Thiking about the thickness of the top piece…you guys says a 1/2" total thickness is good…but with 1/2" - 1/8 (plexi) = 3/8". How can I screw the joystick into a 3/8" thick board? Well I mean, is it gonna be strong enough to hold on tight? There will be some pressure by the player when using the joystick doesn’t it?
Depends on how cleanly you want to do it, and for these suggestions, Im assuming you will be using the plexi. Please not that I mentioned 1/2" plywood, plus the plexi, not 1/2" plywood minus the plexi 
You just do not want the total width of the top control panel to be > 3/4". It seems best around 5/8" or so.
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Countersunk bolts. You drill a hole the width of the bolt threads through the wood, and a wider hole on the top, only as wide and as deep as the head of the bolt. Since its recessed, the plexi will smoothly go over top of it. This should leave 3/8’s or so thickness of the plywood for the bolt head to grip. This is why I said 1/2" plywood; doing this with MDF would tear the wood apart in no time with little abuse. If you want more stability, widen the countersink hole even bigger, and put a large washer under the bolt head. There would be a hair less thickness of board for the bolt to grip, but the surface area with be much larger. Im sure they make drill bits for countersinking bolts, but I havent seen 'em personally.
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Screws. With about a 3/4" screw, you should be able screw the stick to the wood from underneath until it almost pokes through the top.
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Carriage bolts. Drill a hole all the way through the wood and plexi, carriage bolt the joystick to the wood. Not too preffered, since some people find the carriage bolt head distracting. However, it is the strongest method, and the one used in almost all american arcade cabinets.
What I’m going to start doing in the future is using 5/8" MDF with 1/8" Lexan and use 3/4" T-molding to have a nice flush top. Ir’ll still be strong and it’ll hide the edge of the lexan.
Using washers on the top with countersunk bolts for the joystick is a great idea.
what gauge wire do people normally use?
Definitely stranded wire; solid wire is too inflexible, and will put strain on your solder points and endless headache. I believe the wire I use is 22 guage.
I know, I wanted to have a lot of space when playing 2 players and since I play all the time with my brother and he’s not a small guy so…need space
I like big sizes too cause I’m not small either…
And wire definitely go for 22 gauge stranded. See link.
http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog_name=CTLG&product_id=278-1218
Here’s a picture of the joystick I completed last night. It’s nothing fancy but it works. I used the tutorials from Kevin’s Badass sticks site, the model 2 box.
Also when I started playing mvc2 I noticed that it was harder to do fireball motions on the left side than the right side. So I looked at the joystick’s cherry red switches and noticed that the switch for the right was a little farther away from the middle than the switch for the left. So I tried to add a little piece of paper there to make up for the small gap and it improved it a little but it didn’t fix the problem totally and I was wondering if anyone else had that problem? It’s a competition joystick.
Nice joystick but I would’ve made the top a bit longer(more room under buttons and joystick) for wrist support. As for the problem it sounds odd…Try replacing the switch with another. Can you take a close up pic (well lit)of the joystick underneath? It’d be easier to diagnose problem that way.
How did you make the top piece stick to the base? Glue only? cause I don’t see any screws. Is glue only strong enough?
Should I like, screw the plexi to the top piece first, then use more screws to screw both to the base? Won’t there be too many screws? Like minimum 2 for plexi to wood, then at least 4 for wood to base… Need quick answer, I am doing it right now. Thx
He might’ve used cleats on the inside. Basically wooden blocks used like L brackets. They hold pretty tight too.
Another option is screwing in from the top and counter sinking the screws and filling the holes with wood putty. That’s the way I do it.
Ah…sh…! I cracked my plexi while sanding the corner…what should I do? Is there a way I can make it less visible? cause if I cut the corner shorter, I will have to change All my base’s board sizes since I made it to fit the exact size of my top piece.
Were you sanding it with a jackhammer?? 
j/k
Seriously how big is the crack? It’ll be easier to help knowing how big it is.
Well it’s not really a crack…the corner kinda broke completly :(. I’ll try to post pic tomorrow.
The reason why it broke is because I was using a rotative sander and sanded it perpendicularly to the plexi and wood screwed together… what a stupid error of me. It was supposed to be almost over and now gave me like 2 more hours of labor if I want to resize the stick. Any advice?
Maybe sand the box down to size? I’d personally start with a new piece of Lexan (you did use Lexan right???) and redrill/cut. Just cause I hate sanding.
Trying to solder the wires to the PCB but it doesn’t stick to the board… only needs a little pull and it’s gone… What did you guys do?
And another question, can we solder on already soldered places? like where it’s factory soldered? I’m asking this for the shoulder buttons, dunno where to solder them or can I only attach a wire to the existing wire?
- which pcb are you using?
If it’s any of the type where there’s nothing on the other side you can drill small 1/16 holes right on the traces so you can slip the wire through the tiny holes. It makes soldering a lot easier. Also you may have to scrape doen to bare copper. What kind of solder and stuff are you using? - Yeah you can solder to places where there’s already solder on the pcb just be careful not to create bridges when heating up the solder that’s already there. You don’t want 2 different points touching.
My custom sanwa stick and case =). Sanwa Flash, Octagonal gate, and Bat Top!
I’m using some cheap controls from ebay with double force instead of dual shock cheap stuff… oh well. There already a few place that copper is visible but only for up/down/left/right and X/O/S/T only…oh wait, I’ll post a pic
http://www.cardomain.com/member_pages/show_image.pl?fg=FFFFFF&bg=000000&migration=1&image=http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/9/web/633000-633999/633543_23_full.jpg
Does that mean I can directly solder on those three solder points (in the red cercle) for the shoulder buttons or should I use the grey wires coming out from behind?
http://www.cardomain.com/member_pages/show_image.pl?fg=FFFFFF&bg=000000&migration=1&image=http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/9/web/633000-633999/633543_24_full.jpg
Is that the start solder point or it’s the ground? cause I don’t see any for the select so why would there be one for start? Sry, I’m kinda confused…