Arcade cabinet build

I wanted to build a raspberry pi based arcade cabinet. I will try to outline the steps I did in case it helps.

Final product

Design choices

  • Used 3/4″ MDF for majority of cabinet. Advantages: sturdy Disadvantages: pain to work with, sawdust everywhere, heavy
  • Base was 2x4s
  • Several pieces of 1×2
  • Spare 1×6 for monitor mount
  • Black paint
  • Feet (Sofa couch feet)
  • Cabinet lock to secure access door
  • T-molding
  • Other bits and pieces

Hardware

Cabinet build

I searched for plans that were the outline I thought I wanted. Eventually settled on this:
http://hyperspin-fe.com/uploads/monthly_01_2015/post-127147-142870667336.jpg
When I bought the MDF, I had home depot cut it in half lengthwise for me so I wouldn’t have to do the long cuts.
My dad then helped me do the rest of the cuts. Just measured and marked them as best we could. Only real modification I know we did was use a round object to round off some of the corners so they weren’t so hard. Rough cuts were done with circular saw and jigsaw. Then used a router with a piece clamped as a guide to keep lines straight. For rounded edges, we used a belt sander. Once one side was done, we rough cut the second, then just clamped it in place and used the router guide bit to match it exactly.

Here are some photos I took during the build:

All the pieces cut and laid out to paint
Primer painted on
Black paint on
Partially assembled. I didn’t paint the full insides as I figured it wouldn’t be seen, that was a mistake. They should have all been fully painted.
Partially assembled rear view
Working on wiring the joysticks and buttons

Software installation

I used the fabulous software package Retropie to handle the roms and frontend. Their documentation is fairly straightforward, but install the ISO to a SD card, install in raspberry pi, and configure. It was a while ago that I set it up, so I don’t recall the full steps I used to configure, but I don’t believe it was super difficult.