4 corner D-Box style rig with wiper motors?

You are Sorely misunderstanding how much power and torque is required for a Full sized lift style frame. Wiper's just aint gonna cut it. no matter how you slice it.

I'm not necessarily limited to wipers, though I realize that is what my thread title originally stated as it was my first idea. I guess I basically just mean DC motors with gearboxes at this point. With 4 motors total, each one is only going to have to supply around 60 pounds apiece to support the load (I know it will take more to accelerate the load, but that's still something I need to work out the numbers on). With locking gearboxes the motors really shouldn't have to support much of the load at all if that works out. I've found a few garage door motor specs that say 200 pound lift force with 30A max draw (motor controllers will be the next fun thing to look at), though I'm still working on what radius pulley they are using for that and exactly what that spec means in the literature.

I'd love to do it with actuators as that would be fair more straightforward, but the cost just doesn't make any sense. I still can't believe the D-Box actuators are the only thing out there with the power and speed to do the job, though I'm sure any alternatives would still be more expensive than I'd like. A good DC motor with a gearbox and controller is most likely <$300, which is better than any actuators I've seen.

In my non engineer brain I'm with Nick. You may be correct that they need to supply 60lbs hold a piece but that is to hold the unit still. So if I was making up numbers, and each motor could move 100lbs you would be using 60% of your power just at zero motion. Again I'm not an engineer but this makes sense to me.

Even with 4 corner motors a ujoint in the middle would balance the weight. I think the same range of motion could be achieved and would relieve the stress on the motors. Just check out @SeatTime 's joyrider for amazing things that can be done with 2dof (pretty sure it was his build I'm thinking of and I know it doesn't use a u-joint but pointing to it for the range of motion effects that can be had)

I'll have to check that rig out as well. In thinking over it I might consider some lightweight springs under each corner as well to help suspend the load. If sized properly then the weight of the rig would essentially be suspended entirely by the springs at rest and the motors would have to push up (against gravity) and down (against the springs) at hopefully very similar loads if I could size springs well. Seems like that would help balance the loading at least so it's not more effort to lift than lower. I realize a u-joint could do something similar, but would require a more accurate CG calculation vs just putting a spring at each corner. Heck, with the four corner springs I might be able to get away with just two fairly large motors instead of each corner as well, though I'll have to think about that one some more.

A bit of a side note, but is there something rated for more power than a JRK that works essentially the same? Sounds like many have had reasonable success running 20 amps through them continuously when well cooled, but if I went with two large motors I think there's a chance I'd need more grunt than that.

I have never built a 'joyrider' - currently run a 6DOF Stewart Platform , you must be thinking of someone else . FI, even with springs or gas struts to equalize some of the static load, it still takes reasonably powerful motors to overcome the large inertia that can be generated in a fast moving and fully loaded unsupported Sim Rig.

There is a way to make a 4 wiper motors sim:

That's @willaupuis design iirc.



https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...e-francais-anglais-by-google.6344/#post-77652


Next time I will charge you my research time

Hmm, that's a really neat looking rig, though it doesn't necessarily include the pedals and wheel, which is a little of my problem. Seems like you could add them easily enough.

In CAD'ing up my design, I'm debating rebuilding the whole thing from metal to see if I can't cut some weight down. It's already pretty light at 60-70 pounds (I think at least), but I bet I could trim even more off of it with a little more targeting use of material and not just getting by with scrap I had sitting around the house.

Overall I'm not sure if I'm really going for a "vibration" rig as much as a tilting table, so I'm not sure ultimately how fast I think I need it to move. Some of the D-Box setups I've looked at don't appear to move super fast aside from driving over something like a rumble strip in game, though I could handle that with my bass shaker and steering wheel feedback to some degree. As I'm a mechanical engineer by trade, I may have to see about what calculations I can come up with for forces required based on accelerations I can pull from game telemetry. Ideally I would be able to play with a single motor at least, but I'm not really sure I want to drop $100 on a controller just to test stuff. Looking at an Arduino with a MotoMonster I might consider it though as that seems to be a pretty cheap way to experiment.

oops my mistake. I remember being impressed by your rig so your name stuck!

Hi,

I' like to know where to but dbox acuators to fit a Vesasro frame for my first simulator project. I live in Ireland and can;t seem to find a source anywhere thar sell them only Vesaro who are charging a small fortune.
Tks,
John

Hi,

I' like to know where to but dbox acuators to fit a Vesasro frame for my first simulator project. I live in Ireland and can;t seem to find a source anywhere thar sell them only Vesaro who are charging a small fortune.
Tks,
John

Hi,

I' like to know where to but dbox acuators to fit a Vesasro frame for my first simulator project. I live in Ireland and can;t seem to find a source anywhere thar sell them only Vesaro who are charging a small fortune.
Tks,
John

I'm in Canada and was unable to locate a contact person or a price on actuators. My guess is they only sell through the resellers. To be honest I figured if it took me that much effort to buy them, what the heck would I do if I needed any support.

I originally found them while looking at a Sigma Integrale sim setup that was based on a full car. I was asking them questions about the program they were using and they mentioned they have smaller home units. Looks like they sell a D-Box setup that is basically the 4 actuators and control box, but even that was something like $8,000-10,000 so it was way beyond what I wanted to spend.

Having now tried a Dbox rig with the 4 corner style I can certainly place my preference on the scn style seat mover and for much less cost. While the 4 corner heave added minimal missing cues the lack of any real noticible acceleration and braking forces was missing way more than anything added. No traction loss was also noticible. He said they would adding traction loss shortly to the Dbox rigs

Anyways I wouldn't trade my seat mover for the dbox setup even straight across.

Also I preferred my OSW over the BODNAR wheel but the comparison could have been unfair because I am not sure about any of the setting on the BODNAR software side that could have improved the feel. But on the OSW I can feel the weight transfer and couldn't on the bodnar. The motor was about half the size of the large mige but still felt plenty strong. I just didn't get the detail. I did notice the iracing was not set to nm steering forces so I am reserving judgement.


All personal opinions and experience so i understand if others feels differently