In January 2008 my geeky, yet awesome brother told me he was working on what was to become his first arcade cabinet: Project Mame. He showed me his plans and offered to work out the blueprint and advice on building my very own machine. Being a total arcade freak I was hooked from the start, but I was a bit reluctant since I had no experience in building such a machine. Luckily my brother convinced me and even though it took a lot of work and sawdust in my appartment I have never once regretted my decision.

I got over my my initial fear of doing my own project and since I always have been a fan of the old classic and a bit beefy Taito cabinet from the early 80's, I decided that my cabinet should have the same outline, but have a smaller footprint due to the LCD monitor.

My brother worked out the design and blueprints according to a Taito Jungle Hunt cabinet I liked and with the blueprint I was ready to build my very own arcade cabinet. The TaitoRama.

For the rounded part of the cabinet I used a nail as the center and a pencil attached to a string to draw a half circle.

The sabresaw eagerly awaits!

Since the two cabinet sides are identical I transferred the outline of the finished cabinet side to the MDF/HDF board, so the two sides would be absolutely identical. Then I cut the second board with the sabre saw. 

After that I sanded the two sides of the board and rounded the edges facing outwards. You could use a milling machine if you got one, but I used sandpaper and elbow grease.

Finally I drew and cut out the bottom of the cabinet in the 16mm MDF/HDF board. It's basically just a big square.

If you decide to make your own MAME cabinet using my drawings, please feel free to make a donation,  as I'm trying to raise enough money to make a new up-right cabinet, that's hard to do as a student.