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This might be misleading. I was thinking of a very, very soft center. No clicks or clunks of any kind. Imagine a 2 inch bungee cord, now stretch it to 10 inches. Now grab the center of the stretched bungee cord and move it around. You will feel the center strongly, but absolutely no clunks at all. You can achieve that on a joystick by using cams like the Mamba stick, or by using 2 springs on each axis acting against each other. That will give you a very definitive center, but no clunks, clicks or anything that would forcefully "click" you into zero position. The goal is to achieve "infinite" precision around center. And those are the only 2 ways of doing it. Any kind of a mechanical center detent will heavily hinder your precision. And no stick has a bigger center detent than the warthog unfortunately. When using only 1 axis at a time, that is. When you use both, it's smooth of course, but then you have the problem of not getting any tactile feedback on the forces. Anyway, always interesting to hear real pilot's experiences. Keep them coming.

Please don't. Fanboyism can go two ways, the other guys need to toughen up :) No questioning or doubts can ruin neither me nor TM. Worst case scenario someone might learn a thing or two. It might as well be me. By all means. Looking forward to it.

No need to get harsh. 14th JAR can make his statements and opinions, so can anyone else, just as I can defend mine. I hold no ill feelings to any of the questions or doubts, as long as they're civil, which they are. I try to respond just as civil, with the facts that I have on my disposal. This is no dispute, just a debate and there's nothing wrong with that. I might be wrong in some of these points, I'll gladly learn a few more things if I stand corrected. I don't think it was ever a daily bashing. But I have to show what's wrong with it, to sell you a better solution. Otherwise, why would you buy my product if there's nothing wrong with yours. You think warthog has the best gimbal mechanism? That is perfectly fine, I did too. But now I can answer that with some of my findings which point the other way, that's all. You are free to debunk them if you can.

I have no actual flying experience, let alone a military aircraft :) But I don't know if I would count simulators, you never know what's under the hood. Most available to the public are made to practice procedures. I do however know for a fact that hotas warthog stick can never feel like a real plane stick. It only has 1 spring. It is physically impossible. No real aircraft has the same force on both ailerons and elevators. No prop and no jet. More importantly, absolutely no aircraft would let one axis tactile feedback cancel the other one. That will get you killed in an instant. If you can't feel the amount of your pitch input, just because you are also banking.. well that would be like making a car that has no brake pedal feel if the gas pedal is engaged at the same time. 5-6 years ago when I first put my hands on a dual spring stick I was also disappointed because I was used to the arcade style of the cheapest 1 spring sticks. But the real aircraft will never give you the "smooth circular motion" that a warthog hotas has (and all other comercial joysticks with 1 spring system). In a real plane X and Y axis are separate and have 4 quadrants in which they go from minimum to maximum force, regardless of the plane type or era. Even if it's a "fly by wire", it's a safety thing especially in fighters. Your eyes are on the target, you need to feel your stick inputs. And you can never do that on the warthog hotas, if you're banking, your pitch up/down axis has zero tactile feedback and vice versa. This will feel "wrong" and "uncomfortable" if you're just discovering this, compared to a "smooth, easy and arcade" style of the joystick, it did to me. But again, it's just how planes are in real life. (a little silly coming from me with no actual experience, but I've done my research)

