Slowest 2DOF build ...ever.

So I've been lurking these forums for a few years and finally have some extra space at home to be able to put a sim together. Although the process has been pretty drawn out and generally very little planning or design has gone in to it, we've had a lot of fun so far.

It started out with me trying to build something that wouldn't take up much space, at the time I didn't have much spare room in the place I was living at. There were a few great builds on the forum that I took ideas from and was planning on building a seat mover that was compact. I got some RHS cut to the lengths I required and at that point the idea looked something like this...


The design was basically lifted straight from leaedman's build which can be found here
http://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/my-2dof-with-dc-motors.6314/

And that's pretty much where that design and idea finished. Just before we went to weld it up, I told my mate and welding monkey (Ben) that I wanted to build a seat mover that was shoulder mount based. He sighed as I had no plans or designs, yet I had been reading this forum for long enough to understand the basic geometry I'd need to get it all going... ( well I hope so, as I write this we're yet to finish it off and fire it up )




I'm guessing you all know what this is , as for why we didn't just put a flat piece on the bottom and instead made a C section ... plans change and also if you fail to write said plans down and return to the job 2 weeks later confused , then sometimes you end up with this, but it works.



So at this point we were testing to see if we could just reuse the RHS I had cut for the previous design, yeah I'm cheap. But it worked out pretty well, I would have liked to have made it bigger, but can always go back and make another later down the track. This was about the time that we decided that we'd try and make as much out of off-cuts and stuff we had laying around, this was to be a prototype we kept saying.



So we had been working on this for a few months already, mostly my fault due to being lazy. We would work on it maybe once a week during the evening, if we needed supplies like nuts or bolts and we couldn't find anything laying around the garage, then the job would be put off for another week until I could be bothered to get supplies and get back around. Lucky Ben kept on my case otherwise the thing would still be an idea, so over the last few weeks it's started to come together pretty quickly. I'd drop round to remind myself of where the project was at and have a chat and out of nowhere we'd end up get multiple jobs crossed off the list.

You can see in the photo above that we decided to mount the whole thing on MDF rather than build a lower platform out of RHS, the idea is to then replace the MDF with RHS ...but who knows.

This was a section I was really happy with, mostly cos it came together with little thought and we managed to use mostly off-cuts. The brass bolt will still need to have the head removed so a flexible coupler can be attached. But yeah, as cheap and shitty as it looks , it's solid and wasn't anywhere near as complex as my other ideas where for the motor and pot mountings.




So this is how I left it last, just needing some rods made up and the electronics wired in before we flick the switch and watch it burn down the garage ...good times. Will be adding more when I get around to it , currently waiting for heim joints and a few other random pieces to arrive in the mail.


The latest footage of it working 26/3/2016

Can you not edit your own posts ? I didn't proof read that master piece above due to posting at work (naughty naughty)

Arrived home to find couplers and some rose/heim/rod ends waiting for me, should be a productive weekend.

I don't get an edit link , and I'm logged in. Scanned the screen for what seemed like an hour..so took a screenshot to make sure I'm not going mad.




wait... I can edit this post ...wtf ?

Wow Nice idea!

You can edit new posts for a minute after sending them.

Apparently editing unlocks at 10 posts (I thought it was 5 but i cant edit yet).

Well then only two more posts before I can edit ..again.

Cheers!

So this is pretty much where I left it at around 2:30am last night. We plugged in the PSU's and turned on the JRK's to check feedback and power was functioning correctly, it seemed fine. Only had a surface tablet and one usb cable though, so were limited to what we could do.

Still waiting on conical spacers for the rod ends (getting by with some spring washers atm) and also need more sleep to think of what else needs doing ...oh yeah , another set of levers.

But as it sits currently, should be good enough to test it out.

Nice work so far. I had a thought about conical spacers. I remember seeing , on @bsft dual hire sims, when he had them, he had small bits of thin wall steel pipe. So if its a 10mm threaded bolt, he used a 12mm pipe piece. Now as his sims were under heavy use, it seems to be fine.

