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Softdrink

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Jun 26, 2020
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Southern California, USA
Overview

When working on my New Astro City, I noticed that the interior could get quite dark; doing maintenance tasks or connecting new game boards was often inconvenienced by the poor visibility. I decided to mount a 24" LED light fixture inside the cabinet, to provide some much-needed extra illumination. This is sort of a "service light" modification to make working in the cabinet easier - it is not a replacement for the marquee lighting fixture. Initially, I held the light fixture in place with zip-ties; however, I wanted something that was sturdier and more aesthetically pleasing. I also wanted anything I used to be non-destructive to the cabinet.

To this end, I designed some custom 3D-printable bracket clips to securely mount the light fixture along the lower edge of the monitor support frame.

You can find a writeup of the whole project, along with 3D print files and the original .blend source file, on my Github page:
https://github.com/Softdrink117/new-astro-city-service-light-brackets

I thought this might be useful to some people here, so I thought it'd be worth a share.

Design & Printing

The clips are designed to attach to the lower part of the monitor support frame (the metal structures that are above and below the monitor, and that hold the four corner bolts used to secure it in place). They are made to be printed at 100% fill, and are currently specced for use with a resin printer. They are designed to flex slightly during the installation process, so it may be necessary to adjust the thickness or other print properties if printing them with an FDM printer or with a different material.

The .blend and .stl files have been included in the git repo; feel free to modify them and use them in your own applications.

This print has been validated with the following print settings and postprocessing:
  • Formlabs Form2 printer
  • White V4 standard resin
  • 0.1mm layer height
  • 100% scale
  • 20 minute isopropyl alcohol bath
  • 60 minute curing time at 60°C, under UV light bulbs
  • Lightly sanded to remove support markings
A quick test to ensure the print is properly scaled: as designed, the bracket clips are exactly 15mm wide.

clips_printed.jpg

TubeLightClip_3DRender_01.png


Installation

The lamp chosen for the installation was a Commercial Electric 24" 900 Lumen fixture; it was selected because it was the largest size AC-powered LED fixture I could find at my local hardware store that would fit within the cabinet. Here is a link to the specific model I used. The critical dimensions for use of this clip as-designed are a 40x40mm square tubular section body, and a 20mm radius semicircular bulb extending from one face of the tube section.

A minimum of two clips are necessary for secure installation; I chose to use three for my cabinet.
InstallationDiagram.png

The bracket clips are designed with a two-stage mounting process, as shown in the diagram above:
  1. Hook the top edge of the clip over the upper edge of the monitor frame, from below. Feed the round portion of the bracket clip around the LED fixture.
  2. Pull the remaining clip edge inwards, towards the rear of the cabinet, while lifting it up. It should 'click' into place securely around the longer edge of the monitor frame.
When mounted, the clip should be snug enough that it will not slide from side to side without some effort, but not so tight that it cannot move when pushed firmly.

Photos


light_fromdoor.jpg

light_fromabove.jpg

A couple images showing the extra illumination provided by the light fixture.

light_fromcp.jpg

This image shows the original temporary mount solution with zip-ties. It should also help contextualize where the fixture is mounted in the cabinet.

clip_mounted.jpg

A view from the PCB maintenance door, looking upward at a clip and the light fixture as installed in the cabinet.

light_cabview.jpg

A view of the cabinet as a whole, showing the extra illumination from the light fixture.
 
This is awesome. Sick of grabbing my phone every time I have to mount or adjust something. Am definitely going to do this! Thanks.
Thanks!

Let me know how it goes, especially if you print it on a different printer or with different material. I'm pretty new to 3D printing so I don't have the knowledge to suggest tweaks from experience, but if you need to modify the print files at all I'd love to see what changes you make - happy to host some variants on the repo as well!

The original plan was to upload to Thingiverse but that website seems to be completely broken right now... ||
 
I printed on a Creality Ender 3 Pro using PLA+.
I picked up the same model lights from Home Depot. Everything fits nice and snug in an Astro City. Thanks!
 
I printed on a Creality Ender 3 Pro using PLA+.
I picked up the same model lights from Home Depot. Everything fits nice and snug in an Astro City. Thanks!
Glad to hear it worked for you!

I've added that print configuration to the repo as a verified option!
 
anyone ever lost there phone all day, to then notice glows on evening coming from the gaps of a cab?

awsome idea!
 
Can you talk a little bit about your loom being encased in braided protectors? Did it come like that or was it a mod you did? Is the harness the original one for the cab or something you built?

How'd you get the inside so clean looking? Did you disassemble the cab halves?
 
Can you talk a little bit about your loom being encased in braided protectors? Did it come like that or was it a mod you did? Is the harness the original one for the cab or something you built?

How'd you get the inside so clean looking? Did you disassemble the cab halves?
I talk at length about the process in my restore log thread!

The sleeved harness was something I did myself and not necessarily something I would recommend...
Pulled out and cleaned the entire JAMMA harness. At this stage I was still a bit confused about how everything was connected together, but while cleaning it I decided to sleeve each of the major 'clusters' of related wires. In retrospect I don't think this was really worth it - the aesthetic result isn't quite as clean as I was hoping - but the effort of tracing out each wire and learning how the connectors interact was immeasurably useful in understanding how JAMMA and arcade wiring works overall.

I did this for all the major connections in the cabinet - I think in isolation they look pretty great, but in the actual cabinet the effect isn't quite as clean as I had hoped. It's easily reversible if I decide to do so, at least. I also labeled the ends with printed labels.

If I were to do the sleeving again, I think it would look much better to use non-split sleeving and heatshrink. But doing that requires depinning or building your own harness from scratch - which just wasn't a step I wanted to take with this project (and frankly, I still don't think it would be worth the effort unless you're just very, very invested in the look).
 
Looks great! I did something similar with battery powered LED stick-up lights, but the brightness and coverage doesn’t seem as nice as this.

Where’s that power strip plugging in?
 
Looks great! I did something similar with battery powered LED stick-up lights, but the brightness and coverage doesn’t seem as nice as this.

Where’s that power strip plugging in?
Thanks!

Power strip is cut on the end to bare wire, then the Live/Neutral/Ground are connected to the corresponding terminals on the Astro's cable plate - fork terminals in the terminal block for AC power, and a ring terminal for the ground line.

They're wired in 'upstream' of the cabinet power switch, so that the service light can be powered while the rest of the cab is off.
 
I figured… it looks clean! Nice work! The upstream is clever. Thanks!!
 
This is incredible!

Any idea where I could get this 3d printed online?
 
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