Custom stick gallery

Sweet mother of god that is beautiful. /versus/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

Your stick is alright, BMF. /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif I can't even make one myself. It might look relatively cheaper compared to the one following, but hey, not everyone is an artist like Catch22. /versus/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

Catch, are you using 1inch (3/4" actual) thick wood or have you been using thicker stuff?

 

lacquer thinner will eat thru a factory paint job of your favorite automoblie. Try Heirloom latex polyurethane and use 3 coats and see what kind of finnish you get. P.S. dont forget to sand.

 

lacquer thinner is too damn strong. When I realized I needed to remove all the paint from my base after the thinner took some off, I actually used the lacquer thinner to remove the rest of the paint. It worked really fast and without much effort- but I did it outside because it had some strong fumes.

I'm going to use spray lacquer for now, and then experiement with polyurethane and polycrylic. I should have a stick or two done by tomorrow (one japanese and one american).

 

Very cool

 

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teetu said:

Catch, are you using 1inch (3/4" actual) thick wood or have you been using thicker stuff?

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Yes, I use 3/4" MDF. You can glue two of them, or other sizes mixed an matched to get the thickness of wood you want.

 

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Catch22 said:

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teetu said:

Catch, are you using 1inch (3/4" actual) thick wood or have you been using thicker stuff?

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Yes, I use 3/4" MDF. You can glue two of them, or other sizes mixed an matched to get the thickness of wood you want.

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I'm curious, why did you switch from wood to MDF?

 

MDF is wood. MDF also, since it's manufactured wood chips that's compressed, it does not splinter.

 

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Catch22 said:

MDF is wood. MDF also, since it's manufactured wood chips that's compressed, it does not splinter.

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Is MDF the same as "particle board"?

Also, (and this is open to anyone who's making sticks), have you had any luck mounting a joystick on anything other than a small, self-contained box? I guess I mean, have you ever mounted the joystick controls on something bigger or smaller than your standard box?

Of course, not that there's anything wrong with your boxes - they look sturdy as hell! I'm just interested in seeing if people had done anything that wasn't a solo stick or a cabinet.

Keep up the great work y'all

 

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MDF is wood. MDF also, since it's manufactured wood chips that's compressed, it does not splinter

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MDF is great because it is easily cut and sanded, doesn't have knots or grain and is flat and strong. But I don't consider MDF to be wood per se; it is a wood product, wood fibre glued under pressure.

I think when someone thinks of a product being made out of wood a different image will pop into their head than if you admit to making it out of fibreboard.

GE

 

Update /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Over the weekend I put together my 'box' for the new stick. Got around to getting 2 coats of paint on it yesterday evening - upon inspection this morning I've got some drip marks that need to be sanded and I'll apply a third coat of paint as well. No pics yet, sorry. It's not the best paint job, I'll admit, as I am able to see where I filled the countersunk screws a little bit. Will more coats of paint eliminate this? In retrospect I think I should have applied more filler - although it seemed at the time as though I had them covered well - I did 2 applications with sanding in between. Hmph.

For mounting the hardware, I've used a scrap piece of laminate flooring that's been cut to 11x7 (I've gone an inch wider than GE's stick) and I think it will work out really well. Laminate is extremely sturdy and easy to work with.

GE - I picked up a piece of Lexan at Home Depot (11x14), but they wouldn't cut it for me. It's about 1/8 inch thick and the guy suggested I cut it with an exacto knife, using repeated scoring. How thick is your piece? I know you mentioned drilling your holes etc, into the Lexan without issue - did you use ordinary wood spades?

<font color="yellow">.cheers.</font>

 

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Llanfair said:

Update /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Over the weekend I put together my 'box' for the new stick. Got around to getting 2 coats of paint on it yesterday evening - upon inspection this morning I've got some drip marks that need to be sanded and I'll apply a third coat of paint as well. No pics yet, sorry. It's not the best paint job, I'll admit, as I am able to see where I filled the countersunk screws a little bit. Will more coats of paint eliminate this? In retrospect I think I should have applied more filler - although it seemed at the time as though I had them covered well - I did 2 applications with sanding in between. Hmph.