I had trouble finding somewhere locally that does metric conical spacers or misalignment spacers. Ended up ordering a set from the UK and I'm still waiting for them to turn up. I think the spring washers will do for now, the seat has full movement without binding up. The levers I made only have a 60mm CTC mounting holes and they're made from 40mm flat bar, I'll get some 25mm and make 65mm CTC levers. Hopefully by then the spacers will have arrived. Was also thinking of getting some M10 rod ends with M10-M8 misalignment spacers, currently running M8 rod ends. I'll wait until it breaks or doesn't before I spent that money though. The pipe idea is a good one though, bummed I didn't think about it when I was roaming around bunnings at 6pm last night.

So I switched on the sim tonight, movement was okay after stuffing around with axis setup for ages. But the biggest problem so far is the PSU are shutting down when there is a crash, not overly surprised cos I'm running HP server PSU's. So the question is about a replacement PSU , would the 12v 50a version of these http://goo.gl/jZUHuH be good enough or will they also go in to protect. When I got more time I'll put a car battery on the sim and see what happens without the current PSU's running the sim.

PSU shut down's are FAR more common on New guys setup for the fact they lack the ability to know what's going on and what is causing the error's. Most likely you have thing's set too aggressive in the PID and that is the reason for the PSU's dropping out. Batteries just allow you a little more leeway before thing's go a rye.

I wouldn't be surprised if you're correct Nick, as I went to sleep last night the PID and motor settting were floating around my mind.

PID I had set at (P) 0.39 - (I) 0.00 - (D) 0.50

Max Duty Cycle in the motor tab, I have that set to 600 , would bringing it down help ?

So setting the pots/feedback with a multimeter = win

Switched games from LFS to AC and got a lap in at Nords with a few off track wall kisses and no shut downs. Don't want to push it too much as I'm still waiting on heatsinks for the JRK's.

Will keep playing with settings as it's all a learning curve. Any advice on what to have surge/sway/roll/pitch levels in simtools ? I had them all at 20 to test , seemed rather soft but worked none the less.

Thanks for the advise @noorbeast , I'll keep playing with these settings.

I did watch @Avenga76 youtube on PID settings, it was very helpful. But I haven't played with them much, just set them to what the sim tools quick start manual has and they seem good. Will play around as I learn more.

Mostly played with the axis settings in sim tools this morning, getting the dof direction correct. Put a big smile on my face when I started to feel the sway of the car correctly. Haven't had PSU shut down this morning, but that might start to happen again once I get it set and push it harder.

And some photos of how it currently sits now we moved it from garage to inside the house for setup and testing. Wiring is only temp , I will install it all in a box with some fans and might go the full monty and put temp and volts/amps readouts, but that won't be done anytime soon.

The MDF has a slight amount of flex under big movement, I'll either brace it or just build another platform from RHS.

So a few updates and a question,

I broke a 12mm thread rod that was used as a shaft, broke basically cause I stuffed up making it. So I made another, better this time, and also some longer/thinner levers. Was using 40x5 flat bar for 60mm CTC levers, now 25x5 flat bar 65mm CTC.

More important the misalignment spacers arrived and also some heatsinks. So hopefully won't destroy another pair of rose joints oh yeah, that happened also, think metal shavings from the rod ends binding up caused dead rose joints.

So in my testing I've found some really basic settings that I can build from that return no motor driver errors or shut downs of PSU ( well going off track at high speed still isn't friendly all the time, but I'll test with a car battery and see if any changes, not worried about that yet) the issues I am having are with Input Disconnect errors. I've found that if you sway to one side, the other side gets input errors and if you surge back , both get input errors , forward , no errors. And it's constant, so if I test in Simtools output testing, as soon as I move the sway in one direction , the other sides controller show input disconnect errors rolling in.

I'll try and get around to posting screenshots of my settings, but my net is rather shit at the moment and even posting this has been interesting.

Cheers