Gaming Pod Construction > Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
By: John Baez
Now that the basic frame is finished, it's time to clean up the details. These tabs will form the support for the power supply housing.
The metal angle is epoxied to the fitting for placement, then drilled and tapped. Everything should be held together cleanly once the covers are in place.
Tapping for the power supply cover. Once these four holes were threaded, I made a template for the top cover so I wouldn't need to bring the pod back from the Con once it was installed.
Bottom fittings being drilled and tapped for the cover braces. Yep that's the deep black of night - only a few hours to go before Wednesday. Man am I tired.
Once the fittings are done I move to the controller stands. Because we want to showcase four player Castle Crashers, we need to use the wireless controllers. I used 3/8" thick steel disks for the bases. They are torch cut, so they need a lot more clean up than I was expecting. Get out the cheap-o body grinder from Home Depot...
A couple of quick coats of primer, then the disks will be painted, drilled and tapped for a Speed-rail base to support an upright pipe. The controllers, although wireless, will be attached to the finished stands.
I went back and forth a lot on the design of the security for the test kits. The solution doesn't use the typical Plexiglas box because we wanted to present the hardware as you would use it at home. 1/8" plates of aluminium are water jet cut and held together by aluminium dowels. They locked down in back by the cross rod and the top support braces.
The dowels need to be precise since the hardware will be close to the player and any imperfections will be obvious and ugly. A plumbers copper tubing cutter gets the job done, though I wish I had a spare blade!
Just a few hours before the show opens. Tim comes to the rescue to tap out all of the dowels. Not an enviable job since we don't want any tool marks on the dowels. Emil is off camera popping the backs off of 10 wireless controllers to install the stainless steel rope to keep people from walking off with the controllers.
The dowels are done and the cross braces are drilled out. Amazingly, with an hour to go, everything fits together nicely the first time! We throw it all into the U-haul van and race down to the convention center.
The Pod installed at the show before it opened to the public. The trays for the controllers didn't get finished in time for this shot, but they are finished now and we'll be testing them at PAX 2006
