agrasyuk

Yep, nothing like seeing puddle of water when you hookup your new machine :)

Hiway, I will be using 6mm tacts for the double buttons (page, BRT, etc.). For the rest I will be using 8.5mm ones as they have travel and tactile click at the end. Aside of cost I tried to minimize backlight Led count - one LED per pair of buttons . but buttons aside its the button caps that I'm working on. Quite a thing...

Aside of couple neat-picks this is looking good. Don't skip on backlighting ! Warning panel will not work as is. you need to figure out some way to insulate the light bleed between individual anunicators. I'm not sure if one arduino board will be able to power the entire warning panel

Your scale reference would be standard panel width of 5.75" and standard DZUS pitch of 0.375" Although I personaly didnt work with these templates so i'm not 100% sure they conform to the mil standard . others will chime in. And BTW. now that my laser is all setup I can assist with laser cutting services as well. I also found a somewhat local place that I can order laser cut aluminum parts from .

:) and now i need to make 63 buttons

thanks Peter, those i had to order, hopefully someday laser to cut 2mm aluminum in household garage will be a reality. I'm not sure i'm tracking your thought with a joystick. i went with keyboard since it is instant 100 buttons matrixed at cost of 10$ or below. but RPi has more USB connections so it can easily have a joystick as well. as the mater of fact i'm also working on AAP panel that will connect to RPi CDU board to share that that networked connection, and in case GPIO interupt code going to degrade CDU screen refresh times i will revert to using Joystick via onboard USB. as far as EDA software hint thank you. kicad indeed is making me feel stupid. after several tries i did manage to build it properly, but the mentality of workflow I just can't get used to. while i could create a PCB example i still don't understand how to import DXF with physical button sizes and locations. will be trying Diptrace

my wallet took quite a hit. now i need to prepare my anodizing setup and blacken these. although i might cut the corner with black enamel spray paint (after surface prep) there will be more in case anyone else wants

sticky thread in home cockpit forum leads to this article: http://deadfrogstudios.com/warthogpit/index.php?title=Building_a_Custom_A-10_Panel_Using_a_GP-Wiz40 pretty much one stop shopping for all beginners questions.

Weeb, well, that is a tough call. even with best outcome shipping back and forth will sure take time. Yes, nowadays when we buy new stuff we learned to expect things to be scratch free and in good working order. Those chinese guys however seem to be very... well , lets call it optimistic (see below) . Someone sure needs to teach them the cost behind sending out knowingly bad stuff, but you probably don't want to be the one - consider whether all this headache and expense with is worth it for you as i'm sure you want to start making parts already. as i said earlier your machine looks serviceable to me. if the power supply and tube are functioning i would not bother sending it back since there is no guarantee you will get one in better shape. calibration (once you get the DSP) and optic path alignment you will have to learn to do anyways. absolutely. my test pattern is a 40mm square, i'm measuring the square itself and the inside cut-out with goal of (dim_Inner+dim_Outer)/2 = 40. i'm quite confident i will reach the right numbers. its the out of square that worries me a bit as there is no simple way to put any of the angles i have against the guides. plan to disconnect the Y shaft coupler, adjust by tiny increments and then measure the made part with granite surface plate and gauge blocks. with that there is more fun stuff from optymistic china tech support. per their request I emailed them this tube video. after seeing it the tech person is under impression that the issue is with unaligned light path. normally i would laugh ADD: Yey!!! my situation was surprisingly resolved by auto tech. after reading my overnight exchange with the Chinese supplier John sent out his technitian Taylor who dropped off new tube at my place. so now i'm cutting again :D well at least for now.

how do you expect saitek hardware to recognize additional switches? the only way to do this is to have the additional buttons on stick connected to another controller with separate wiring harness. regarding all the metal vs resin. as far as "more prototypical" it is not necessarily so. while real grip might be resin, it might be of different kind then what hegykc is going to use. that difference is not of great concern to me , i'm ok if the end product is sufficiently durable (and i can see resin being durable enough). it seems that the biggest thing here behind the materials is budget concerns. while i do want aluminum, if what makes this project see light of day is 3d printed resin then so be it. and i assume it will be finished somehow with polish or paint ?

Aries Radio System: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=104800

well, that new tube didn't last long. under 15 minutes of total cutting time, died on me cutting next calibration pattern. just emailed the vendor a video with pretty sparks in the high voltage end. i'm sure they will be thrilled to replace yet another one. going on third week with no parts made, gets a bit frustrating. not to mention that my "perfectly calibrated and aligned" machine aside of actually not being calibrated as far as stepper pulses also has X and Y axis slightly out of perpendicular.

encoders are incremental devices, you don't want to limit their range of motion.

I'm quite sure this has nothing to do with pit building. This thread should be moved into proper forum for it to be seen. Contact someone from moderators team to move it .

