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Showroom Smitty's Rotary Servo 6DOF build (Complete!)

Discussion in 'DIY Motion Simulator Projects' started by smitty, Dec 15, 2021.

  1. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Feature-creep alert!
    So I already had a plan for the flight controls, which was to use the hall-effect gimbal i already made...

    Until I found this in a DCS forum thread!:
    upload_2022-8-22_21-3-4.png

    It's from vpforcecontrols.com, their website isnt even up yet but this force feedback platform looks really great. They sell a DIY kit as well, which is what i am going to see if i can integrate into the frame (that box just wont work for me):

    upload_2022-8-22_21-5-48.png

    My pilot bud tells me rudder feedback is more important than the stick itself, so a 3rd motor will be used there. My initial calcs show this could give 5kg pressure on the stick and 20kg (!) on a rudder pedal with the right gear reduction.
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  2. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Got many bracket pieces and the main lift rods painted!

    We ran the brackets in a tumbler for a while, but getting the last piece out was a chore. I think it was stuck in the bottom for a while, took a good 10 minutes of digging thru the pellets to find it.

    Not pictured, but we got many of the clamp collars welded onto the steering & monitor brackets.
    991560A0-A502-46E7-9697-3130DB69D45B.jpeg 1578B059-B9DB-4252-BCF1-7D8299E4F22C.jpeg 833EF316-469C-466A-820C-5E60EF2F15D5.jpeg
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  3. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor, JRK
    The construction care and attention to detail is awesome :thumbs

    Have you assembled the rig yet from all those carefully painted and detailed pieces?
  4. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    nah, we only get about 3 hours per week to work on it. you guys will be the first to know!
    Upper frame is next!
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  5. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    EB627888-6CC8-452F-832F-C2EB3526518E.jpeg 40B534A3-35C9-4BE7-B204-8EE499AB5A3C.jpeg DADBE7AD-57AE-4039-9DC8-836940DEDDE9.jpeg Got the main connection blocks started. The alum bars are the lift arms and the steel blocks will become the upper mounting points on the moving frame. Also the baby gearboxes for the FFB joystick came in. This pic shows the layout of how the joystick will be set up:
    Screenshot 2022-10-12 210750.png
    • Creative Creative x 1
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2022
  6. Dirty

    Dirty Well-Known Member Gold Contributor

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    That control loading system looks interesting. I'd like to know more about it. Have you tried it out before buying? How much torque do these motors have? Are those motors recommended by VP force? Do they have much cogging :) Sorry for all those questions :)

    That mechanical system you have there (with the rod connecting to the roll axis) could introduce a little "axis contamination", but I am not sure how much, or if it is even noticeable. Might not be an issue. The longer that rod, the less contamination you will have.

    I'd be very interested in hearing how this system performs.

    Cheers, Dirty :)
  7. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Yep, i calculated the arc swing to be about 6mm toward the right at its endpoints of the 35deg travel, but im probably going to adjust it to about 20 deg full deflection. should barely be noticeable. i also thought in the future if i wanted to make a yoke style or spitfire style i could lock the rotation on that axis and make a little bellcrank thing for roll without moving the servos.. but thats a much future upgrade and i like sticks better than yokes.

    I did not try the joystick, the guy is based in Lithuania, but he posted a anticogging demo video:

    The joystick motors are 1.6Nm peak, 1.24Nm sustained. The base VPForce unit uses 5:1 ratio on the belts and a shorter stick, i'm going with 10:1 on the longer stick to get about 8lbf/4kgf

    I'll know soon enough, just got the fedex tracking #! :)

    VPForce doesn't have much of a website yet but there is an active discord server at https://discord.gg/n5hBaPkAKv
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  8. Dirty

    Dirty Well-Known Member Gold Contributor

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    Thanks for posting. :thumbs

    I just looked into this guys YT Channel and it looks like he knows what he's talking about. Also, from the setting options in his software alone it appears that this might be the control loading solution I was looking for.

    I guess the bottleneck will be the implementation of FFB cues in the sims, but that's a different story. I hope there's a way to interface the controller myself instead of having to rely on the sim to provide cues for me.

    Keep us posted on how things are going with this system.

    Cheers,... Dirty :)
  9. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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  10. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    I got around to testing the joystick setup, in a single axis. It’s so amazing!! But, the gearboxes I got first were pretty cheap ($22) and have too much backlash. At least I was able to determine that 10:1 ratio will work good. I upgraded to low backlash gearboxes, same brand as the 6 big ones on the base. And now there’s NO backlash in the stick at all! This is going to be great to fly.
    E09DB32D-6FB2-47D4-9B7D-69ADC3F5979D.jpeg F7B1F8A8-FEBB-4682-9E60-8A372E460019.jpeg CEC91C52-AC1A-47B0-9AF0-290A19F94F65.jpeg B7FC7886-97C9-4C68-ABD6-AF3C9471D8F0.jpeg

    We also got back into the shop. We got all the stock cut for the remaining machining and some more painting done.
    5CC6A29D-ACC0-4BA4-84D7-51770BCEB70F.jpeg BC5C7F2B-6274-44FE-AFA2-148E47D4F00E.jpeg

    Hopefully next week a CNC will not be running a job so we can get these cut!
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  11. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Due to rain cancelling some weekend plans, we were able to spend most of Sunday working on things. Got the first joystick pivot machined and some assembly done
    77D98323-6CCE-43C0-849A-A1DE5413F1C6.jpeg E59AB587-0DE2-42C8-BF68-16EB49B62D9E.jpeg
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  12. early_m

    early_m Active Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino, Motion platform
    Lovely work.

