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Softdrink

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Southern California, USA
Overview

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A few months back, I designed a custom shelf to fit above the cashbox in the Astro and New Astro City cabinets. I've been very busy with work, so I only just finished documentation of it - but it's been working fine for me for over half a year. The project is open-source and I've made dimensional drawings, assembly instructions, and cutfiles freely available. It's a very easy lasercut job, and is designed to be cut from 1/4" thick plywood 2ft x 2ft project panels (the like of which can be commonly found at Home Depot and other US hardware stores). The entire project will probably take less than an hour if you have access to the tools and materials, or will be affordable to outsource if you do not.

You can find the full documentation, including cutfiles, material recommendations, and installation instructions, on Github here.



Process and Background

I've always found the interior of the Astro to be a bit of a strange layout from a functional perspective; because of the way the PCB mounting tray is positioned along the midline of the cabinet, the space is awkwardly divided up when in use. Combined with the bulk of the cashbox, this creates a difficult to reach (and harder to utilize) 'dead space' behind the cashbox and the PCB tray (when mounted).

I had been using this back corner space to store a spare MS9 chassis (in an old Kirin Milk Tea crate - it's good stuff! Thanks to @Hatsune Mike for the chassis and turning me on to the milk tea!), and one day I noticed that the height of the box made a sort of 'shelf' that could almost fit a NAOMI or other stuff.

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I decided to run with this concept, and over the next few hours I measured out the interior space and made a first prototype out of foamcore. It's actuallly quite a substantial amount of space - more than enough for a full NAOMI setup including connected cables, and if routed correctly there is no interference with the operation of the coin door.

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Then I refined the plans a little bit and made a more final prototype out of plywood. I unfortunately didn't take final photos of the shelf before posting this (hence the temporary support and the lack of a securing screw), but I figured it would be worth sharing regardless - I'll take new photos soon. I also decided to build mine from a double-layer of 1/4" plywood and laminated it myself - while I think the result is very aesthetically and structurally pleasing, I don't think it's necessary. A single layer of 1/4" is already quite sturdy.

Visible in these pictures is also my Service Light mod, which gives a great diffuse illumination inside the cabinet. You can find more information about that project on Arcade-Projects here, or on Github here.



I've been enjoying this shelf for months now, and found some fun uses for it. One of my favorite applications is holding a NAOMI system; there is enough room for cables to be routed in the front-right corner of the cabinet, so all the JVS power and IO signals can be cleanly tucked away under the shelf along with a Sun PSU. And there is zero interference with the PCB tray (by design), so I can have PCBs mounted to the tray and the NAOMI set up and ready to go, so switching between them is as simple as moving the JAMMA edge over and plugging in the Sun PSU (again, my apologies for the lack of a good picture demonstrating this - when I am near the cabinet again I'll try to take some photos).

I thought this might be useful to others here, and I'd love to see what else people can do with this concept and this otherwise akward part of the cabinet.
 
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I like it, its clean. My naomi is mounted on the wood and its right infront of the door. I really dont like it.
 
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Finally got around to taking some photos of the shelf installed, with a PCB tray and PGM system for scale. I also updated the github repository with these images, too!

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Some extra images showing the finished support and the clearance between the PCB tray and shelf area. Plenty of room for cables or other installed equipment.
 
@Softdrink would be nice if the deisgn allow to stack multiple shelves
I built one of those, years ago, for a Super Neo i had.
I think you could probably cut 4 of these boards, set them 3" apart, and give yourself 3 protected layers and 1 exposed layer, to mount pcb's to, all where he is housing his naomi.
Kick in a Jamma extender harness, and ditch the vertically oriented wood from the normal pcb mount, and you should be set for 4 pcb's in a single cab, with little issue.
Only thing I'd see, is you'd want two supports in the rear of the cab, instead of 1, to help with the extra weight.

*** Just noticed, you'd have to somehow alot space for the coin door, so the stacked shelves may have to be shorter in length, than the main bottom board. ***
 
@Softdrink would be nice if the deisgn allow to stack multiple shelves
This occurred to me when I was designing it, and I ultimately decided that it wasn't a great idea. You can see in a couple photos in the opening post - there is actually not very much space above the shelf before it starts having potential clearance issues with the monitor cage (and proximity to the cage also means proximity to the chassis, which might also add electrical interference concerns). You could maybe go about 6" - 9" up depending on the size of what you want to store on the shelves, but because of the angle of the monitor, you have less space the farther back in the cabinet you go.

As bagheera369 noted, you'd also need to offset the shelves back to clear the coin mechanism.

Both of these are doable, but to me it seemed at the time like it would compromise the utility of the space. Looking at it again now, though, it might still be viable depending on the size of what you want to store.
 
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finishedInstall_03.jpg

Finally got around to taking some photos of the shelf installed, with a PCB tray and PGM system for scale. I also updated the github repository with these images, too!

finishedInstall_02.jpgfinishedInstall_clearance.jpg
Some extra images showing the finished support and the clearance between the PCB tray and shelf area. Plenty of room for cables or other installed equipment.

Awesome design! I'm definitely going to make one of these when I have time!

What is the mounting rail you have on the vertical board? (Shown holding a pgm)
 
I saw that you used some sort of stick as stand to support the shelf... I wonder if the design can be updated with a proper leg?
 
I saw that you used some sort of stick as stand to support the shelf... I wonder if the design can be updated with a proper leg?
I would imagine most wouldn't need anything heavy than the plywood leg can support. With that said, I'm sure you could some adjustable leg or fab one yourself if you needed more weight.
 
I saw that you used some sort of stick as stand to support the shelf... I wonder if the design can be updated with a proper leg?
It's a 1/2" hardwood dowel, so it can actually take a fair bit of weight in this orientation. But as the design says, you can use basically anything as long as it's the right height. Pretty much exactly what @Robertguy09 said - I don't think most people would need to hold much weight, and if you do, you're free to remix the design to suit that need. I also intentionally wanted to keep the design simple to fabricate and use a minimum of hardware.

But, I agree that it would be aesthetically nice to have a more "finished" leg design. Something else to look into if I revisit this project in the future.
 
Awesome design! I'm definitely going to make one of these when I have time!

What is the mounting rail you have on the vertical board? (Shown holding a pgm)
Whoops, didn't see this -

It's a generic "PCB Holder"; I found it from a seller on eBay. This isn't the exact listing, but it's a very similar (perhaps identical) unit.

However, I've been considering replacing it with a 3D-printed option designed by @TD-Linux , since the generic one is a bit bigger and bulkier than what I need.
 
Thank you for this awesome design. Not the most easy cut, but it fits incredibly well in my Astro 2.
 

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Can anyone already cutting one do one for me?
 
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