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2DOF SBtooth2x32 PGSAW 50:1 ricmo clone

Discussion in 'DIY Motion Simulator Projects' started by weld12, Nov 6, 2018.

  1. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    Hello friends,
    I have been reading posts here for many years and I'm now undertaking a move to motion with my static rig.
    Starting with Grand Prix Legends on a laptop; with a new baby on the way; I bought a G27 and had a chuckle with my wife about pretending to race...
    Well I didn't realize how much I would enjoy sims and building to make it more immersive. I like to work in metal and wood because of the fabrication and carpentry work I've done. The last ~10 years have placed me in municipal wastewater operations/maintenance where I've acquired some knowledge of industrial motors and controls.
    My "racer" (kids name) for my rig? Began from photos of the RS1 cockpit on isrtv and my best guess of measurements to suit me with several iterations of seating; porsche 914, welded office chair, vintage bucket.
    20181125_210112.jpg 20181125_210303.jpg 20181125_210244.jpg
    A few things have turned out well: a bournes pot handbrake from alu pipe/scrap,
    20181125_210048.jpg 20181125_210052.jpg
    custom alu pedals from a clip I'd seen of Magnus Walker discussing his race pedals.
    20181125_210038.jpg Craigslist, scrap and thrift shops have helped along the way.

    A heady mixture of MDF, cut aluminum signs, ss unistrut and bad lawnmower gas smell in my shop have fueled my passion (helps the immersion LOL).
    Running dell workstations (t3500, and t5400 with gtx 750tis), I'm constrained to but enjoy GPL,GTR2 (P&G!), Rfactor, RBR, Rally Trophy, Dirt Rally, ETS2, MSFX, IL2 Sturmovic = older sims.
    Obviously I'm very low budget and prefer used or rebuilt by myself.
    I really badly wanted to do a argon ffb build and began to assemble many parts but time has moved quickly these few years and much has changed.
    So I've begun to build some bang for the buck by stretching my frame, mocking up the pgsaw motors and today a test w/ new ard uno (first time) with sabertooth on some 9v 16:1 motors sourced from a dead peristaltic sampler pump.

    Attached Files:

    • Like Like x 1
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2018
  2. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    +23 / 1 / -0
    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    I've added approx. 18in to my static frame with the same in overlap or sistered to prevent flex from the motor mount.
    20181031_205002.jpg 20181031_204909.jpg
    After several evenings of wiring and installing programs etc. I attempted to drive the little 9v motors on my bench test from the ard through the sabertooth using @BlazinH ,@RufusDufus excellent SMC3 utility and walkthrough. No motor output last night and the night before!*&%&$. I thought I couldn't get my dip switches correct well I slept on it and damn I'd wired the 5v from sabertooth to pin 13 not s1 to pin 13. This afternoon
    I ran PWMmax up to ~20 and got motor movement out of both motors!
    I'm using the 180 hall effect pots recommended by folks here. I have motors following feedback with some varience in speed at equal PWM values between motors (these likely have thousands of hours).

    Attached Files:

    • Like Like x 1
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2018
  3. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    Waiting on some M12 threaded rod, locknut,washers for the PGSAW gearbox I got (thanks @Nick Moxley @noorbeast); M7 thrd rod for bracket attachment and motor to motor bracing ;) and 1/2-20 rod levers to seat.
    Forgot to mention the double flanged ujoint was salvaged from the scrap pile used in a 30' vertical shaft driven centrifugal pump. I have a few extra pieces of the yoke if I need more height (not 30' thougho_O)
    Thanks to this great community I'm very excited to start getting the motion going.
    :grin
    Update: I've got all the parts in to continue the build. I had a long wait on the M7 rod. As the well known industrial supplier (G) sent two M12 rods and an M16 rod, with multiple calls/emails (bad customer service), they basically told me I could keep the wrong parts. They would send out a M7 ASAP-never happened. I went to Ebay and received it promptly.
    I've got a lower backed bucket seat whereby I'm trying to make it possible to still have shoulder mount rod mounting. Welded up a unistrut brace with multiple attachment points for testing. Room for a pad maybe.
    20181125_210204.jpg 20181125_210200.jpg