Quite the opposite. If you pull your warthog left/right you will feel a huge center detent, also forward/backward, massive detent at each axis neutral. Try it, use only one axis at a time. Only when avoiding the center of the circle (using XY at the same time) is the warthog smooth. Neither of these features are found on any real plane controls. Again, completely unrealistic, and not found in any airplane control system. I'm sorry, but this is just the way it is. A real world system is exactly like you see on the Mamba picture. Each axis has it's own maximum and minimum force and "soft zero" position, not depending on each other. For example, if you apply full right aileron on X axis with 10lbs of force, and then applying elevator, you will still go from 0lb to 10lbs on Y axis, even though your X is already at maximum. In a real plane. Because each axis is a separate system. Not on a warthog hotas. As soon as you move your stick from zero position, the force stays the same in both axis for the same radius movement. Completely unrealistic. Doing the largest radial circle movement on a warthog means you are commanding you aircraft through the most demanding maneuvers and you are getting absolutely zero feedback from the stick. Force stays the same regardless if you're at axis minimum or maximum. Completely and fundamentally wrong. This is wrong on many levels: 1)Precision formation flying is very hard, impossible even, because of the absolutely huge center detent. Aiming also. 2) When you apply maximum X axis, you have to apply maximum force to get even the slightest Y movement, because there is only one spring, and it is already engaged to the maximum. So even though you are starting from zero on the Y axis, you have to apply maximum force from the start, and that force stays at 100% through the whole range of stick movement. 3) Real world pilots correct me if I'm wrong, but the stick movement is not circular. If you apply max X - max Y - min X - min Y you get a square. I know this is like me telling you Santa is not real :) But I'm sorry, that's just the facts. I really wish it were not true, but it just is. Don't blame me, I'm not the one who made these crucial and absolutely amateur mistakes on an otherwise brilliant product. There are 2 sides to that coin. I will tell you that the most expensive part on my grip is the warthog adapter. You shouldn't blindly follow anyone, especially if they're taking your money. It's ok to speak out.

My grips will be X55 and warthog compatible, after I prepare my own base. I don't want to drive my customers to my direct competition. I'm already doing them a huge favor as is.

What I'm trying to say is that a stick can be good, and also have parts of it that are very, very bad. All I'm doing is calling out the bad parts. It is still a good stick, but up until very recently it was also the only high end stick and being the best doesn't really mean all that much when there's no competition at all. Google "VKB Mamba" or "BRD joystick" to see how a proper mechanical gimbal is supposed be: Regarding mechanics, they are both miles ahead of the warthog. But they're far from perfect, especially regarding price. I will call out bs when I see it, and I expect to be treated the same back. You question some of my plans, doubt or have any criticism, bring it on. As long as the discussion is civil and respectful, I don't see a problem.

I am sorry, but that simply cannot be true. All due respect, it might be your opinion, but as far as facts go, the exact opposite is true. Ball bearing vs. direct contact friction, ball bearing wins every time. Warthog does have very fancy electronics and 3d sensor which compensate and make things smoother. But as far as mechanics go, Warthog has the worst possible mechanical solution for a gimbal. And I mean that literary, the worst solution possible. That is not my opinion, that is physics fact. Best solution for a gimbal, ball bearing. Worst solution, direct contact friction. There's no big science behind it, it's as simple as that. Overall, it might be the best stick (for now). And coupled with the powerful 3d sensor that crappy gimbal does work good. But looking at the mechanical gimbal by itself, it is crap. What you're saying is "I have a million $$$ sled in my garage and it is the smoothest ride ever made". Sorry Santa, you might love that sled, and it might be a really good ride, and served you well all those years, but a 200$ 1985 Yugo will beat the crap out of it in the smoothness department. Again, fact. Wheels beats sleds every time. Our warthogs (I have 2), are sleds, with some very fancy and powerful sensors. This doesn't have anything to do with my project, it's just how it is.

TM Warthog is the greatest piece of flight sim hardware ever manufactured. Which is why I own 2 sets. No neither of them broke, I just own two. One is on the shelf, as a reminder of what to inspire to, and one is dissected into 150 pieces. Each wire de-soldered, each switch unscrewed. I did that 2 years ago, when the price of a locally bought warthog set was 720$ in my country. It brings me no joy and it hurts me to say that my favorite toy has a crappy base. No it's not so-so, it's not okay, it's not somewhat bad. The gimbal mechanism is absolute crap I didn't even find on a 15$ joystick I disassembled for comparison. A single tear just rolled down my left eye. It is a friction based gimbal. Just think about that for a second. A gimbal is a mechanical device meant to provide frictionless movement. And they went on to achieve that by using direct contact friction. You can't eve say it, those are like two words with the exact opposite meaning. Like "square wheel". A Ferrari, with sleds instead of high performance tires. The throttles are a beast, with a crap slew controller. Not so-so, not okay, crappy crappy slew control. Because they decided to use the cheapest solution possible. Ok, they had to cut corners because injection metal casting costs big bucks so all the money went to the grip which is absolutely superb. They even went the extra length to put custom springs into each button so they replicate operational forces on the real grip buttons and hats. But the base mechanism is crap. The slew control is crap. I can't go into detail about everything, I have a lot to do still so I try to keep it short. Some misunderstandings will occur. Have no doubt, I have great respect for anyone making quality stuff, no matter what the price and even with flaws. Especially if it's ground breaking stuff for our relatively small community. My grips will extend the file of their superb but problematic product, indefinitely, and will result in more sales for them so they get no pity or mercy for their mistakes from me. They're a huge company, they can deal with it if they want to. They know how to write checks.