Weeb, hope you healing up well. How is the repair project of the cutter going? I got and installed replacement tube. Gweike had some interesting ideas as far as true meaning of 3 month warranty. But after some back and forth they agreed to replace and send automation tech another tune. AC gave me one from their stock in advance. Stock tube that came (cracked) in this machine is 720mm, same that goes into small K40. The replacement one is ~ 790mm however, marked as 32W typical. Not complaining as it is a tube length that determines the output, and that added length fits perfectly in rear compartment. So perfectly in fact that it makes me suspect this one is the actual stock. I'm using a tankless medical air compressor instead of the stock diaphragm noisey joke rattle. With the included nose cone I get nice 25psi of air assist pressure with lots of flow. Cutting power is very similar: at 80% duty and 6mm/sec vel I cut through 6mm acryl sheet in one pass. although Amp meter readings are quite concerning - 19mA at 80% power seems very high. Makes me wonder how precise is the built in analog meter and how precise was the light object digital one I am still in process of calibrating the stepper pulse values - not immidiately occured to me but the machine was way off. Got both X and Y to within .05mm which is already not to bad, at this point using the two squares test feels identical on hand. My dad promised to stop by with some gauge blocks and proper measurement equipment this weekend. will be seeing what precision level this thing will hold

Part of the trick is to pause tracking. Helps if this function is on your HOTAS

Its nice when it's being provided, but there is nothing wrong with asking compensation for info one has (And as you know quite a few firms are closely guarding their trade secrets from competition. ). whether cost is justified for that particular piece of info is matter of personal opinion. It is also a good thing to have a rivet counting neat-picks on forum. Yes DM's uncompromising stance can and does rub some people the wrong way - I had my share of beef with him (DM, so was it 6mm or 3mm that my LDG panel is off? ) As annoying as they may be at a times, to those who are thick skinned neat-picks still are quite useful. And I don't see what's to be gained from you getting banned. Insults are even less constructive.

Letters are better . and while in general that front panel is usable the fat line around the 3 indicators is quite distracting . The reason it is drawn as it is in my dxf is due to how areas to be engraved are defined for laser. It seems that in your case you would need to modify it to be single line. Same applies in lesser extent to the box around "tems ". Let me know if you need help with that.

On public forums It happens from time to time to get responses without specifically asking for them. It is hard to argue that having exact dims is ideal. But when this data is unavailable there are only 2 possibilities. One of them is do nothing and cancel the project, the other is estimate and adapt. Off by 0.78 is better then off by 0.60 and worlds better then nothing.

What's to be lost about? Its called estimation. When you have a picture with several known dimensions (width between consoles, known dzus height, anything) you can use measurement tools of the graphical editor and some quick math to estimate the missing data. Very close, but not to mm. hence he is saying 95% .

Yep, the letters look quite dinged. Not sure about your process, but its maybe due to how the text is exploded - that's how I need it for the laser. I'd say delete the text and use the same approach as you did in your other panels.

Will it make sky diving gear obsolete too? It is quite a hassle to drive to a field , pass the training, get to the altitude in a rattly crop duster, not even speaking of the expense. And here comes the Rift - boom! All of that suddenly obsolete as you skydiving in your office you just spent 8 hours working... Thinking about it, will make skiing obsolete too while its at it? I was never into ballroom dancing, but now I don't even need to bother because it is surely obsolete now with Rift coming :lol: :lol:

Had a chance to test the new benq1085 projector - friend got one for his eleconomic home theater. Projecting from 8.5 feet ,zoomed to create 8.5feet wide picure. Test footage - F15 neveda edge trailer/teaser (YouTube full screen 1080p quality). Sitting about 4 feet away picture fills the field of view almost completely and pixelation is no longer visible. Immersion is quite a thing - I felt strange things in my stomach when wags was doing barrel rolls. But all in all i have some doubt's - picture looked very soft to me (proj was correctly focused). Maybe it was youtube, maybe its the fact I wasn't wearing glasses (my vision is -1.25, barely enough to pass vision exam for driver license without glasses) while looking at screen much farther away then PC monitor. Stretching the image even further with that reflective setup may result with image really washed out...

Rift will not kill vaccum cleaners, will not kill toaster-ovens and will not kill scuba-diving equipment. And for exactly same reason it will not kill pit building.

Bad idea IMHO. For this to work there needs to be active board moderation specifically for those new sections - those coming for a quick question not going to bother categorizing properly and things will get dropped all over. This is based on my experience moderating electronics section of model railroad board. Will be quite a mess ADD: What would be much better though is an index thread. Think stickied thread with the first post containing a list of links to prominent build/equipment/ or anything else of interest. sorted by topic, maintained by thread starter. Rest of the thread deals with suggwstions of items to add and suggestions in organization. Again this needs someone very verse in topic of pitbuilding to create that initial list, and be very active at same time to attend to suggestions