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I was struggling a lot with hiding the screw holes and seams between adjacent pieces of wood. All I can say is don't rely on paint to hide or cover up anything, because a majority of the time it won't. Make sure you are using multiple grains of sandpaper if you are going for the seamless look. For example, going from 60 grit, to 200, to 400 won't do it. What's cool about MDF is it is easier to sand and get that smooth, seamless finish (in my opinion).

As for particle board vs mdf, particle board is a poor product in comparison to mdf.

 

an exacto knife, firm grip and constant pressure is all you really need to cut lexan. When you've made the appropriate cut you can bend it off.

I used a Hole Saw attachment for my drill to cut the holes. It works perfectly well. I have wood spades but never tried them, they aren't meant for plastic, but they might work well enough.


GE

 

While recovering from the paint disaster of my first base, I slapped this one together real quick. I'm not too crazy about it, but I learned a lot from it being my first stick. This is obviously an american happ stick, and my other one (hopefully done by tomorrow) is the sanwa one.

I'm not good at making underlays- but I liked the art from ssf2x on GBA, so I ripped the art with an emulator. Unfortunately they were too small, so I threw them all together in photoshop which worked out ok. When I get more time I'll organize it better and make it look nice.

It's my first, of hopefully many. I kept things simple, but managed to crack the plexi on the LAST hole (I still can't find lexan anywhere). It's a pretty small crack, and it doesn't even show up in the picture.

These were spare parts I had around, hence the 2 convex &4 concave buttons. I'll probably use all black comp buttons and a comp stick when I get around to ordering.

I wanted a clean look on the base, so I used corner irons on the inside for added support. The screw type happ buttons allowed for the clean top, GE style.

BIG thanks to Catch for his tutorial, and everyone in the thread for the tips and ideas.

 

Nice Job. Looking forward to the Sanwa stick.

GE

 

I finally had enough time to finish the first stick I started working on (finished my second stick already). If it wasn't for Catch's guide I would have been pretty lost on the japanese stick- his system works well. My japanese stick has a much lower profile than my american stick, mostly due to the parts not being so big. I wasn't happy about having to use screws in the plexi to hold it down, but I carefully countersunk them so they don't stick out at all.

As you can see the underlay for the two are very similar, because I was trying to find an arrangement that works. I'll probably scrap both underlays and find something better, but at least I tried putting them together on my own.

I used pcbs from psone dualshock controllers, cause I'm not big on 3rd party stuff anymore.

I learned a lot from these two, and am going to start on two new ones pretty soon with a lot of changes and revisions. I'm going to also use the same techniques used to make some jamma cabinets (american and japanese sit down).

 

Good Job. I always laugh at the size difference between a stick with a happ contoller and a sanwa.

My next real project is a cabinet as well. I'm almost through the design for a sit down game/jukebox cab that will go well in my house. Should take about two weeks to make the actual cabinet. Can't wait.

GE

 

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GodEater said:

Good Job. I always laugh at the size difference between a stick with a happ contoller and a sanwa.

My next real project is a cabinet as well. I'm almost through the design for a sit down game/jukebox cab that will go well in my house. Should take about two weeks to make the actual cabinet. Can't wait.

GE

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What kind of cab do you want to make? I was going to make a mame one at first, but now I realized that it's so easy to make it into a jamma cab (there's nothing like the real thing). I might make console powered cab too.

These guys at arcadecontrols have some very inspiring designs. I just need to get a decent rgb monitor for the cab, but I wish I had money for a wells garner. I'm gonna buy a jamma harness from bob roberts, use a spare PC power supply, some fuses, mdf, and I'm good to go. Of course it wouldn't hurt to get some arcade pcbs either.

I'm still going to keep making joysticks though, hopefully have some new designs up in a week or two.

 

Finally! /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Llanfair's new stick

The stick is a Sanwa stick but it has a North American bat style handle. Imo, it's the best of both worlds - japanese feel for directions, etc, but it takes to the hand like NA stick. So far, I find the stick incredibly accurate and very responsive - no complaints. The nice thing about the japanese sticks is the box for this stick is only 2.75 inches thick. The buttons are Happ Competition buttons and the playing surface is 10x7 - approximately - it's actually 9 7/8 x 6 7/8... /versus/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

<font color="yellow">.cheers.</font>