    Bolted down the seat through a 1/2" UHMW sheet as a seat base/ w light steel frame.
    20181125_210011.jpg
    Aluminum sheet on the rig should spread the load and torque to the platform.
    • Like Like x 1
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2018
  4. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    M12 rod through the motor with nyloc nuts either side and levers of 1" channel that effectively retains the nut pinched by a 3rd nyloc on the flat. I think this will work guys.
    20181125_210211.jpg 20181125_210218.jpg
    I've got ctc of 1.5 and 2.5" to play with and a 2" bolt
    The head retained in channel using the high misalignment spacer, rod and nyloc.
    20181125_210319.jpg
  5. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    I've made aluminum plates for brackets to attach the motor to the outside of the 2x4 wood structure with three possible positions behind the seat. With offset holes in the brackets I used 1/2 lag bolts and pre-drilled through the frame. At the furthest point away from the seat motor mounting appeared to not allow enough pitch without longer rods and thus the angle seemed too flat. Testing with a battery, I realized my geometries would have to change and be more like some of the other seat movers on Xsimulator.
    20181211_193612.jpg 20181211_193604.jpg
    After mounting motors, I wanted to allow my levers to make a full rotation around the motor if something went wrong while testing. Seeing some binding, I've run longer bolts through the lever and shimmed out where the rod ends attach. The carriage bolts were a little fat to clear the motors so the heads have been sanded down. Levers have been shortened to just past the 2.5" length.
    Due to the levers farther out from the frame, at the motor, the rod attachment at the seat frame was widened as well this using the high misalignment spacers and multiple locknuts. Motor shafts have been shortened outside and moved in toward the pots.
    20181211_193548.jpg 20181211_193553.jpg
    7MM threaded rod through the motor/bracket at 3 points using cutoffs from an aluminum sign retain the pots (attached to motor shaft with flex couplings). At the top rod I've welded a section of ss pipe with nuts either side to cross brace the motors a very dramatic improvement in flexing at this testing phase.
    • Like Like x 1
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2018
  6. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    I moved further with my structural work mostly complete. Have to box the end of the frame eventually (leaving myself room to work). It was time to run the sabertooth/ard on my actual wormgear motors.
    Using some utility wiring boxes to house the controls: a double outlet box provides a nice enclosure for the sabertooth with holes for ventilation and a strain relief, for the arduino an "old work" single outlet box with strain relief topped with an outdoor see through hinged lid. The ard fit snug with some trimming of the plastic. Mounted on a plastic panel with built in stand offs (so future use or cover). I have used a a lot of common plumbing and electrical parts for sim building!
    20181211_193622.jpg 20181211_194125.jpg
    20181211_194211.jpg
    • Like Like x 1
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2018
  7. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    +23 / 1 / -0
    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    I was anxious to run the smc3-sps-sabertooth on my build and was not disappointed with the range of motion running the utility. I picked up fairly quickly how to adjust the pots/couplings where I could turn on the motors. With my previous testing, I was able to have somewhat close feedback tracking to different waves. From the beginning my pot wiring was made with telephone wire unshielded so I knew this would need to be replaced. Getting a lot of small waves on the green line that should quiet down with shielded wire. A bit daunting all the settings, options for a noob.
    I thought things were working well enough and maybe a little excited, I'll dip my toes into the simtools and lfs demos available. Thanks, guys!
    I followed the setup to establish communication to the arduino in game engine almost to the tee only to have one item under parity left blank assuming it was the same as none and thus no motion from simtools. After reading a thousand pages of various threads :roll someone had made the same mistake.
    At this point I dropped in some variables for axis assignment and started lfs and holy moly we have motion in game.:thumbs An incredible feeling of surge at acceleration/ braking to curbs to rumble on - very much worth the trouble.:grin
    I have cleaned up my pot wiring, have no idea what I'm doing, I have a motor that makes noise, but I understand
    why the community likes to play with motion!
    • Like Like x 2
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2018
  8. bbb8cd

