arcade stick

this is a printable enclosure for an arcade stick!  it's definitely not yet ready for public consumption, but I decided I wanted to design one and I had fun doing it.

edit 9/10/23: I created a second revision of this model to fix the worst of the design issues.  the whole fragile inset/top plate combination has been replaced with a single top plate, and now the tactile buttons at the top of the stick straddle a support brace holding them in place.  at the time of the first print I didn't realize, but the stick base was warping significantly and that was the cause of most of my fitment issues.  this second revision also has problems with warping that I need to sort out; if you've got ideas I would love to hear them.

here's the onshape project if you wanna mess around with it. 

bill of materials:

• 1x Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT lever
• 8x Sanwa OBSF-30 buttons
• 6x 6mm x 6mm x 8mm tactile buttons
• 10x M3 heat set inserts
• a raspberry pi pico
• a USB-C breakout board.  I used this one but I think it's a cheap clone of Sparkfun's USB-C breakout if you wanna use that one.
• a 0.96" 128x64 OLED display.  I used this one but I believe they're pretty comparable in dimensions across manufacturers?
• a bunch of M3 cap head machine screws and washers (haven't counted them yet, sorry).
• some M2 machine screws and nuts.
• a handful of M2x8 and M3x8 self-tapping screws.
• depending on your personal taste you can do the wiring a little differently.  but I used:
  • a preassembled Sanwa JLF wiring harness.
  • some 0.1" header pins.
  • a dupont connector kit.  you'll need 4 1x4 connector housings, 1 1x2 housing, and 20 or so pins.
  • a bunch of 2.8mm quick disconnect terminals for the pushbuttons.
  • a bit of breakaway protoboard to serve as a star grounding point.

tools you'll need:

• a soldering iron
• a crimping tool
• a screwdriver with a flex extension
• an x-acto knife
• a printer with a build plate area of at least 260x170mm

assembly guide:

• make sure your printer can print things square in the X-Y plane (mine can't, as I discovered!) I think printing the box and top plate with the same edge facing forward will help to give yourself the best chance of success if your printer is a little out of square.
• print one of everything and test-fit it.  I used polymaker polyterra PLA+, with 15% infill for the case and 30% infill for the top plate; I recommend printing the button inset on a raft with the lowest separation distance you can manage while still being able to remove the raft easily.
• insert the heat sets into the case.  you'll need 4 in the lever mount bosses, and 6 around the edge of the top plate.
• remove the sacrificial supports in the screw holes around the edge of the top plate with an x-acto knife.
• test-fit the top plate and case.  even if it's not quite right, as long as you can bolt the top plate into place I was able to relax the fit slightly by setting the case upside-down on my printer's bed under a couple books and turning the bed heater on to 65 celsius for a little bit.
• fit the OLED display into place with pins facing inward, then fix it into place with screws driven outward through the display, case, and then nuts.  (you can also just apply a dab of super glue to the corners of the display and press it into the bracket.  that's what I did because I realized I didn't have any M2 nuts.)
• connect the USB-C breakout board to the raspberry pi pico.  the USB interface is mostly broken out to the test points on the back of the pico (thanks raspberry pi spy!): connect GND on the breakout board to TP1, D- to TP2, D+ to TP3, and VBUS to pin 40.
• solder some header pins into the appropriate pins of the pico for all of the buttons.  you'll also want to connect a star ground or anything else you want to solder directly to the pico at this point.
• make sure all the wires between the USB-C breakout and the pico are clear of the screw bosses, then secure the breakout board to the bottom of the case with M3 self-tappers, and secure the pico to the bottom of the case with M2 self-tappers.  you'll need the flex extension for your screwdriver to secure the USB-C breakout.
• draw the rest of the owl (finish wiring the stick.)
• put the tactile buttons in the button tray in the corner of the top plate, then place the button insert over them and clip it across the top plate.
• install GP2040-CE to the pico.
• do a button check with the OLED, then fix the pin mappings.
• bolt the top plate on.

list of known issues:

• the wire slots in the bottom of the button tray in the top right of the top plate are too narrow to pass wires through, let alone dupont connectors.  it's also impossible to daisy chain the grounds between buttons unless you want to cut the wires to remove them from the case.  I'm going to redesign those slots to go sideways instead of up and down to hopefully fix this.  (edit: fixed in rev B)
• I need to use some fancier heat set hole features than the ones currently in the model; you can insert the heat sets off-center, which throws off the hole pattern enough that nothing goes together right.
• I've tried a variety of snap fits on the button insert and I can't get them to be sturdy enough to not break.  (edit: fixed in rev B)
• there's more wires inside a fight stick than I expected, so you kinda gotta squeeze stuff into the case when you install the top plate.  I shrunk its height down pretty aggressively and I probably should've been less aggressive.  if you're using quick disconnects for the pushbuttons, you should bend over the ends about 45 degrees for extra clearance.  (edit: slightly mitigated in rev B)
• the position of the USB connector cutout on the back is a couple millimeters too low. you can rework it with a hand file.  (edit: fixed in rev B)
• the screw hole features around the OLED display are a millimeter or so too tall to fit the display and needed some filing.