Latest Project: Custom Neo Sticks

Well I've been wanting to make a stick that would kind of walk to the middle road between an old style and a bean stick. The goal was to come up with something slim and light, yet durable.

I had been toying for months over enclosures. I had been through countless ideas, drawings, prototypes and nothing was really striking me as practical enough to jump into...
I had thought of things like:
- vacuum table to plastic mold
- build a wood enclosure
- fiberglass enclosure

Then I had kind of settled on doing a sheet metal enclosure as I had acquired a bunch of scrap sheet metal. I just never found the time to sit down and fabricate. I had built a few prototypes out of paper and cardboard, planning out my cuts and bends, but it just wasn't stirring that fire to start.

Finally I had gotten an enclosure from Xian Xi for some other work and when sitting at the workbench I looked over and the idea struck to see how that ABS enclosure might suit. I dug in that night and have now completed two and am very pleased so far.

They are extremely compact, walking that line between a been and old style, lightweight, yet the ABS seems thick enough that they should withstand quite a bit of gaming.

So here are the two initial builds. They both went through a small gathering a week ago and survived quite well. I apologize for the pictures being kinda grainy as I only had the camera phone available when I took these.

Click and image to view in it's full size grainy factor..



The specs:
- All sanwa parts (stick and buttons)
- The chord is a chopped extension as I felt they were too small to comfortably through in a female db15 ... since I was going for portability I just decided to wire in directly
- The button layout is not really from a template but rather a custom layout I finally settled on from a couple cardboard prototypes that I tried out for a while
- LEDs in the side vents to match the color of the buttons... not very bright but just enough cheese to make you smile or cringe (have thought about a toggle off/on for them as well)

very nice.

Looks nice.

Whats the dimensions of that?

Sn00t said:

Looks nice.

Whats the dimensions of that?

Click to expand...

Hmmm I had it written down somewhere but can't remember where I put it now. I'll remeasure them when I get home.

They look great...but what's up with the large bump on the top of the enclosure? It makes buttons A and C looks very odd.

BigTinz said:

They look great...but what's up with the large bump on the top of the enclosure? It makes buttons A and C looks very odd.

Click to expand...

Yeah those enclosures have a cosmetic groove on the top there. I thought of taking part of it down where the buttons would be but decided against it. Since I used screw buttons instead of snap-ins, they can be cranked down pretty well and the groove is negligible except to the eye really. It's also why the screws for the stick are set in closer at the top as opposed to the bottom. In some of the pictures you can see they have slight gaps form the groove. Those I think appear larger than they really are from shadowing, but really, they don't alter the tightness of the button and don't look as odd in person in my opinion.

Awesome looking sticks! They look easy to store.

Koopa64 said:

Awesome looking sticks! They look easy to store.

Click to expand...

Yeah they are actually. The mrs is back from her trip so I have the camera again and can take some better pictures tonight. But you're right, they stack very nicely on the shelf when not in use.

Just make 2 marks on the side of the buttons and shave the part that is on top of that groove so the front of each button is flush with the case as well as the back part of the button. You may also want to shave the other 2 buttons down a hair so they all are the same height, but thats up to you really. Just a quick fix to add a finishing touch so the A and C buttons dont have a gap underneath them

xmods (jwm2) said:

Just make 2 marks on the side of the buttons and shave the part that is on top of that groove so the front of each button is flush with the case as well as the back part of the button. You may also want to shave the other 2 buttons down a hair so they all are the same height, but thats up to you really. Just a quick fix to add a finishing touch so the A and C buttons dont have a gap underneath them

Click to expand...

Hmm that's actually a pretty good idea. I might have to try that out then and see how well that works. I would just hate to eat up a button that way but I guess if I throw them in a vice it would be stable enough to do.

or you could shave the bump itself.

Xian Xi said:

or you could shave the bump itself.

Click to expand...

That will leave abit of a rough area where shaved

That depends on skill. Also I meant directly under the 2 buttons only.

Xian Xi said:

That depends on skill. Also I meant directly under the 2 buttons only.

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Yeah that was my initial thought...

I can't remember if they are thicker under the groove or it's outset.... for some reason I thought it was outset and that's why I was concerned with shaving that area a bit and weakening the plastic that is supporting the button itself as that would be about 50% of the circumference.

I'll have to take a look again tonight to be sure either way.

Xian Xi said:

That depends on skill. Also I meant directly under the 2 buttons only.

Click to expand...

I thought you meant the whole triangular part on the casings top

But yeah, dropping down where the button sits for those 2 buttons to level the line off would look better.

Yeah I guess the other thing would be shaving that part off in a careful enough way that the plastic isn't melting down onto anything else. I would have to mask the area I guess and that should take care of it.

It's offset about 1mm iirc.

looks sweet, I ran across that enclosure a few days ago trying to find a good enclosure for arcade controls/CMVS. I've been looking for stuff large enough for US Happ controls and I haven't had a lot of luck due to how long happ buttons are. Are Sanwa buttons much shorter overall? what about the sticks? that enclosure doesn't look too tall.

Looks great, but I'm not really digging the "It's a Girl/It's a Boy" button/ball top colors.
One of these Mesh Tops would look pretty rad.

Classic arcade color R,Y,G,B buttons would look cool too.

Looks great.
But why is it vented?

It's a desktop enclosure, the vents are for well heat ventilation from whatever electronics you decide to put in it.

Finch said:

I've been looking for stuff large enough for US Happ controls and I haven't had a lot of luck due to how long happ buttons are. Are Sanwa buttons much shorter overall? what about the sticks? that enclosure doesn't look too tall.

Click to expand...

New Happ sticks are terrible
I recommend just getting a sanwa with a bat top if that's the style you're shooting for.
As for buttons, I could have swore I saw some Japanese short buttons with concave surfaces (like Happ buttons) but I can't seem to find any now. I recently ordered some buttons from Happ and the green buttons are now a crappy looking faded green too...

Fett said:

Looks great, but I'm not really digging the "It's a Girl/It's a Boy" button/ball top colors.
One of these Mesh Tops would look pretty rad.

Classic arcade color R,Y,G,B buttons would look cool too.

Click to expand...

The it's a girl, it's a boy color setup was done because it's for exactly that. I picked out my color choice and the mrs picked out hers.

An MVS color scheme would work out I guess, just not a fan of sticks having a setup like that as they just kinda seem messy to my eye. The only ones I like so far that have had that color setup would be ones like grave did where the top of the enclosure is an mini mvs overlay.

Those look similar to the size of the elecom/mayflash ps2/ps3 sticks.
Its bothering me, so i have to ask. Whats the height of the JLF shaft from the base of the case to the start of the ball thread? I only ask because it looks pretty high in the pics. Maybe 25-27mm

AJtheMishima said:

Those look similar to the size of the elecom/mayflash ps2/ps3 sticks.
Its bothering me, so i have to ask. Whats the height of the JLF shaft from the base of the case to the start of the ball thread? I only ask because it looks pretty high in the pics. Maybe 25-27mm

Click to expand...

Approximate dimensions.... Lazy night so they aren't anything precise.