and this time I already predicted the weight of this part). After conducting tests and making basic changes, I decided to order the manufacture of an updated building. I ordered from the same manufacturer as the previous time, and they quite adequately accepted the error on their part, and already agreed on any questions regarding the drawings with me. The approval of a new order took place over the course of a month, with constant amendments to the drawings for the capabilities of existing machines. I was only recently able to get the final calculations and order production. But the previous case was not yet completed.
During the coordination of new drawings, I decided to bring my “unsuccessful” prototype to its final form: it was necessary to make wooden parts of the case. I quickly found a workshop, agreed with the craftsmen, and under their guidance I was able to independently make the parts I need from oak. The tree is very beautiful and has a pattern that I needed so much. This was not a simple matter. In total, I managed to turn the oak blank into elegant profile plugs in 4 hours, with the help of a jointer, a surface gage, a sawing table, a milling table, and, of course, a small amount of tinting oil, which gave the wooden picture even more noble appearance. The next time, I still try to do this work on the CNC router, since he is in the workshop.
And here’s what I got as a result:
I can’t say that the result exceeded my expectations, but the fact that I was pleased with my work is unequivocal. I got what I was striving for. In the meantime, I am preparing a new version with an updated filling, which will allow you to connect to current consoles. I also ordered the controls that are manufactured by the very company that produced the buttons and sticks for most Japanese slot machines.
Morality. Friends, be patient, if you want to be in time - do not rush and do not be lazy to check your work.
Thanks for attention!"
And below I attached a voting ballot on the topic of whether my friend should continue to do this project! I would be grateful if you express your opinion!