    bbb8cd New Member

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    St. Louis, MO, US
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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    Nice work! I have the same setup planned (Pgsaw motors, sabertooth), just gotta get building. Since you didn't show changing the gear direction, did you wire the motors opposite each other?
  9. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    The gearbox of one motor was flipped around after reading a few threads on the subject. I emailed Kim at PGSAW for more comfort on the subject and his response was:
    "The large gear with the shaft can be simply pulled out and turned around to make that a left or right as you please. We do this on our sawmills with the same motors.The best grease to use would be isoflex grease but if you do not have that a wheel bearing grease will work for that.
    I hope this helps
    Kim"
    There is a sort of long side and a short side hollow tube through the gearbox. I oriented the longer side out toward my levers, of note is a hole for a roll pin or bolt which I did not use as the box is pinched with nyloc nuts on the threaded rod per @Nick Moxley. The grease in the boxes is sort of the stickiest gunk you can imagine - very important for the longevity of the worm. I will be looking at getting some isoflex grease to repack what may have been lost opening the box.
    • Winner Winner x 1
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2018
  10. bbb8cd

    bbb8cd New Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification.
  11. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    It was hard to do but I got it mostly done and certainly working! It's hard if you have kids but often they help me:thumbs After a year of inactivity to the thread I"ll get an update with new pics and speak of some trials and success.
    Winter 2018
    • Like Like x 3
    • Optimistic Optimistic x 1
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2019
  12. cgodwin

    cgodwin Active Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, JRK, Joyrider
    Nice job! It is good to see another DIY sim in Oregon!
    • Friendly Friendly x 1
  13. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    Thanks! Although it has been sometime since I looked through your project thread, I was inspired by the project you built for your kid/s and of course being fairly local was cool! I think there is a few Oregon based folks here and I often browse craigslist looking for components for our strange hobby; gearmotors/servos/industrial equipment/aviation/motorsport.
  14. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    Following up with my functioning build last winter.
    -I boxed in the back of the ladder frame and installed heavier casters at all four corners of the sim as the originals
    had nearly collapsed from extra weight.
    -After reinstalling much of my 5.1 audio system, handbrake,extra powered sub. I began to experience frequent arduino uno crashes after just a few laps.
    -That lead me down the path of using more shielded wiring to the arduino, ferrites on audio cables, better usb cables and insulating metal components of the sim.
    -Thinking of what else to try or do I reduced overall force in the profile editor and ordered an arduino mega to see if I still had crashes.
    Grasping for straws is how it feels when you experience crashes like this. It's very easy to apply multiple fixes at once and lose track of the problem or problems that created it.
    At some point I realized my aluminum base for my pedal tray combined with metal cladding under the seat and perhaps subwoofer amp were leaking some stray voltage after I went over everything with a multimeter, creating interference to USB.

    Soon I was able to run multiple laps without crashes and demonstrate the Mega working on the SMC3 soft start sketch.
    More recently I'm enjoying the motion profile in Assetto Corsa as it seems much more refined than the GTR2/rFactor generation of sims.
    Dirt Rally is fantastic after some refining, really enjoying the jumps.
    Into my old Dell t3500 I placed a Xeon x5687 @ 3.6ghz, GTX1070, SSD for boot and a USB 3.0 pcie card for VR.
    Picked up a Oculus CV1 combined with motion in Dirt Rally has kept me up late in the night a few times!
    The soft start sketch was updated and doesn't slam the seat up anymore!
    I have played with the joystick plugin on games without support like flatout 1, ps2 emulated Tourist Trophy, Mini Ninjas and GPL/NR2003 (I have problems with their plugins.)
    Recent struggles have been a transition to Win10 and all my drivers,older sims and games to test. Sound card; drivers and 5.1 settings to battle.
    A failure of my old Logitech Z640 control head.
    Followed by a craigslist find z640 set to replace it.Yes!
    I have experienced a few random crashes since improvements have been made, not sure why and opening the SMC3 utility doesnt seem to save some motor settings however I see the sketch reflects the higher values I input. (Utility will show pwm say 28 and the sketch must be outputting nearly 200.)
    To be continued...
    Last edited: Jan 15, 2020
  15. Arazok

    Arazok Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF
    @weld12: I had a similar problem with regards to "wrong" values in SMC utility. Do you use the softstart loop in the SMC3 code? If yes, this is exactly the problem. I changed it and it works now with correct values. I need to check my changes, cannot remember it just from scratch...
    • Informative Informative x 1
  16. weld12

    weld12 New Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    • Like Like x 1
  17. Arazok

    Arazok Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF
    I will pm you my changes..