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

[RCHeliguy]

I wonder if you are losing some tactile feel in the Fanatec V3 pedal frame. You have a plate with transducers, then the V3 frame bolted in 4 places and then a relatively thin plate bolted to the top of that frame. There is a lot of potential for flex.

That creates two bolted layers to lose tactile response.

 

[cnhoff]

Maybe, but the V3s is what I have right now, so that will not be helped at the moment.

I have not experienced any difference when going from a single plate holding the shakers and race pedals to that dual plate solution though.

That setup preserves the ability to use my front shakers for flight also.

 

[RCHeliguy]

To be clear, I'm not telling you to change your rig. I'm just trying to understand this better and I know others who have upright pedals with RB isolators mounted under them that are saying it is working well.

I only have my rig as a reference point and I can't pretend to know exactly how everyone else's system feels.

I have my overall effects for my BK and TST pairs at only 30% where the baseline is 50%. My Exciters are closer at 42-45% vs 50%.

I know that the NLRv3 has some play in the pivot on top of what the RB isolation provides so I may have a bit more tactile isolation and efficiency than many others have. The BK is hanging off the back of my seat which gives it a lever arm to the pivot. The TST-429 is more centrally mounted, but is very powerful. Also having just my foot plate vs. the whole pedal deck sprung is likely an easier load. Now I feel like both the front and back are balanced such I can run the same volume signal to the front and back and the result feels natural and not accentuated for either.

P11-P6 this morning 488 EVO Watkins Glen. It's a start. If I can get one race in every morning, I may get back into the swing of things. It's been too long.

 

[cnhoff]

I can very well imagine, the V3s frame and thin heelplate are not ideal tactile-wise compared to more sturdy setups, where the pedals are bolted directly to the entity, that holds the shakers. I for one am quite happy with my solution, but i tend to drive the pedals at lower volumes than the seat as a personal choice. It just feels more natural to me, when the pedals are a notch down compared to the seat. I for one can hardly imagine 8mm plates bolted together with 4 M8 screws would be detrimental to the rigidity of the setup. I would assume the actual material used for the plates play a bigger role for the system's mechanical properties.

All my soundcards are at 60%, my NX3000 and NX1000 for LFEs and TSTs respectively at 1pm. In Simhub it is a little bit complicated to tell because of several groups with their own respective volumes, but on average, single effects are probably at 30% or lower if i multiply the involved volumes.

Of course the DSP settings also come into play, but in general, it seems i am running at quite low volumes too, far below the maximum ratings or heavy nonlinearities of any device i am using.

 

[RCHeliguy]

When all the effects are balanced, they don't need to be set too high. In fact it becomes distracting.

I was testing out a brand new effect this morning and I was tinkering with it quite a bit with the volume higher then I'll probably leave it with all my other effects still on to make sure it blended well. I was testing the main BK and TST frequency settings and relative volumes to see if it felt right on my rig and it was pretty solid as it came. My BK-CT's wanted a couple more Hz over the LFE's that it was likely optimized for. I should probably look at tweaking my DSP curves to bring my CT's in line.

This is an effect that I believe needs the priority checkbox. Very useful addition I'm definitely enjoying being on the front lines trying these new features out.

 

[cnhoff]

When all the effects are balanced, they don't need to be set too high. In fact it becomes distracting.

I was testing out a brand new effect this morning and I was tinkering with it quite a bit with the volume higher then I'll probably leave it with all my other effects still on to make sure it blended well. I was testing the main BK and TST frequency settings and relative volumes to see if it felt right on my rig and it was pretty solid as it came. My BK-CT's wanted a couple more Hz over the LFE's that it was likely optimized for. I should probably look at tweaking my DSP curves to bring my CT's in line.

This is an effect that I believe needs the priority checkbox. Very useful addition I'm definitely enjoying being on the front lines trying these new features out.

Would you care to enlighten us on what this effect is about? Or is it a customer-only secret that you are teasing here...

 

[RCHeliguy]

Would you care to enlighten us on what this effect is about? Or is it a customer-only secret that you are teasing

Just testing something new that hasn't been released. I'm still curious how it actually works.

