Mobile Driving/Flying Cockpit with Motion and Tactile ( Build )

[R8pilot]

My expectation is I'll go through the same process I do right now, but only using a Prusa PETG profile.

If you haven't used it yet, PETG is much more robust than PLA and not much harder to print.

I have a Prusa Mini, and have printed cheap generic PETG with the Prusament profile (needed stronger parts in a hurry). Works fine. I noted that the Prusament PETG profile runs hotter than Prusa's generic PETG profile, and I found that to be important. The lower-temp generic profile yields less stringing but worse layer adhesion.

Using Prusa's own PETG filament should be even better, but I always watch that first layer with PETG!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Spoiler: Drivel that will most likely be ignored

I did actually read what you said and didn't ignore it.

I do appreciate your input. Right now I'm in the middle of a 3D printer addiction and since this is a hobby that I do for fun and since I'm having a blast designing stuff that my 3D printer manufactures for me, I'm focusing on that.

This is not out of disrespect. I'm simply having too much fun with my 3D printer right now and as soon as I get it out of my system ( ie. run out of things I can print for my rig and that day is coming), I'll circle back around to other things.

My priority is where ever I'm getting the most enjoyment.

 

[RCHeliguy]

While I did this mostly for cosmetic reasons, having the attachment bolts on the outside does make it much easier to adjust the height of the button.

SC2 Emergency Button Box Enclosure by RCHeliGuy

SC2 Emergency Switch Enclosure. This is not to be used by anyone who can not reassemble the switch properly and safely. This replaces the stock enclosure that came with my SC2 Pro. It takes 4 x M6x16mm bolts to mount to the profile uprights of a profile rig. The disassembly process of an...

www.thingiverse.com

The disassembly process may not be obvious.

1. Release wires 1 an 2 with a Philips head screw driver.
2. Undo the gray plastic nut and remove the wires.
3. The switch that had wires going to it is released using the center screw.
4. Next remove the rectangular part that is snap fit to the end of the threaded cylinder holding the spring loaded button. This is the hardest part and must be done carefully.
3. Then the inside plastic nut holding the button in place can be removed.

This is obviously not something that I needed to do, but I like the look better now.

 

[Wmacky]

Nice! I may have to give that one a try. Did it need supports?

How about a VR HMD hanger next?

 

[RCHeliguy]

Nice! I may have to give that one a try. Did it need supports?

How about a VR HMD hanger next?

I got lazy, didn't use supports and I made the button face 4mm thick knowing I would have a bit of crap to cut away. The result was a rough surface that should hold the plastic mount well after I cut some stringiness away, but it looked very clean inside up until the button face. It's VERY solid feeling and the button face feels perfectly rigid despite cutting away a bit on the underside.

I really like my folding HMD hanger below. I was just going to add a place to mount that on my button box.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PQ334GJ

I just saw the new support paint feature in the PrusaSlicer Alpha and with that feature I will likely use supports a lot more. It will be very handy for cleaning out the supports I don't want and allow adding them very specifically where I think I will need them.

 

[mechsicko]

Here's some work you might find interesting/inspirational... a French user named Natalucciu I'm following on racing.fr is making a really cool custom wheel deck face to integrate button panels and ventilation and it looks pretty rad

The whole thread is a good read with lots of cool pics and renders. He's got his dash mostly complete as of this point as is working on working adjustable louvers for the vents. It's laser cut out of 12mm steel iirc.

He also prints a lot of cool custom brackets for his rig.. he makes the files available as well. Here's his SC2 psu mounts for instance

DIY - Le cockpit dynamique de Natalucciu - SFX-100 - Partage des plans - racingfr.net

Hello, Comme vous l'avez peut-être vu sur d'autres sujets du forums, je suis en train de fabriquer mon cockpit dynamique à base de profilé et de SFX-100. Je suis assez satisfait du résultat et j'ai décidé de partager avec vous mes réflexions et les…

translate.google.com

 

[RCHeliguy]

This button box is going to take a while. I want it to be modular and easy to replace in sections especially since I expect to want to tweak it to be easy to update in sections.

I'm also planning to release all the Fusion 360 files on this project because I think "if" I do it right, it will be extensible and I believe many people will feel the need to modify sections to hold specific switches etc..

I'm thinking of making small slot pairs by each control to hold laminated laser printed labels.

I'm trying 1/8" screen splines as a gasket material since I'm mounting directly to the Sim Lab vertical mount and I want it to be quiet.

The world doesn't need another cell phone holder, but I'm working on something small that I can mount to the button box in what I'm hoping will be an unobtrusive way.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've been looking for a way to attach the button box directly to the SimLab vertical mount in a solid, rattle free way that wasn't bulky. I want the mount to be a frame that is a starting point that everything else can mount to. This is what I've got so far and it appears solid.

