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Tinker Tuesday for January 7, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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Over the long holiday break (I had to burn a lot of PTO before the end of the year or lose it), I got mostly done with designing and building a video game arcade cabinet. I've built some stuff before, a long built-in window seat for my Florida room. But this felt like really jumping into the deep end because so much of this isn't square -- on purpose. I've learned a lot about both designing furniture and woodworking in general.

It felt cool using some of the tools I've acquired over the years in anger. The biggest enabler of this journey was the Shaper Origin, which is a hand-held CNC. Second was the new table saw I got last year.

https://imgur.com/M03FtuI https://imgur.com/Sz8Xqqd

I'm at the point where the only parts that are left are:

  • Install the screen. Not pictured, but I have a mount for the monitor. It'll live on the cleats that are on the inside.
  • Make and install the keyboard/mouse drawer. Of course I decided to walk the harder way by specing a push-to-open undermount drawer slide.
  • Wire everything up and test. Central to this is a MiSTer FPGA that I already have.
  • Install the back of the cabinet.
  • Finish the cabinet and install the T-molding into the slots that I already routed.

I'm really hoping to get through all except finishing it over the weekend. The only part that really worries me is the drawer since that seems a bit annoying -- mostly because I've not done it before.

(and yes, the control panel was recut because it wasn't square; you can see a few mm gap in the front... since I had the bad one, I decided to install some controls to see how it'll feel.)