Sega Mini Cab Conversions

[virtvic]

The girly with the rifle has a great set of cans.

HTH

[Spectre]

[NGAES]

Gotta dip my d*ck in cold water after reading this thread..

[Pete]

Be nice to see these at Replay Big Versus vs Mini Versus

[FrancoB]

Indeed it would. I've got just under two months

I know I can fit at least one in my car Wonder if I can get two in

[Pete]

Surely they can stand upright like passengers

[FrancoB]

Found a photo from when I picked one of them up.



They're a fair bit deeper than they are wide IIRC. Judging from that photo I think with them both on their back they might just fit

I'm back home tomorrow so I'll check.

[Johnnychaos]

Careful with the handles on the back. I laid one of mine on its back to transport and they bent slightly.

[backfield22]

I'm pretty near you Fran. We could do a VW convoy up to Manchester. One cab in each car.

[FrancoB]

Ah, home sweet home

Careful with the handles on the back. I laid one of mine on its back to transport and they bent slightly.

Good call dude, I'll remove them before transporting them. Thanks.

I'm pretty near you Fran. We could do a VW convoy up to Manchester. One cab in each car.

That's a very kind offer bud! I just had a measure though and looks like they should just about fit ok!

When are you going up there? Are you taking the troop with you?


Been up since 2am this morning travelling back but I don't want to go to sleep now as it will mess me up for tonight. I'm messing with the cabs whilst the Mrs is sorting out the washing in the cases etc

I got a few components for the service panels ordered whilst I was away and they should be here in the next day or so. Once that's done I can get them wired.

Fingers crossed I can get everything finished in time!

[opt2not]

Indeed it would. I've got just under two months

Want the artwork finished before then? At least for one of the cabs?

Right now I've been working at my own pace, but if you want these done before Replay, I can light a fire under my ****.

[FrancoB]

Hey man. Yeah I think we would be pushing it to get both done, from your results above I can appreciate how long it must take to do your thang and really don't want you to have to rush. I would rather not do a rush job on my end of things either.

[opt2not]

Truthfully, I've always worked better with a deadline.
I'll turn up the priority on this one. Let's try to get both fully arted up for Replay! October 12 right?

[FrancoB]

Unfortunately I've had a lot of things happen and I've not been able to work on these recently. There is no way I'll have them ready for Replay now I'm afraid

I've spoke to opt2not and were continuing to get some artwork ideas together. Once we have a clearer idea of graphics/colour schemes I can get some joysticks and buttons ordered from Aki. I'm also going to get some of the Hirose edge connectors from them so I can't do a lot on the wiring side of things until then.

I have had chance to make some progress this weekend though I had some fairly major plans for the marquee holders so I thought I would get to work on them as I knew they would take a while.

I had come up with a few designs for holder profiles a while ago:



I eventually decided to make a version of 'B'. A couple of days of hard graft later I've ended up with this lot:






They're similar to the Aero City holders. I decided to go for that style as they are one of my favorite designs with having the large beveled edge

Here's a before and after shot of the beveled edge:



The holder on the right shows the raw edge after cutting the 45 degree angle. It takes two to three hours to polish one of them up to end up with something like the one on the left.

Mounted:



There are a couple of extra parts I needed to make for these holders:



I wanted to be able to light them up like the Aero City holders but as I can only bolt the marquees to the top of the cab it wouldn't be possible to light them using a light box like the Aero and Pony 25. Instead of inserting the marquee holder into a light box I thought I would try and build the lighting into the marquee holder itself.

The idea was to insert some LED strips into the base of holder. I cut a recess in the bottom of the marquee holder for clearance and then made these 'LED mounts':



They're made from 5mm and 3mm white acrylic. The marquee holder is made from 6mm and 2mm clear acrylic so they end up being the same thickness. I routed a slot in one of the pieces so I could feed the power wires through. I used a jig I made a while ago which is really useful for cutting slots.



I mounted some double density LED strips to the top of the LED mounts and wired them up in parallel so that there was only one set of wires I needed to feed through the mount. The C&D cab will have a lot of green in it so I chose green LEDs for that and blue ones for the 'Mini City' cab:





It's always hard to capture LED light on camera but they are lovely and bright

I then needed to drill a hole in the marquee holder mount and the cab itself. Luckily there was just enough room to drill a 4mm hole at the front of the cab.





I could then install everything. You can see from the cab on the left on the photo below that the mounted LEDs inside the marquee holder recess and below the top of the metal marquee holder mount. The curved acrylic piece is then bolted on the back as shown on the cab on the right. This is to cover it up and stop light shining out the back:



Test time!








Excuse the grubby paw prints, I'll give them a good clean before they are finally mounted.

The LEDs are actually that bright that they shine through the white acrylic, I think I'll line the inside of that piece with some aluminum foil.



It's been a hell of a lot of work on this part alone but I'm really pleased with how it turned out

[pubjoe]

Loads of hard work and awesomeness

Wow!

I tip my cup to you, old bean.

[sombetzki]

Wow... looks amazing dude!

[IDCHAPPY]

You're a crazy genius dude

[Spectre]

Holy **** amazeshitabricktasticballs batman

[crunchywasp]

Exceptionally nice work Mr Bizzle

[FrancoB]

Kind words broheimendudes, kind words indeed