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DIY Servo FFB wheel

Discussion in 'DIY peripherals' started by MadmaxII, Jun 23, 2016.

  1. MadmaxII

    MadmaxII New Member

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    Hello all,

    I am from Australia and have been a very casual sim racer since 1998 (GPL and rFactor). I am a mechanical engineer with some very limited knowledge of mechatronics.

    My current setup is very outdated with the classic LWFF wheel with Jens Schumi bearing kit. I have a decent new gaming machine and I would like to build either a direct or belt drive ffb steering wheel with 10-20NM.

    I have on hand numerous pmsm motors including a couple of lenze mcs 12L41 motors, very similar to the 12H20L referenced in servo ffb guides... The 12l41 has a peak torque of 57NM ..... although their Kt is lower at 1.21 so they will require more current to achieve the same torque. Also rotor inertia is a bit higher at 10.6kgcm2. Alas also they have resolver instead of encoder for shaft position but these can be swapped out if required. I have some matching ABB servo drives however I doubt that i could adapt the ABB servo drives to work with MMOs firmware.

    Alternately, I have some dunkermotoren BG75x50PI motors which have integral controllers and canbus interface. At 1NM continuous and 2.5NM peak these 4Q motors would make a great little belt drive setup. control is via -10 to +10v AI and they can do 4Q torque control. 4096 ppr encoder count is available via canbus and maybe so is the torque control, i will need to check. If so then these may be fairly straigtforward to interface with a pc usb port and gaming software.

    So several options which I look forward to discussing with the members of this forum.
    • Like Like x 1
  2. mrbeginner

    mrbeginner Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Interesting idea! I wish best for your project!
  3. MadmaxII

    MadmaxII New Member

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    Right... so i have done some reading and have some good news....Although my motors have resolvers the ABB servo drive resolver interface card has a TTL encoder emulator output...! this may interface with the STM32/MMOs and alleviate any need to change out the resolver for an encoder. The resolver interface card does also have a TTL encoder input so to change to encoder requires only the encoder itself and no other hardware to connect to the ABB servodrive. The drives can output 21A continuous so with a torque constant of 1.2 theres 25NM available... plenty.

    The unknow is torque control from the STM32/MMOs to the ABB gear and the several hundred parameters in the ABB servo drive that will require configuration.. Oh and also I need to prove that these drives will work with single phase AC.

    If all of this is too hard then I will go the Argon route with the MCS12L41 motors (after checking motor/drive compatibility)

    As for the Dunkermotoren motors.... i could use the STM32/MMos approach with an encoder on the steering wheel shaft and some re-programming of the MMOs code to produce the analogue voltage signal for torque control. The reason i like these little motors is that they could maybe be fitted to something like the ECCI 6000 to make an awesome single stage belt drive.

    If i am missing something fundamental please let me know as I my enthusiasm is often at odds with reality....
    • Like Like x 1
  4. MadmaxII

    MadmaxII New Member

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    In order to use one of the Lenze motors I am pretty sure i will need to replace the resolver with an encoder. The resolver produces 0.8 degree accuracy, or about 450 ppr. Renco R35i is the encoder used on the lenze MCS motors which is a 4096 ppr device.... I will contact lenze tomorrow to get a part no. and price. I expect it will be prohibitive.... Not to worry, i have other uses for them.

    Now im leaning towards the Dunkermotorens for a belt drive. My dad has an ECCI 6000 that i think would be straightforward to convert to FFB with the motor in place of the steering damper and pulleys replaced with toothed belt type.
  5. Musashi

    Musashi New Member

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    This is gonna be interesting to watch happen. Best of luck.
  6. MadmaxII

    MadmaxII New Member

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    Thanks Musashi!

    So the MMos does pwm and direction for torque control.... the BG75 motor uses an analog 0-10V (or 0 up to 10v) for torque control and has a digital input for direction. So i can convert the pwm signal to an analog voltage using a filter however I would prefer to do this in software. Any idea how difficult it would be to reconfigure the STM32 and MMos software to output an analog voltage and digital direction for torque control?

    For encoder ouput I'm going to dismantle one of the motors to see if its possible to splice into the inbuilt encoder. I dont like my chances and have a backup plan. I have a 4096 encoder that i can mount to either the motor shaft at the pulley or on the steering shaft. It adds complexity and as i only have one such encoder it means i can only build one wheel.

    Does anyone know where i can get Renco R35i encoders???? These are used on quite a few servo motors it seems...!
  7. MadmaxII

    MadmaxII New Member

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    Bringing this thread back from the dead...
  8. MadmaxII

    MadmaxII New Member

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    ECCI 6000 with motor in place of the damper. Mechanical conversion is progressing well and electronics tested up to encoder integrated into STM32 and MMos.

    Question - the encoder is 5v output, can the STM32 handle 5v logic on the encoder input pins?

    Attached Files:

  9. MadmaxII

    MadmaxII New Member

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    motor is a dunkermotoren BG75x50PI, encoder an "omron" E6B2-CWZ3E, 1024 p/r voltage out
  10. Chris_Beeves

    Chris_Beeves Active Member Gold Contributor

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    Nice project!
    The mmos is closed source, so no getting analog voltage outputs. If you go EMC or VNM software they both support DAC output I believe.
    Stm32f407 pins are not officially 5v tolerant so you’d need a level shifter (in my experience it works fine without it though, did not know this in the beginning and haven’t burnt anything yet)
    • Informative Informative x 1