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Showroom Aiming to build a 5DOF

Discussion in 'DIY Motion Simulator Projects' started by Eagletrike, Jul 14, 2017.

  1. Eagletrike

    Eagletrike New Member SimAxe Beta Tester Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    DC motor, SimAxe, 4DOF
    Hi All,

    Been on xsimulator for a while with every intention of designing and building a sim. I am a recreational pilot that cant afford the cost of actually doing the flying :(. Thought I would start off with a simple Pitch\Roll seat mover design with the theory that it would give me the knowledge and experience to then build a 6DOF Stewart Platform which would mainly be tailored to flight siming. Don't know what happened, must of read too many threads with all these great designs :think, so the design now is to incorporate Pitch, Roll, Surge, Traction Loss/Sway and Heave in the seat mover being mainly for motor racing siming, which I am a huge fan of, cant expect anything less being brought up just out side of Bathurst, its in your blood, even raced go karts as a kid.

    Unfortunately time on the project is limited, life seems to get in the way, dam this working thing. I have designed the sim using Sketchup and interfaced to simtools, looked ok while moving, that is when I could get it to actually stay together without exploding all over the screen. That was an interesting ride.
    Here is the design.
    5DOF design.jpg

    I haven't finished the surge design yet but what I am planning on is an actuator pushing and pulling the steering and foot controls unit forward and backwards which then I may be able to also use for adjustment for different size users.

    Anyway thought I would start with getting motion happening, the electronics in particular and why not do it the hard way, anyone can go buy a H bridge right, were is the fun in that why not build @speedy HPMC and @yobuddy simaxe having extremely limited experience in electronics that was founded in a couple of lunchtime meetings of the Radio Club back in high school some 40 years or so ago, gave that Radio Club thing away so as to spend my time more appropriately smoking and hiding from teachers on the school oval. Anyway it has been a huge (understated) learning curve so far. More to follow when I can get a few minutes to spare....
    • Creative Creative x 1
  2. yobuddy

    yobuddy Well-Known Member Staff Member Moderator SimAxe Beta Tester SimTools Developer Gold Contributor

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    @Eagletrike,
    Unfortunately the SimAxe project never really took off, and a simple Arduino can do a lot more now days. I would go with a couple of Arduinos and speedys HPMC's.
  3. Eagletrike

    Eagletrike New Member SimAxe Beta Tester Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    DC motor, SimAxe, 4DOF
    I ended up building a Simaxe and a HPMC to get the process under way etching the circuit boards which took a few attempts, found a few techniques some worked better than others. I liked the mix of Acetone and isopropyl alcohol/mentholated spirits to transfer the laser print from the paper to the copper as I had more success this way rather than heating the paper to melt it onto the copper, for the actual etching tried a Copper Chloride in Aqueous Hydrochloric Acid Solution (Environmental reasons - trying to do the right thing) sort of worked but went to the Ferric Chloride which gave me a better result. Next ones I will try a CNC, see if that is an easier option, like to do it myself so I can say "I built this", rather than just assembled it.

    Next came the soldering of components, a few choice words and burnt fingers and it was done, did they work, of course not.
    Simaxe.jpg

    Speedy designed HPMC.jpg

    Pretty sure the Simaxe was a goer but the HPMC was letting the side down, The Simaxe had the required voltages from the Motor directions and PWM, had a back light on in the LCD but nothing else. Program loaded well and could go between all the different configs all visible in the admin program. So what next, I had decided by this time to use ballscrews in a linear actuator requiring something like a multi turn encoder for positional feedback, didn't like the idea of trying to gear a Pot as they seem vulnerable to breakage and it would require to spin approx. 20 times in a full length move, PMed @yobuddy (it seemed that the simaxe thread had died a natural death) about being able to convert Pins from the LCD to add extra digital inputs for the encoder and micro switches to control the travel limits. After a few messages back and forth yobuddy put me onto @RufusDufus Arduino and SMC3 thread. After some 63 pages of reading the thread I pulled out and dusted off my Arduino Uno that I had used to simulate movement via model aircraft servos.

    Back to the @speedy HPMC I thought rather than be like a damsel in distress I would try and nut this out and maybe learn something along the way after all that is why I wanted to build from scratch. I stuffed if I could line up the pins joining the top board from the bottom board so I soldered wires joining the jump points still nothing, looking around with a multi meter I realised I had no idea what was meant to be happening anyway so I started to read the components datasheets, I swear they speak another language I think it is called gobblety gook.
  4. yobuddy

    yobuddy Well-Known Member Staff Member Moderator SimAxe Beta Tester SimTools Developer Gold Contributor

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    When electronics fail in my experience, its almost always a bad solder joint.
    Inspect them with a magnifying glass and I bet you'll see a few culprits.
  5. Eagletrike

    Eagletrike New Member SimAxe Beta Tester Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    DC motor, SimAxe, 4DOF
    You are spot on there @yobuddy, from memory I found two joints that didn't take too well but I also found that polarised capacitors have to go in the correct way as well to work, go figure. Out of the five polarised capacitors I got four of them around the wrong way, it is a good thing I'm not a betting man I'd be broke and destitute. Like I said I only attended a couple of meetings of the lunchtime radio club. Anyhow did a lot of reading learnt a lot of interesting things on h bridges, gates, logic circuits etc. but what it has taught me is that there is still a lot to learn.

