Zee Sim Rig

[Zeeflyboy]

Right so thought I'd give some more details as I make the next actuators, especially since it's using an off the shelf screw and nut which makes it easier to replicate... The only thing that would be a very difficult without a lathe would be turning down the screw for the bearing block, but you can order screws with end machining if needed.

Here's a selection of most of the parts (mainly missing 4mm steel guide rods x3 and a 6mm to 6mm flexible coupling) :

32mm OD, 30mm ID CF tube
12mm OD, 10mm ID stainless steel tube
8mm trapezoidal lead screw (2mm lead, not the more common 8mm lead)
30mm m3 standoffs
6x19x6mm deep groove bearings and a couple of m6 washers to go between them.
3D printed parts (black parts are printed in a CF PETG composite, orange is Armadillo semi-rigid TPU, grey guide is just matt PLA)
Zhengke ZGA37RG 12v 1000rpm motor





First up turning down one end of the screws that it fits through the bearing block. A good tip here that I learned a while ago was to take it down to just a few tenths of a mm above where you need it to be, then use some 600 grit to massage it down to size until you can slip the bearing on... stops you overshooting end ending up with a loose fit.




Next I used a 10mm reamer to just make sure the ID of the steel tube was right to make fitting the nut easier.




That done, flipped it around and gave it a quick polish with some scotch pad followed by 2000 grit.




Polished section vs unpolished (that bit is getting cut off anyway!):




To finish the tube off, I just cut to length with an angle grinder and then popped it into the lathe again to ream the other end as above, as we'll be making a small part to attach to the rig.

Then it was simply a case of smacking the nut into the tube (it should be a tight fit, I used a hammer and some wood to avoid damaging the end of the tube or the nut) along with some thread lock/sleeve lock to help make sure it doesn't go anywhere.




Assemble the end bushing (when I eventually get a multmaterial printer it would be cool to be able to print this sort of thing as a single piece) and ream the ever-living poop out of it with a 12mm reamer until it's a snug but smooth slide fit on the 12mm rod:








Put the motor section together and we're most of the way towards building an actuator! More to come later.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers


The wife just gave birth a few days ago so that has slightly reduced play time, but I did get a chance to finish off the actuator:

So picking up where we left off, first I machined the end nut... this again is a press fit into the shaft with some sleeve lock, drilled with a 6mm hole to allow it to attach to the upper module.






Also remembered to make this little part - just stops the screw from being able to rattle about inside the metal tube




some 4mm stainless rod used as guide rods to stop the screw housing from rotating (given the end of the shaft is fixed to the rig you could actually do without these as the rig itself would prevent the screw from rotating).




3D printed motor covers:




Et voila:






Now I just need to do another

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers guys! Little one is doing well, thankfully getting some sleep

Little more progress:

Machined the side plates for the upper module (Machined a little pocket for a decorative carbon inlay I can add later):






Fitted the left actuator:





Cockpit "closed":




Cockpit "open":




Next will be making the right hand side actuator, then wiring them up properly to work from one switch and add limit switches.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Apologies for the lack of progress reports for anyone that's interested, had a bit of a stall over the last few months what with all the job stuff, new baby, attention demanding 3yr old etc! Anyway enough excuses.

I have made some solid progress over the last week grabbing some hours to work where I can:

- made the second actuator for the upper slider, some limit switches set
- a whole lot of wire organisation. I also re-wired the actuators to work via relay so I can add an over-ride with a remote switch later which will allow the whole rig to be fully opened/closed with one button push for getting it out/putting it away.
- designed and built some tablet mounts for touchscreen goodness in gameglass etc and for telemetry in racing games.
- have centralised everything to a single USB hub so there is only one connection to be made to the computer.
- ordered a 2ch amp (found a stonking deal on a behringer NX3000D refurb) and will be adding a second shaker to better be able to separate out effects.

I'm still plugging away at the last bits of wiring there and will have some pictures to share shortly. The end of "phase 1" is finally in sight though and once that's done I'll probably do some proper photos and maybe a video tour.

Here's a little peek at the in progress rewiring though to prove I haven't been completely inactive.





The main reason for the post was to see what you guys think of these two things I've been working on for the rig... would be interesting to get some feedback before I commit parts to the CNC and printer.

First up are my load cell based brake pedal/hall effect clutch and accelerator. Work on the load cell pedal design is pretty much done and now just needs prototyping to check how it all functions... I thought one thing quite interesting to try would be putting a resonance speaker behind the pedal for ABS effects driven from the standard simshaker style software. If you felt like it you could make it work from tyre slip in cars that don't have ABS just to add a bit of feedback.

I've seen others use rumble motors powered by an arduino board but a buzzing pedal doesn't really sell ABS to me. This resonance speaker goes down to 50hz and should be able to give a nice fore/aft pulsing effect which can be customised in the normal simhub et al software. It's also using a 100kg loadcell which is this chonky boy right here:




Still fleshing out the designs for the accelerator and clutch, planning on using a cam roller on the clutch to give a "bite point".