I've been mostly trying to focus on my driving lately and actually having fun driving my rig

I have also ordered some new shorter T-bolts for my clutch & brake pedal plate quick releases so I can get rid of the 1/2" aluminum spacers. I think it will look better and the large quick release arms will have more clearance from the brake cables in the back. I think I over stressed PCB board on the back of my HE Sprint brake pedal because of hitting/nicking these cables repeatedly. Fortunately HE sent me a new PCB board that has been reinforced in the area I had an issue.

Because the T-bolt threads are in a fixed position getting the quick release arms to face the correct orientation is tricky and I want all of the levers to face out. The T-bolts below are longer than the ones I'm using and the ones I ordered are shorter still.

The levers have cylinders with threaded holes that are not consistently tapped. By that I mean the threads do not start is the exact same place. This means that some of them are symmetrical and rotating the cylinder hole 180 degrees has no effect and others will allow you to adjust orientation by starting them from the other end.

This can be a bit of a pain if I remove the quick releases like I have done a few times recently. I've tried to mark the cylinders to get the orientation correct, but the cylinders fall out and I lose track of which cylinders go with which bolt. The T-Bolts captured in the slots can be rotated 180 degrees which can also be used to get the rotation of the levers on the correct side, but they have to be experimented with to get the right pairings.

The bolt lengths have a narrow range where they will work. They need to capture enough threads to be solid, but if they are too long they will stick out into the lever such that it can't rotate.

The new shorter bolts will have more threads into the lever cylinder and giving me room to shim them with washers to get the right orientation. An M8 x 1.25 has 1.25mm of height per rotation. Using .75mm and 1.0mm washers should allow me to get the orientation I want.

 

[RCHeliguy]

OK, I'm going to jump the shark for a little while.

I think this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen that was 3D printed. I paid for the STL files for this. The author obviously put a lot of effort into it.

Step 1: 3D print, assemble and make this work.

Step 2: ahem.... Head over to the Mill and Lathe at my maker space and start to replace 3D printed parts with metal.

I think that should be one hell of a project to learn by doing

I won't liter this thread with the ongoing work on this, but it looks to be a bit of an adventure.

 

[metalnwood]

oh man, you are going to get tired of making gears! I have seen some people do it on the lathe when they only have a lathe but for your sanity I hope they have a dividing head for the mill.

 

[RCHeliguy]

oh man, you are going to get tired of making gears! I have seen some people do it on the lathe when they only have a lathe but for your sanity I hope they have a dividing head for the mill.

If they don't have one, and I need one, I'll add a new fixture to the maker space.

Looks like in addition to the dividing wheel, there are very specific cutting blades needed. This will definitely be a deep dive!


So, back to the 3D printed piece. 133 pages of instructions.

140 hours of print time with different head nozzles. It's only about .7 kg of PLA total.

However, there are lots of very specific instructions about how to print different groups of parts so slicing this will be a bit painstaking. I'll also use my 0.25mm head for the first time for some of the printing.

I ordered some filament for this. Now to order all the little non-PLA bits.

I suspect this will take quite a while to print and I'll need to be very careful about labeling all the bits as the prints finish. I also believe I'll need to let the print bed cool down fully before removing the parts so I don't warp any of the small parts.

I would seriously consider printing two of everything, but it appears I may have to iterate on some prints.


Also recently added a 600VA dedicated UPS to my 3D printer. The Prusa i3 mk3S is rated at about an 80W draw at room temperature and in my box where it gets warmer, hopefully it is a bit lower than that. The UPS is only rated for 23 minutes at 100W, but that should be plenty for the types of 1-2 minute power outages that we very rarely get. More importantly, I won't worry about having it running during storms which we seem to be getting a lot of lately.

I think I'll put my wattmeter on it and verify this.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Got my 10mm shorter T-bolts in place and got rid of the 1/2" aluminum spacers and got the orientations sorted.
I think kit looks cleaner now and the levers in back won't hit the cables anymore

You can also see corrosion on a few Sprint parts that show up pretty noticeably with a flash. Fortunately I don't notice this normally.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Started 3D printing with my .25mm head for the first time.
The detail for this is quite small. it looks much better to the naked eye than in the picture.
I have a tiny bit of cleanup left.