These clamps will use M3 socket head bolts and square M3 nuts which I believe are strong, but not too large.

In addition I decided to go with very inexpensive 1/8" dia. vinyl screen splines in the corners to make sure the clamps didn't slide and hopefully to eliminate any creaks and rattles.

Below you can see the spline and spline tool for pressing the gasket in place.

Once they are pressed in place, a razor cuts them flush.

The bolts and nuts I intend to use arrive tomorrow, but I had some hex nuts and counter sunk 3M bolts to test this out now.

This is the back view that will be hidden from view, but isn't too bulky.

From the front it will only extend up about 4mm from the vertical mount and 3mm out.

What I see coming is a cantilevered horizontal ledge extending back and braced against the bottom of the vertical mount, as well as captured nuts on the front plates with bolts entering from behind so there are no fasteners visible on the button box.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I ordered a pile of Button box parts over the last couple days. I ordered a number of controls just to see if like them. This includes somewhat smaller joy sticks that I can submerge into the button box easier, as well as backlit buttons, different sized buttons and knobs for 3 rotary encoders.

Since I have a 12V power supply going into my button box to drive the PPM board that controls the 200mm Noctua fan and it has extra capacity, I've decided to use some 12V LED buttons and switches.

In keeping with this being a modular design that I may want to make changes to over time, there will be 12V disconnections between each section and the main terminal block going to individual terminal blocks for each section for power.

This button box will use different sized ribbon connectors between the 64 input Bodnar board and the various sections which will each have one or more receivers. This way each section can be wired up individually and then plugged in for both power and data.

When I'm done I want to have a platform with a frame that mounts securely to the Sim Lab Vertical mount and supports 1 to 5 button box sections.

Since I will be using 3D contours to make finding controls easy, I don't expect to need my controls to be as oversized as they are currently. So the current monster Start button will go away and other controls will fall to hand in obvious ways.

The lower left section with the X gets in the way of my flight throttle and needs to go. The huge green start button needs to go. Since Fusion 360 has a simple mirror command, it will be easy to create both left and right mount systems with all the appropriate buttons for people who shift on the "wrong side"

I am debating whether I want to integrate the fan mount into this. It may make sense to modify the SC2 mount section to include cable routing for button box controls on both sides of the wheel.

The parts won't get here for a little while which will give me time to plan this out better. I don't want to carnivalize my existing button box, until I'm ready to assemble something I can use.

 

[RCHeliguy]

This morning I rallied and tomorrow morning I'm planning to get a few hours racing against some AI in iRacing to get back into things. This coming week I can start practicing for the current Fixed series in iRacing and maybe get some real racing in next week This is just for those who feel I'm building a museum piece and sometimes it does feel that way, but I was enjoying my rig quite a bit this morning and feeling very good behind the wheel.

Today while hiking it dawned on me that my amplifier has no problem with 2 ohm loads and I could easily take an existing 4ohm Aura channel and put my spare Aura in parallel, so when I got home I did. I don't need a unique signal on top of the pedals since I'm mostly reinforcing with this, so this should work.

Right now I have it running off of the side transducer with rpm and a little front suspension vibration, but I could run off one of the two channels under the foot plate. I plan to experiment a bit with this, so no final thoughts yet.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've been beating my head on this button box design and spending too much time measuring my rig wasting time.

The vertical mount has a lot of funny angles, so I finally broke down created a decent model to design around.

This should help me make progress a little faster.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Nice! I may have to give that one a try. Did it need supports?

How about a VR HMD hanger next?

Here's one.

Headphone holder simracing-rig M8 by storemaster

A simple headphone mount for my sim-racing rig

www.thingiverse.com

Meanwhile I printed out a flat piece checking the edges for alignment. This is almost 2 layers of filament and it matches pretty well. I did have to tweak things a smidge to get it to this point, but I think I can now proceed. My initial model was a bit off.

I suspect that when I post this stuff on Thingaverse that it will make sense to have a single piece like this for a test print just to make sure that a given printer doesn't need a scale factor to fit perfectly before starting a very long print job.

 

[RCHeliguy]

This is taking some time to put together, but it is coming along.

I'm still flushing ideas out and I expect it will continue to change dramatically before I print anything. Some of these pieces will take nearly a full day to print and I will burn through nearly an entire spool of filament by the time I'm done.

I believe that I will simplify the boxes before I'm done, but I was experimenting to see how many controls I could fit by wraping controls around edges.

It will be much easier to see where I'm going with things once I have actual buttons, switches and joysitcks mounted, but I think given the print times that I need to model everything so I'll probably do that shortly.