Next up I have my generic FCU style button box which I've tried to design to be good for both driving and flying. I have set up the rotary encoders (with push) and middle buttons to mirror the airbus setup and designed the knobs to have the same shapes for each function they would correspond to as I plan on playing in VR. Given I'm intimately familiar with the bus layout after 9,000+ hours in one I figured it would be a good one to go for and you can feel the different knob styles to help determine which control you are holding... even though I don't intend to fly an airbus much in MSFS it'll be good to know what I'm blinding reaching for. Running from left to right they would correspond to Baro, Speed, Heading, Altitude and lastly V/S.

The rest are potentiometers x4, an assortment of toggle switches, a 3 way momentary dial on the right, and assortment of momentary square pushbuttons in the middle (corresponds to AP1/AP2/ATHR on an airbus), and an engine start on the left.

I also plan to have the ability to add a small remote gear up/down module on the right side of the sim and a flap/mixture lever on the left but those can come later. Anyhoo, let me know what you guys think and if you have any cool ideas/input/criticisms have at it! These will probably be worth threads of their own as I think it'll be interesting to work on them.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

one more cheeky little render of the brake after some more work on it today:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Aye it's nice to have toys!

@SupraWez - no, a Leo Bodnar BU0836A and matrix breakout board. More plug and play than the Arduino route and you can't beat Bodnar! The pedals will use a Bodnar LC-USB.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Right so, What have we been up to?!

Firstly, I decided to go with some more butt based stimulation. The main thing here is that I wanted two units so that I could separate out different effects which lets you play with things a little more... for example when flying spitfires in IL2, I gave the buttkicker a nice strong engine beat to simulate that big old merlin engine (amazing when you fire it up in game and the whole rig shakes to life), but that meant it was getting a little saturated so gunfire for example wasn't as clear and separated as I would like, smaller effects like flap movement and gear travel got lost in the noise.... same with driving games, road noise and bumps could drown out the finer effects.

I thankfully got the opportunity to step up the game too by moving up to a BK4-Advance for the main unit, which is substantially larger than the Mini-CT. Here they are, made some custom spacers from 95A durometer TPU on the 3D printer which especially help to fit the curve on the back for the smaller unit.











To drive it all, I managed to get a stonking deal on a factory refurbished Behringer NX3000D 2ch amp.... poifect! I need to look into the software to allow to do some some useful things with the DSP to set things like peak limits to avoid any bottoming out and whipped up a quick little box for the new amp, the space on the right is for the small 50w amp that will be driving the pedal transducer.





It was a faff but finally got all the wiring sorted:




And it all hooks up to an easy interface panel with quick connect/disconnect to cut down on bother rolling the rig out and getting it connected. I also changed the switch box to have 3 switches as I intend to make the seat position electric in the future.




Used some drag chains to tidy up the wiring for pedal platform USB cable, and the speaker cables to the seat and installed a USB hub to give a single USB connection to the PC.











Bought 2 cheap android tablets in the sales, designed a quick tablet mounting arm using magnetic mounting for the tablets. These will be used mostly for gameglass in starcitizen but may see some use in other games too.



Fold up out the way when storing the rig:




And finally the whole thing neatly tucked away by the CNC.




So with that we're pretty close to finishing phase 1. What's left to do?

I will be converting my thrustmaster warthog HOTAS over to quick connect using the same connection as the Virpil stuff (they kindly shared their connector and pinouts with me) as I intend to eventually get some of their stuff. I would like to also build a central mount for the stick (it both matches more what I tend to fly and also leaves room on the right for an H-pattern shifter) but it will need to be easily removable for driving, and ideally I'd upgrade to a wheel with quick disconnect to stop the wheel getting in the way. As mentioned previously I'd like to make the seat move electrically and already added that cross piece it is now sat on with that in mind.

Other than that and just some small bits and bobs like making the arm rests though, pretty much done for now until I look to making the G-seat. First though, I'll be starting work on those new loadcell racing pedals!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

many thanks gents

Got arm rests mostly done now - mostly 3D printed parts, laser cut piece of wood and foam, couple of offcuts of CF tube and an m12 threaded rod. Trimmed with Alcantara which I found at my old man's house from about 18 years ago when I was trimming my first car lol.

Laser cutting foam:



Trimmed wood piece:




Voila




where it'll go when I get some suitable bolts:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Sneaky peek of the FCU style button box... still awaiting some square buttons for the middle and a start button for the bottom left.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks chaps, very kind! Happy Christmas y’all!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks!

@koolpc - Quite a difficult question to answer as so much of it is made of scavenged parts and leftovers from other projects, a lot of custom bits are 3d printed and the chair was a gift from a couple of years ago... so short answer is not really got a clue lol. Probably about £250-300 of new stuff to build the thing itself, wood and miscellaneous parts etc... I think the shakers and amp together come to about £500 although the big one (BK4-A) was £270 of that on it's own and again was a gift. The tablets I got for about £60 each in the sales.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Probably as good a guess as any!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Mostly finished the button box now, mostly just waiting on the 3 sqaure buttons for the centre which seem to be stuck in a post office somewhere.