I thought you meant MFG quality, SlawDevice, VKB Mamba, KomodoSim and others alike. That is the quality to match. TMWH is superb on the outside. Like a super hot blonde with slightly suspicious dark eyebrows. Then you take her panties off, and it's a Taiwanese lady boy smiling back at you. As magnificent as it is on the outside, there are some really crappy solutions under the hood there. A friction based gimbal are you kidding me, what is this the stone age? Ball bearings please, you know like the wheel and everything. All the guys I just mentioned have already surpassed big manufacturers in terms of quality. And I better match that.

I understand you don't care about the packaging. And you shouldn't. I didn't make it for you. I made it so that a major retailer doesn't laugh in my face when I present my 'superb' product to him. I also made it so that his shipping agent/freight insurance company doesn't laugh at his face when he asks them to ship it all over the world. And why should I beat "superb quality"? I can't, even if I wanted to. And anyone who says they can is a liar, and their pants are probably on fire. Superb cannot be beat. Only matched, which I will do. All the small manufacturers today have superb quality products. And I can only work my ass off to match them. I don't claim otherwise, as they have set the bar pretty high. Prices on the other hand, I can beat the crap out of those :) I can neither confirm nor deny that :D

No pretty box - no major retailer acceptance. No retailer - no large quantities. No large quantities - no money for a pretty box. No pretty box - no major retailer acceptance... and here we go, back into that viscous circle. So even if not apparent from a customer's point of view, the "pretty box" has a very direct impact on the final product and can have a major impact on all aspects of production. I cannot surpass the quality of that particular manufacturer, as the quality is as you say superb, and I completely agree. I myself have drooled over the pictures of his pedals in admiration, and I still do. It is not my goal to beat anyone's quality, only prices and quantaties. Match the quality, beat the prices. Beat the heck out the prices. Step 1 - free pretty packaging, ckeck. A pretty box is not a concern when you're thinking in terms of a 500$ product. He can take 20$ out of his 200$ profit and get a superb packaging solution made tomorrow and ship those pedals to the moon and say "here, happy now?". But can he do that with a 320$ product where his profit is 20$? No. I can, I own the machine. He can also take 5$ and pay for that pretty engraved name plate on his 500$ product. But can he do it on a 305$ product? No. I can, I own the machine. This goes for every single process. Sure it's not necessary when thinking in terms of a 500$ product, just pay to get everything made, you have the budget. Which is how you get to the 500$ price tag in the first place:) But when you're working on 120$ or 60$ budget, every dollar counts.

Opinions are irrelevant. Mine, yours, anyone else's. You know how the saying goes You however mistook my research, prototyping and calculations for opinions.

You are right. But bmw's and the lowest price joysticks are products made in hundreds of thousands. That's a whole other world. TM Warthog sold 30,000 units in 5 years if I'm not mistaken. That's 500 a month, right where I want to be. And that's a problem. No one will make you 500 custom sized boxes, let alone custom made foam packaging or any other service you need for your product. Well they will, but it'll cost you more then the product itself. So you're making more money for the companies whose services you use, then you are for yourself. I will post pictures of my workshop once I pretty it up :D Right now it's a big prototyping and proof of concept mess.