This will all bolt together with M3 bolts so I got a wide assortment to work with.

I'll have standoffs for the Leo Bodnar 64 input card (yellow) printed into the green frame. You can see the access hole on the back panel for the USB plug.

I still need to create mount points to each button box front piece for the ribbon connectors and I need to add a place for the 12V power cord to plug in for power to the fan and to drive the buttons with lights.

There are slots in the tan piece that bolts to the side of the profile so the left side button box can be moved around to match where the vertical mount is set.

I probably need to extend that box far back enough so a button card can also be mounted in there. Currently I have an access port between the red and blue button box to run.

Lots, lots, lots more to do with this.

 

[Tom_Hampton]

I ordered a pile of Button box parts over the last couple days. I ordered a number of controls just to see if like them. This includes somewhat smaller joy sticks that I can submerge into the button box easier, as well as backlit buttons, different sized buttons and knobs for 3 rotary encoders.

Which Joy stick did you get? I got one of these....

This button box will use different sized ribbon connectors between the 64 input Bodnar board and the various sections which will each have one or more receivers. This way each section can be wired up individually and then plugged in for both power and data.

What do you mean by "receiver"? Do you just mean a small intermediate circuit board for the switches to wire to with a 2x100mil header (for the ribbon cables to attach to?

 

[RCHeliguy]

I went with this for my joystick.
I was looking for it to be narrow. This uses a 22mm hole.
Also the top of it can be screwed to the button box front and the base quick connects using the yellow lever.

I'm going to use difference sizes of these.
I plan to 3D print a mount for these inside my boxes.

2.54mm Socket Header Connector ISP Male Double-spaced Straight needle Curved needle

 

[Tom_Hampton]

I went with this for my joystick.
I was looking for it to be narrow. This uses a 22mm hole.
Also the top of it can be screwed to the button box front and the base quick connects using the yellow lever.

Got it. That's almost exactly the same dimensions of the one I have (22mm panel hole, 47x47mm overall LxW).

I'm going to use difference sizes of these.
I plan to 3D print a mount for these inside my boxes.

2.54mm Socket Header Connector ISP Male Double-spaced Straight needle Curved needle

Right. that's what I was referring to. Are you planning to Solder the switch leads directly to the header pins, or are you going to make a small through-hole PCB to interconnect the switch leads to the header?

I ask because I'm headed down the same path, with multiple button modules all wired back to a Bodnar-64. I was mulling this over in my head last night as I went to sleep. Only to wake and find this from you.

I haven't checked to see if any of the maker sites have a breakout board ready-made, yet.

ETA: Here's something interesting from Adafruit:

DIN Rail 2x8 IDC to Terminal Block Adapter Breakout

This one's going out to all the makers and designers who use DIN railing in their builds. This adapter plate is perfect for simplifying complex wiring. You connect a 2x8 IDC ...

www.adafruit.com

 

[RCHeliguy]

Those prongs are spaced so that I can use plugs on them.

I have a pile of these in a box that I can use. I've been soldering to the switches and plugging directly into the Bodnar board to this point.

I may very well solder to those pins once I'm comfortable that I like my switches, but initially I'll just plug them in. I suspect I'll be tweaking these things for a little while.

such that

 

[RCHeliguy]

I think this may help to visualize what I'm trying to do.

 

[RCHeliguy]

@Wmacky were you thinking an HMD hangar something like this?

I decided rather than using an angled dovetail like hte SC2 QR that I would just bolt up the HMD hangar to the side of the button box with M6 bolts, and yes I did finally break down and reinvent the wheel because my wheel is better for my purposes

Also got my rotaries from Digikey and decided that it would be a whole lot easier to print my button box section if they could lay flat on the face, so I simply have chamfered edges. I'm also designing the interior of the boxes so they can be printed wtihout supports.

The chamfered button box fronts will print better, but I'm thinking that any tactile dividers will be separate parts that that screw into place from the back.
Below I've added the headset hangar and the fan knob and gotten rid of anything that sticks up.

I've found that I get limited in Fusion 360 if I do much edge finishing, so I'll be leaving much of this square until I get further along.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I decided to try a test fit without any button holes. I'm going to see what feels right and then put tape on this and measure where the holes should be and drill the holes for verification rather that eyeballing them in Fusion 360.

I wanted to make sure that I could print this without any support so the ledge has a chamfered bottom. The tolerances for the M3 nuts and bolts appear correct.

The fit is snug, but not tight, but it slides a tiny bit to the left without any fasteners on the back.

This will pull flush, but it will need a lip to hide the seam between this piece and the rear frame.
The rear frame is printing and once I have it bolted in place and the button box is secure, it will be time to put masking tape on this and mark the locations of the buttons.