    The red/yellow/orange rods (do they have a technical name?!). Are they off the shelf parts? If so could you tell me where from?
  13. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    I wish, we had to cut & weld those too. We call them the pushrods, connecting rod, or links. In fact my buddy welded the first one with 2 left hand thread bungs :) so we had to cut it off and redo it
    • Like Like x 1
  14. loon_NG

    loon_NG New Member

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    Thank you for sharing I found your rig design is very nice but need a lot of pro tools to build.

    In waiting to see it moves a have a question :what is the ref. of your gearbox for 80ST-M02430 servo motor?
  15. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Hi, gearbox is 50:1 from YUN DUAN on aliexpress https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832781256249.html
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  16. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    These are the upper pushrod mounts, which will be welded to the tube cockpit frame. We did them on the 5-axis since that made the side holes easier to deal with.
    8657B541-465C-4D4C-A971-02FBE2BEAB66.jpeg BFD22370-E500-4FD5-9D33-831CBC620878.jpeg 1397D790-7CAB-476F-B41F-3C4FBF217C92.jpeg 8657B541-465C-4D4C-A971-02FBE2BEAB66.jpeg C18CBC81-7308-45AD-BA78-732429FFBE60.jpeg 6B187171-9972-4ADF-87E9-99ED394AE381.jpeg
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  17. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Huge progress update! We started on the cockpit frame!

    8C2F0787-DC54-4648-8607-52C5E39F077B.jpeg

    Today we were finally able to get the tubes mounted to the pivot point blocks. The dimensional accuracy of the bent tubes was phenomenal. We measured out where the blocks would be, 34” apart on the threaded end face, and the main tubes dropped right into the pockets of the pivot blocks. Keep in mind the front blocks are on a bent section! Every check dimension was spot-on. We tacked one together and went for some dinner, and the plan was were going to finish out one frame more. But the larger weld table had so much junk on it, and we need the room for the lower seat tube and front cross tube. We figured then since we knew how this went together at this point we should just do all 3 up to this stopping point. Looks like a Santa sleigh, just in time! Next week we can add all the other parts to them and fully weld them.
    EB8C1D6F-A44C-42EE-A1D6-4E06529EA396.jpeg D1D68745-36E4-4F22-9A33-E9563CC8CC02.jpeg F0CFD54B-31AB-449A-A5ED-E9E7383D4184.jpeg 2EF5AE48-852E-46B7-B934-607EE3F2FA22.jpeg 65B0D406-FBA3-4D8C-8237-F4150A5C1C6F.jpeg 3C12B2E7-519C-4CF2-84E1-9C12F8CFC297.jpeg
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  18. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    I should make another update, things i did last week with the FFB stuff. My friend got the Thrustmaster pendular pedals, which i promptly disassembled:
    upload_2022-12-23_0-39-19.png

    I was able to draw up this unit that can bolt on the back, and have the FFB motor drive the pedals.
    [​IMG]

    The motor will just pull on a bicycle brake cable instead of the spring unit. It even uses the same mounting bolts so no permanent damage to the unit.
    [​IMG]


    Its a simple solution, i was able to adapt it to my Saitek pedals. It works pretty good!

    upload_2022-12-23_0-37-33.png

    Now if only i could get XPForce to not hang when i try to choose the axis for this unit. As soon as i pick yaw: Y Axis i get this. and the dev seems to have abandoned the software.
    upload_2022-12-23_0-44-49.png

    Attached Files:

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  19. smitty

    smitty Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Tonight was a big one! We got 1 cockpit tack welded together and I was finally able to sit in it!
    7AAB040D-8312-45DC-B354-8F3E31C0F0D5.jpeg

    The pedal assembly took some time to fit up but a couple little jack screws held it up nicely. It has a huge adjustment range. It was nice to get real confirmation that all my measurements of plywood pieces 1.5 years ago all worked out. The next 2 should go quicker now that we have a good plan on how to finish these up. Still some machining to do- the servo lift arms and some joystick gimbal components.

    1E959EE5-A451-4B3E-83C4-CD93CC0F3A12.jpeg 2EF66E6A-5B5E-4EA1-BA66-A5377094A78F.jpeg 7786A938-8AD2-421C-9364-FF3E9ECF16B1.jpeg 9E306B1C-E5C7-459A-B80D-2353DF630FDA.jpeg 563F863E-6E30-422B-927A-5725AFA5C437.jpeg
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  20. InTheory

    InTheory New Member

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    Hey. Brand new here. me and my buddy are working on designing a 6dof rig similar to yours.. Currently waiting for parts to show up.

    I was curios if you ever got your Thanos working properly? and if so can you share you settings?