Cupholder Design

I wanted to go into the design of the cupholders, which I think is pretty clever. I found inspiration in this video, where a guy is showing the features of his own game table:

He doesn’t go into any detail in the actual mechanisms that make it work, however, so I had to deduce it on my own.

I knew I needed something similar to a drawer slide for it to ride on. I tried several different short slides from Amazon but they all had a bunch of play (side-to-side movement) that would not have been ideal. I eventually found these, which are more like a linear rail and are rock solid:

Then I looked into a push-to-latch mechanism and found this one which I’m also going to use for the drawers:

Then it became a matter of figuring out how to arrange everything so it would work in the table. Here’s the cup holder module in the open and closed position:

If we go into x-ray mode we can see the linear rail underneath:

• 
• 
• 
• 

The only problem here is that the rail is actually a bit too long and pokes out the back! They do make slightly shorter models, but then the rail doesn’t extend far enough to open the cup holder all of the way. So to accommodate that I’ll need to cut little pockets in the side rail going around the table to allow them to poke out the back:

And what’s that red thing inside the pocket at left? That’s the push-to-latch mechanism. It will be attached to bracket that goes around the leg:

The latches for the drawers will lay flat on the base:

There are 14 latches total in the table, 6 drawers and 8 cupholders. Why two extra cup holders? The dimensions worked out such that each player station is 30" wide, with a 6" cupholder for each. But in order to make the ends of the table symmetrical, I need a cupholder on both sides of the player tray! I’m going to replace the second cupholders on the ends with a dice tower!