Atari 'Volcano' Cones - Repo'd
The idea of PhilsArcade was to create a workshop to help the arcade community as a whole. I’m please to announce that our first product is now available to order and can be bought directly from our shop.
The Reproduction Workshop
I’ve been looking for something fairly easy to start our Arcade Repoing with and looking at a lot of various items out there. Something that kept popping up from time to time in forums was people looking for certain type of joysticks, rollers, switches, etc…, and having difficulty locating them, or having to order from the United States, thus the wait to get the part as well as the cost of possible import taxes, or companies not wanting to send overseas.
From this I had taken any opportunity to collect a number of these parts worldwide, especially in the U.S., in order to have the items to hand for when I can get enough time to work out how to repo them.
Trying to find a simple first item took a bit of time, but ultimately it was the Atari switches and ‘Volcano’ button cones that looked the easiest.
These come in two different sizes, tall and short and in two different materials, metal and plastic. The switches themselves are a different story, so I’ll leave them for later and see how these progress.
The hardest part of creating these was trying to work out the thread pitch used for the internal screw section. I went through a number of tap sizes in order to get the correct one. Each seemed to be slightly too much or too little. After a number of tries, I finally came across one that is mostly found in the United States and most companies over here don’t supply, or even ever heard of it.
A bottom tap was needed as the threads go all the way to the bottom, so the tap I eventually settled on, I made a slight variation in order to ensure the thread went right to the bottom, and the top of the tap could protrude through the button hole at the top, which is smaller than the threaded hole. Thankfully it all worked out and are now ready for purchase in our shop.
With this now out of the way, I’m looking at the actual switches themselves and hopefully can make a start on these. Keep an eye out and come back from time to time as the reproduction work grows.