I got word today that the CNC cutting of the cabinet was finished yesterday and the parts were picked up today. There’s still some work that Haruman has to do this weekend, but the word is that I ought to have it on its way here next week!

In the mean time I’ve been, while doing things like working on the Cupcade, getting the rest of the bits and pieces here. In the last week, the T-molding for the top of the table arrived, as did the 1/4″ glass for the top.

I also spent a good bit of time over the weekend working on designs for the control panel overlays. These are the graphics that get printed onto the control panel surface, both to indicate button use and to jazz them up.

I went through a lot of iterations trying to figure out what I wanted. I mocked up examples as simple as a black background, to muted ones with gray textures or “futuristic” grids and things like that. I’ve seen quite a gamut of things people have done online, usually a bit over the top with clip art.

The design I finally settled on is… well… deliberately over the top, but hopefully in a classier way than putting 50 different renderings of video game characters and logos splattered all over it.

So these are the “final” designs. I created them in Inkscape. They’re a hodge-podge of some graphics I found online, some clip-art, some effects I put together, and other bits. For example, the plasma “burst” around the trackball is actually an X-ray image of Cassiopeia A taken by the Chandra x-ray space telescope.

They’re taller than the designs I posted before because they’re intended to wrap around to the front of the control panel. With a bit of geometry, I calculated how the face panels would align as the overlay wrapped around the edge. It remains to be seen if I got it right. In theory it should be millimeter accurate.

I intend to get them color printed at a Kinkos or something, verify their layout exactly matches the cutouts on the wood, and then order polycarbonate laminated prints online of them. It means a longer process to get the final prints, but I don’t want to drop a hundred bucks on the overlays and discover they’re not quite right.

I should also mention that the “red dot” on the end panels will be on the wall-facing side of the panel, not the front edge. So if I decide to swap which end of the table the spinner and trackball are on, I’ll be reversing the background on those.