Not really. Actually, not at all. It's the complete oposite :D I've quit my job two years ago, and I've been working full time developing machinery and processes needed to make this possible. A fair concern shared by many, I can understand and respect that. But you should keep in mind that as this project snowballed, the product itself became smaller and smaller part of the whole operation. Right now, the grips are maybe 5% of what I do and most of the work is done behind the scenes, on automating production processes and keeping all production work in house. For example, this is the sight you are greeted with when you open a $500 present box from a certain rudder pedal manufacturer: That looks horrible, sorry :D, and takes waaaaay too much time to do. No disrespect to him, he still provides a product to this community that was not available before, so my hat is off to him. But I want more. I do my homework first. Below is just a small part of an order i just shipped minutes ago. Custom cut packaging foam protection for a different rudder pedal manufacturer. Behind this picture is a custom designed (by me) and custom built (by me) computer controlled packaging protection cutter capable of producing protection for 10,000 units per day if needed: This took time to develop. So did the industrial 6'x9' laser cutter/engraver, automated cnc painting machine, automated box stamping machine and I could go on and on and on. All the hard work that you will never know about (yes, I am Batman:)) because it's not directly simpit related, but it's the extensive groundwork needed to make 60$ grips. My products will be 1/3 the price of everyone else, because I get to keep 90% of the sale price in my pocket. When you buy your Mamba's, Slaw devices, VKB's, heck even Saitek's and Tm's.. you pay them, and then they pay the cardboard box guys, the packaging protection guys, painting guys, laser cutting guys, mold making guys and probably 5 more guys I forgot about :D That's why rudder pedals cost $500 and grips $250, you pay 1 company, but 10 companies take their cut. When you'll buy from me, you pay me, period. I am also free to dictate the quantities I need. Any one of these manufacturers gets an idea for a limited product, say a Mirage 2000 hotas, or any of the helicopter collective and cyclic sets ? Good luck getting all those guys to provide you their services for a 50 piece production run. I'll make products for every module even if I sell a single unit and I won't loose a single cent over it. The picture above is just one piece of a very large puzzle making it all possible and profitable. This business is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Enter this marathon quickly and you will either struggle, collapse or get run over by someone who trained and prepared for years. I may be far behind all of the manufacturers selling today, but I did my homework first. So when I roll out my products, it won't even be a competition. It's game over time for them, and it's play time for you. P.S. This thread started as nothing more than a "what if" experiment. A quickly done grip model, meant to be online 3d printed with old technology and some cheap china switches. It slowly grew from that, and in the beginning of 2015 came a decision to go full pro with it. It might look like a 2 year dead project but it's actually a 10-month full speed ahead development. And I would have never created this thread so much ahead of time if it had been a professional and commercial project from the start. But I'm not gonna leave people clueless now, gotta role with it :D

I should put this in the first post, if DCS has a module, I will have a grip for it. There are no expensive molds in this technology, so the only investment is 3d CAD design and development, which is done by me, I don't charge for it and it's my hobby and passion (borderline addiction actually). So it doesn't really matter if I sell 1 or 1000 units, it will get made just on the fact that I want one for my self, I can't help it really. As a matter of fact, the weirder and rarer it is, the more I want to make it. There's a carrier module coming? Guess I'm building a carrier bridge simpit then.

Target price for the standalone (warthog and saitek compatible) grip is $125 and it's achievable right now. Dream price would be $59.99 and will need stocking up on raw materials and components, buying in bulk and making several automated tools and rigs. Things I am already preparing for now. The reason why grips are not already for sale even though they're ready, is that I do not want to get sucked into fulfilling orders all day. Because once that happens, there's no more research and development. Bye bye ejection handles, bye bye base and throttles and bye bye instruments and panels. And most important of all, bye bye production automation and optimization. That's the "sweet trick" every small manufacturer falls for: "money. now." And then they get stuck at just maintaining that level. I'll take the "more money, later." route. It's a vicious cycle of "sales ASAP=low quantities=low profit margins=high prices=low quantities= ..." and I tend to brake it. I'm looking at the big picture, and I'm thinking long term. I will have the ground work ready for much bigger and more affordable things, before release, despite the extra time and effort it will take. Sorry I can't show anything new just yet, but I will take your "thank you's" real soon :music_whistling:

No mill spec switches? Housing is supposed to be RAL 7046 grey and the panels RAL 7021 black. And that engraved lettering better be back lit! Just kidding :D This thing looks uber cool! Some serious craftsman skills as always! But seriously, green voltmeters: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Green-LED-Panel-Meter-Mini-Digital-Voltmeter-DC-0V-To-30V-NEW-GODD-M15-/351590012214?hash=item51dc65d536:g:rgwAAOSwPe1UIPBD Paint the housing ral grey, and the panels ral black, with green back lit lettering.:pilotfly: I'm just getting into instrument building so I'll definitely need one myself. Not as complex as yours but it'll be fun to try to match the cockpit style.