Zee M-FCU button box build | Overclockers UK Forums - I am posting a continuous log there of the button box if anyone is interested in more details (by lack or replies there I guess no one is lol)




In other news I made a start on my pedals after finalising the design:

3D printed and CF Electronics box I whipped up housing the Leo bodnar LC-USB






Cutting frames out of chunky 3mm plate




Brake pedal is up first (printed bushings are temporary, waiting for some oilite bushes in the post :

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Almost done on the brake prototype, currently a mix of 3d printed components and parts made on the lathe... most of the 3d printed parts will eventually be replaced with milled/lathe parts once I'm happy with the design.

Few shots of parts in the making:
















And where I'm currently at with the prototype - I'm waiting on a few parts such as oilite bushes, springs, and a different damper. The small black spring on the main rod is temporary just to see how it works, the final spring will be like in the render where it goes over the guides. The idea is to give an adjustable distance travel before hitting the elastomers to simulate that first lighter bit of travel where you are just pushing the pads onto the disc.

The "elastomers" are also 3d printed from 85A durometer TPU (orange is all I have!)... they are possibly a bit hard so I'm looking into alternatives but can decide that once I've tried it.

Only thing left to do before the brake is functional is to machine the side mounting brackets.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

I apologise for the crap photo quality - my phone died a while back and I've been using an old one which really struggles with lower light pics. I'll break out the proper camera and take some proper photos at some point!

Anyway, resonance speaker arrived, just had to make a little adaptor piece for it

how she comes:




Adaptor nubbin:




And mounted:




I remade the thumbnut and upper spring guides in brass rather than 3d printed:






You can see there I've also been playing with designs for 3D printed elastomers - those are 95A and just too stiff even with zero infill, but switching to that ribbed design and gyroid infill using 85A ninjaflex works great. Unfortunately I only have orange for now but will be changing that over to something a little less garish. It's quite cool 3D printing them as you can vary the stiffness even in the same material just by varying the infill...

I also got around to machining the side brackets:












Which all takes us to pretty much completion on the brake unit other than machining the few remaining 3d printed parts but there's no rush for that (if I even bother!). I will just need to wait patiently for the proper spring to arrive (the one that fits on the main shaft spring guides), and I need to hook up some wiring for the resonance motor. I also have a better damper/shock arriving at some point too.





Edit - better pics for the last two

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks very much. Nope, not an engineer or anything - just a hobby for me and I learn as I go a lot of the time!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks

Mostly done on the accelerator pedal now, and I've had it all set up and working, did some racing in ACC and AMS2 and it's all working well. I need some stiffer springs for both the brake and the Accelerator which are on the way but I'm very happy with the compression of the 3d printed elastomers.

Accelerator is still rocking quite a few temporary parts such as 3d printed brackets, thumbscrew etc.

The small pinion gear for the hall effect potentiometer was giving me grief 3d printing it due to the small size and thin walls, so I turned to a resin printer instead. Here you can see the first resin print vs the 5th attempt at FDM printing! (resin in grey, FDM in orange)







and here is the counterpart on the pedal:






I also got a pedal plate machined out with routing for the wires (including the audio for the resonance motor) to keep everything tidy










also picked up this little amp which will be powering the brake resonance motor

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Most people probably think of what is called an FDM machine when they think of 3D printing where you have a spool of plastic filament being pushed through a heated nozzle... that’s the stereotypical 3D printer you’ll see and by far the most common in DIY.

Resin is another type of 3D printing (of which there are many), which uses photo-sensitive liquid resin instead of filament. There are a few different types but mine has a powerful UV light behind a high resolution LCD screen, under a vat of resin. it effectively displays a picture of each layer on the screen while turning on the UV light which causes the resin to cure where the LCD lets the light through, then the build plate moves up and does the next layer and so on.

It can make incredibly intricate prints, which is why it’s the default printer for guys that are in to their miniatures, but it’s much more of a pain in the arse than an FDM machine.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

It's a rabbit hole, have fun!

Just hooked up the resonance motor on the brake and had a quick test, brilliant! Get a nice pulsing through the pedal as ABS kicks in which really gives you a much better feel for where the threshold is... for cars that don't have ABS it looks like wheel lock under breaking should be easy enough to add but need to test it out.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Hah yeah it kind of is in the plan, next step for the rig itself will be G-seat and belt tensioner to simulate the forces of acceleration, cornering and braking.

Eventually I’m tempted to put the entire thing on 4 DIY actuators to give a proper feeling of being jostled over the bumps and lumps, but that probably depends on how well the shakers and G-seat work out together... I may not feel the need for that significant increase in cost, complexity and weight etc.

Sorry to hear about the accident, I can massively recommend at least getting yourself a wheel and a VR headset - you don’t have to go as mad as me to have an amazing time racing!