Guns-A-Blazin

A little more progress! Got the overlay applied to the control panel this afternoon. Just to refresh your memory (since it’s been over a year since the last time we talked about this) Scott Prior at MameMarquees LLC printed the CP Overlay for me (they are now Game On Grafix). I am very happy with the product, his service, and the way it held up rolled up in a tube for over a year before I applied it.

The trick was how to line up the artwork with the holes in the CP. We took a couple of extra buttons and cut the fingers that hold the micro switch off the bottom. Then we carefully indicated the center of the bottom of the button and drilled a hole with about the smallest drill in our drill set (and one we had two of).

Using a button housing nut to set the depth we inserted these into two button holes in the CP, one in the Player 1 group and one in the Player 2 group. We drilled the same hole in the CP overlay at the crosshairs for the same holes (we were smart enough to put crosshairs in the centers of ALL hole in the overlay art before having it printed). Then it was fairly easy to locate the holes in the button bases in the CP with a drill sticking through the holes in the overlay (a small finish nail would work too). Once everything was located properly we peeled back some of the backing on one side and adhered it (we had wiped everything down with alcohol first to make sure it was clean, oil free and dry) and then did the standard “pull the backing off while rubbing it down” move to adhere the rest. A wallpaper roller helped to make sure every inch was well stuck.

Using a click blade knife with a fresh (read sharp) tip we trimmed the edges even with the edges of the CP and carefully cut along the line between the CP and the T-molding on the front edge. Then it was just the effort to remount the controls and:

It looks fantastic in person too!

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