Just be sure to delete the inner outlines, they're the fillet from the model.

Yeah that's for the cnc guys. I guess they would choose their own offset anyway based on their drill bit. Laser guys need to delete it first.

Yes all the panels have those leftovers form the cad program, double outlines 0.5mm apart, from the fillet you use for softer edges when rendering. You can either delete the fillets, or just delete the inner outline when opening the dxf. I deleted it in the attached one DXF ELEC POWER Acryl FRONT.rar

Sent. Well it's the MS33558, and you won't have problems with it in a graphic program. But in cad every single dot has to be perfect, and there it wasn't. One (or more I can't remember) of the letters had a tiny line missing. I've downloaded the font from several places, same thing. Anyway I think it's a problem only for cad modeling, if you use textures in your models and presentations, you're fine. I don't think it would be a problem for engraving, as many of the guys here are using it just fine. Actually, ALL of their "D's" are open loops, haha suckers :) And this might come in handy too. I wanted to re-make the whole font per the standard, but thought what the heck I'll just try this font editor stuff first. And it's a little vector program, displays each charachter and there is a button "check for all broken lines" and you just go next next next and connect them again, and you get yourself a cad friendly font. It's the MS33558, whether that is the correct font, I don't know, but that's the one I fixed for cad use.

Hi Lars, I will too be trying out the panels soon. Is it the 33558 font you are talking about? Cause I fixed that one in a font editor, as I also do everything in cad and some letters were open loops and wouldn't extrude. I'll gladly send it to you.

It's taking longer only because as my knowledge increases I see I can make it better and better, and in more ways than one. Also, all of my projects are interconnected so it becomes easier to get some services done and goods ordered. So, my first plan of just plugging a mini thumb joystick plug'n'play into the throttle will not work. TM used a device which is not a simple potentiometer or hall sensor, but a kind of a micro controller in itself. I don't know if that's the right phrase but the tiny joystick itself can be programmed for different applications. It communicates with I2C protocol, and in order to make my regular mini joystick to work, we would need a custom designed pcb with some other electrical components to mimic this. The really, really bad thing is that it only has 1mm/0.04'' of travel in each direction, and only travels in 2D which is unpractical for a finger. It was made for mobile phones where the operation is much more intuitive using ones thumb. BUT, do not despair. Working on my other projects I became much more familiar with electronics, so I have a couple of solutions in mind. The last one in this thread, was to simply design a new encasing with a micro mechanical mechanism that would translate the small 2D movement into a much larger 3D joystick like movement, via a lever in a gimball. But plastic micro mechanical mechanisms brake and wear out, and any backlash or deadzones in the mechanism would be enlarged. Plus, why go through the trouble of making a really bad thing, slightly better, when we can completely replace the whole thing. So, I think I will take the very first design with the simple playstation mini joystick ( there are some really high quality ones, down to the 0.99$ ones), discard 1 of the 3 bolts on the plastic plate and rout the wires through that bolt hole, outside, to an arduino nano. Or better yet, plug that mini joystick into some of my projects that already use an arduino, like the instruments/panels/levers. Not the most elegant solution, but it's dirt cheap, high quality, no drilling/soldering and I can tell in advance that it'll work. I will also test the new casing with the mechanical mechanism just in case it works out.

The boxes are all options now. If I'll sell each one individually, then all the boxes will travel throughout the world, so a fancy box would be all beaten up. But if I go through distributors, then it's a different story. Also, special editions for people who don't mind a bit of extra cost, a box in a box. I personally want some stuff made in metal, so metal castings will happen, but no promises there. I am days away from my own cnc laser and a larger printer and will continue posting pictures of prototypes in the coming weeks.