    Got out my Arduino Uno loaded up @RufusDufus SMC3 software, connected up @speedy designed HPMC found a old brushless computer cooling fan hooked it up and came up with the following video.


    • Like Like x 1
  6. yobuddy

    yobuddy Well-Known Member Staff Member Moderator SimAxe Beta Tester SimTools Developer Gold Contributor

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    When I was in electronics in collage, people used to attach caps backwards to students power supplies.
    When they came in and turned on their power supplies, half the class would hit the floor when the cap exploded.
    Oh, the good old times. :grin
    yobuddy
    • Funny Funny x 2
  7. Eagletrike

    Eagletrike New Member SimAxe Beta Tester Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    DC motor, SimAxe, 4DOF
    Well it's been a while, still plodding along unfortunately not spending as much time as I would like on my project. After getting the HPMC and SMC3/Arduino up and running I contemplated what I was going to make the rig actually move. The original, refer to 1st post, actuator design I had come up with way back then, started to look too heavy and cumbersome as this was around the time SeatTime had made his flash lightweight carbon fibre actuators, so it got me thinking. I went looking through the forum for ideas for a design and came across @Hoddem 's great design, this one caught my eye and thought this is the concept I would go with. I downloaded Fusion 360 and started working on my version of the design so as to suit the parts that I had already had and my needs, note to oneself, design then buy the parts:think. I had never used Fusion 360 before so that was another learning curve. I like the software though, I have only scratched the surface, could spend a heap more time on learning it, just seeing other peoples work it is amazing and the licensing of it is just great as well.
    • Like Like x 1
  8. Eagletrike

    Eagletrike New Member SimAxe Beta Tester Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    DC motor, SimAxe, 4DOF
    Designed the actuator around a Custom DC Motor 12V 350W 4500 RPM , CUI AMT102 modular incremental encoder, 1605 Ball screw and nut and a couple of Multicomp micro switches. I am using 4 X 10mm linear rails and my free sample issue of Igus iglide®, H1FM-1012-10 bearing. I have priced the material for the slider which is 316/316L Stainless 26.67 mm OD so will need to be machined down to 25mm for the linear bearings and a 50.8 mm round bar machined to bolt up to the Ball nut, not looking forward to hearing the machining costs though.

    Actuator design.jpg Actuator design 2.jpg Actuator slide rod.jpg

    Next step make the parts. I didn't have access to a 3D printer so looked on the internet at shops that would print your designs, but didn't that come as a shock some of the quotes I got back. I could go and buy a cheap 3D printer Kit and put it together for half the price of one lot of the printed parts. I ordered a Geetech Aluminium Prusa i3 printer. That was a fun thing to put together over a couple of weeks, had a few teething issues searched through numerous forum posts and managed to get it up and running and am quite happy with the end product. I had what I would classify as an acceptable fail rate as I worked out shrinkage which you wouldn't deem as equal across the board, I have only printed it in PLA e.g. The diameter of the mounting discs would shrink by approx 8% but the holes in the plate could be as high as 25 - 30 %.

    IMG_0137.jpg IMG_0139.JPG IMG_0138.JPG

    My goal once the prototype is tested would be to produce the components out of Aluminium, so yay I will get to build myself a CNC router, "Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it". by Greg Anderson. Wow I'm having a joyous time.
    • Like Like x 2
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2018
  9. Eagletrike

    Eagletrike New Member SimAxe Beta Tester Gold Contributor

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    +9 / 0 / -0
    My Motion Simulator:
    DC motor, SimAxe, 4DOF
    More of my joyous moments came about when I realised that running an incremental encoder, 2 limit switches, 2 motor direction and a PWM for each of the 3 motors was beyond the scope of the Arduino Uno. Decided on using a Mega 2560 R3 so as to be able to do the 3 motors. Sounds easy just incorporate a little code into @RufusDufus SMC3 sketch, after all I had done a bit of programming back in the day only in database development but how hard can manipulating hardware be. Did the research, lot of reading then got stuck into it. I enjoyed myself as I always like coding, it reminds me of building motors, you take a lot of bits and pieces and put them together to get it running, a rewarding experience often with challenges which all adds to the experience and you don't have to lay on cold concrete or get covered in grease. Ended up being a fairly large rewrite incorporating the incremental encoder and the micro switches but haven't got to the stage of running the Sketch but it compiles and I have been able to check functionality via the print commands in the serial window. Unfortunately the SMC3Utils v1.01 program isn't compatible with the mega and the sketch so I will need to wrap my head around that and develop a utility program to the handle setup rather just relying on hard coding it, so if you read this RufusDufus maybe a few suggestions would be much appreciated thank you.