Posted by Jonathan the Red on January 28, 2002 at 11:54:50:
In Reply to: Pushbutton Spacing posted by simpleman46 on January 28, 2002 at 00:16:59:
Mine are mounted 1.5" center-to-center. Seems a good distance, with one very big caveat.
The "player start" buttons (the ones with the little people on them) are inexplicably designed so that when the people are right-side up, the microswitches are oriented "east-west", that is, parallel to the line of buttons. This causes the prongs on the microswitches to bang into the microswitches next to them.
If you only have two buttons, no problem. You can disassemble one of them and rotate the face 180 degrees (thanks, OSCAR and Mr Arcade) so the microswitches will be back-to-back. If you have more than two buttons (which I do), it's a little less simple, but still workable. You can bend the microswitch prongs up to about a 45 degree angle (thanks, J_K_M_A_N) and you'll be fine.
My wood seems plenty strong with the 1.5" separation. My panel is made of 3/4" MDF, and given the amount of the button that sticks out, probably up to 1" thick would still work.
Hope this helps.