 

[mechsicko]

Got my 10mm shorter T-bolts in place and got rid of the 1/2" aluminum spacers and got the orientations sorted.
I think kit looks cleaner now and the levers in back won't hit the cables anymore

You can also see corrosion on a few Sprint parts that show up pretty noticeably with a flash. Fortunately I don't notice this normally.

View attachment 530964

I not sure that's corrosion, my guess is it's a lighting artifact of the galvanizing on the steel

 

[RCHeliguy]

OK, let's look a little closer.

My rig sits in a room that is right off my screen room. It is very humid here and the door to the screen room is open a lot during about half of the year.

I've replaced rusting bolts on my ProSim H pattern shifter and Precision Sim Engineering wheel, so this is pretty common place to me.

My Sprints have been in this environment for over 2.5 years.

In the image below you can see obvious red rust to the left.
If you look inside the 3 bolts with arrows pointing to them, you can see the light blue appearance inside the hex opening.
The larger M8 bolt in the center has had some use, but has also sat in storage.

I generally don't see these up close, so I'm not very concerned by this. I replaced the bolts on my wheel and shift that are very prominent. If I ever get a wild hair, I'll install identical SS bolts and prep and spray the other parts.

This is the same pedal freshly mounted new out of the box.

 

[Atak_Kat]

I've replaced rusting bolts on my ProSim H pattern shifter and Precision Sim Engineering wheel, so this is pretty common place to me.

That is really interesting. I remember your comment on this previously, and I applied a really light oil to my bolts a while ago. I live in a very humid/mediterranean climate and I don't see anything at all on my hardware. Good flag though, and appreciated for those of us that care for these important elements.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That is really interesting. I remember your comment on this previously, and I applied a really light oil to my bolts a while ago. I live in a very humid/mediterranean climate and I don't see anything at all on my hardware. Good flag though, and appreciated for those of us that care for these important elements.

I periodically clean and apply light oil on the Prosim stick and spring and the rust seems to be at bay for the time being.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Speaking of Prosim, I guess there is one item for my rig that I am still waiting for. The clutch lockout, I was put on the waiting list a year ago. I did check with them recently was told that it's not that they've gone back to the drawing board. They consider the design complete and have for a while. They are waiting for manufacturing and they have no idea how long it will be before they have them to sell.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I'm not trying to go way off topic on 3D printing, but I thought this was interesting.

This 3 axis tourbillon clock has a lot of parts that require precision. For people around the world to print this successfully they would need very well calibrated 3D printers. If your 3D printer isn't scaled perfectly, the results would likely fail.

So the designer of this clock created "fitting jigs" that you print out and then test fit the bearings. Bearings are of a known and fairly precise diameter so they become the measuring stick you use.

In red text below he states to use the exact same printer, filament, nozzle size and print parameters to print these fitting jigs as you will use to print the parts he has designated as precisions parts.

He also has jigs for the inner diameters of the bearings.

Once you have your printed fitting jigs and have measured how the bearing fit on the inside and outside of the bearings, you then select the part designed for that deviation to print.

I continue to be impressed with this and I'm learning from it.

I have ordered all the non-3D printed bits. The most expensive part is the metal 12.7x0.2mm feeler tape that is used to make the metal spring. It requires 2-3m of this.

I'm currently printing all the non-precision parts with the 2.5mm nozzle. Once the bearings arrive, I can start to print the precision parts.

There are 88 3D printed parts not including some of the tools for winding the metal spring so this will take a while.

 

[RCHeliguy]

This is going to take a while to print, but so far the results are good.

I'm learning things and getting ideas. I can't imagine I'll get through this project without having a coming up with a spin off of some kind for my rig.

 

[blekenbleu]

replace 3D printed parts with metal.

My guess:

• overly massive metal parts with the same dimensions as polymer may have too much inertia for specified springs