Hempstead

Mainly on the axis, to get more responsive and precise control. You might not be able to react quick enough from seeing one frame and effect an input before next frame, you can certainly see the trend and move your hand in a “rate” to get multiple inputs in between frames. Now once that is solved, you want to couple it with crappy button responses? 20 ms is a long time in computer signal delay. You never start pressing the button when you see the piper on the bandit, you time the button press to take effect when the piper will be on the bandit in the future. That won’t work well if you can only have a button input every 3 frames on display. Plus, we are only talking about latencies inside the controller. We have not accounted the time it takes for the report to be transported via USB bus, and bus collision avoidance time, host OS interrupt response time or scheduler time, then travel up the host driver stack, and be picked up by the software’s event loop, calculated the response, waited for the discrete event simulator’s next time tick, and acted upon. Windows default scheduler has a tick rate at the magnitude of tens of ms, around 30ms. And you just added 20 ms on debounce time, just inside the controller. 20ms latency is quite substantial! When you are shooting a missile or a Gatling gun, it probably doesn’t matter, because there is always a mechanical delay. But if you are shooting a chain gun, it matters for the first round out (if the sim can simulate it). The goal is to have inside controller latency to be at least an order of magnitude below human reflection time. So it becomes insignificant to human reflect and default general purpose OS scheduler. Best athletes have been recorded to have about 100 to 80ms. Which means about 8ms., which turns out to be about 120Hz…. Not a random number.

Short answer, two words, latency and debounce. Long answer. Latency and debounce are kind of related. Here's the thing, when you close a switch, the mechanical contact will close, open, close, open several times. How many times and how long depends on the design/construction of the switch. For your wall AC switch, 20, 30 ms is not unusual. For your AC light bulb and many other applications, it's not a problem. But for computers, it's a huge problem. You don't want pressing a button and fire, sometimes 3 missiles, sometimes 4 missiles. Do you? Worse. In order to solve this problem. Standard solutions are mainly in two categories. 1. Hardware Debouncer, 2. Software Debouncer. Hardware debouncer are usually based on hysteresis circuits. So, to turn on, you need, say above 3.0V, but to turn off, you need to be below 1.5V. So, once you get above 3V, if it doesn't dip below 1.5V, it's still on, and vise versa. Software debouncers on the other hand does this... once you detected an on/off state change, wait.... come back and sample it again after some time, say, 20 ms later. If it's still on, report a state change. Otherwise, do nothing. This is the approach Hempstick took for TM stick (that PS2 connector on the stick), even though in the stick there is already a 3 chip cascaded buffer which kind of buffer the on/off state and kind of a debouncer. But for direct leads on the chips, Hempstick configures a hardware debouncer on chip for each lead. The trouble? Unless it's a built-in on-chip hardware debouncers, you would have to install hardware debouncers .... could get your circuit complicated. For buffer chip... like the TM stick, the debounce characteristics is unspecified. After all, they are designed and sold as buffer chips, not debouncers. Whether it's hardware or software, you get two problems. a). Different switches require different debouncer characteristics. Will your on-chip debouncers satisfy the OTTO switch you select? Probably not. They are most likely designed for debouncing mini-push buttons that kind of stuff commonly seen on PCB. b). Well... you have to wait for that period of time for the signal to settle. Either hardware waits for you automatically, or you wait with your software loop/interrupt. Either of that increases your latency. Time you press the button until the firmware report a value change. I calculated that for us simmers we need latency below 1/120Hz = about 8ms. That is we would prefer at least one control input per frame. Preferably more. By rule of thumb, you get an order of magnitude smaller. That is, 8ms / 10... the fastest you can get for Full Speed USB is 1ms. Close enough, 1kHz it is. Now, I will need to find some switches that has latency that is way below 1kHz. That means at least, 2kHz. Now, no mechanical switch I know can achieve that. Even if they do when new, wear and tear would kill it. So, basically there are two solutions... magnetic (Hall sensor), and optical. See why Razer went making their own key switches instead of using Cherry, and then developed those fantastic optical keys? Preferably, it has a built in amplifier that already conditions the signal so I don't have to expend valuable PCB space for the amps or DSP. It also has to be small enough that I can squeeze in at least 4x sensors in a can with OD=0.75", and still have space for tactile feedback mechanism that can be in sync with the signal. Click, and on/off state change every time. Hence, the 3 years of many different solutions to solve this particular tactile feedback in sync with the optical interruption. The optical sensor I selected has latency of about 5 to 20 µs. There is also a Hall Mini Stick... I started that project long before the 8-way optical switch. But got stuck on the pushbutton. So, I put it down and started the 8-way optical in hope that I can solve the pushbutton problem and reuse it in the mini-Hall stick.

Opps, typo king!

4-way now. The deal is that the shaft of each of the optical "8-way" is an OD=1/8" (or 3mm) stainless steel rod (solid). You just design a cross shape cutout and you got a 4-way. Here, the Trim, TMS, and DMS, and CMS all have +1. The +1 push buttons are configured with 900g trip force stainless steel dome switches. That's almost 1 kgf! It's very unlikely you will trip it unintentionally. It gives a very satisfying click. 0.9 kgf is still not quite to the level of force the OTTO ones have, but remember, we could fire hundreds of missiles a weekend. You don't want to get blisters. So, all of the HATs will have the +1 even though the original does not.

For the fun of it... populated some of the button "caps." This finishes the Main Control Plate by merging some of the button "bases" with the plate. For instance, now the trim cap base (the part with the text) is merged and is part of the main control plate.

10 years from now, we will probably be able to print this stuff at reasonable prices. 10 years ago, I spend $3,500 on a SLA printer, and it was pretty much a complete write off. Now, you can have one that actually works well for about $250. Fingers crossed.

Huh.... USD $788.94 for a 316L stainless steel print. If I go cast this in bronze... like I did with the TQS I will have to charge you about that range too AT LEAST (tons of labor and high failure rate), and it's basically chagring by minimum wage hourly rate + material and equipment costs, not making much profits. See why I am exploring plastic core fiber sleeve method? nullHow much would the military pay for an F-16 aluminum stick body? $1,332.61 (let's say $2,000 for the whole thing) is not bad, if you know many hours I put in making those 4 TQS bronze castings (and I only have one finished)! And, I expect there will be very little sanding/grinding/polishing works with 3D printed parts, compared with raw castings. Me? Poor me is going back to plastic.

So, you are advocating a linear curve for all cases, if I understand correctly? Could it he possible that you curved it badly, causing human induced oscillation, thus removing that curve made it easier for you? I would very much agree that our setups and preferences are all different. What works for me not necessarily will work for you. What I “reasoned” was that if your setup does not have “enough” resolution at the throttle range around 309 kts when the refueling door was opened, you are going to have trouble with human induced oscillation. That is often, but not always the cause of difficulty in AAR (to me, the biggest trouble was the inability to see the tanker indicator lights with my Quest 2, which I could see clearly in 4K pancake, so I am always guessing about my location). The main takeaway should be — if you have difficulty with AAR, see if you have trouble with fine adjustment of speed around 309 kts. If you cannot easily adjust within ±1 kt, then you need to try a curve to allocate more resolution to that mid-range throttle movement. Before ED updated the response curve when the refueling door was opened, about 2 or 3 months ago (?), it was nigh impossible for me to adjust within ±1 kt without a custom curve. But, if you are still having trouble with the ±1 kt trouble now. Try curve it, with a number to measure it with, instead of blindly apply some Internet witch brew. Not that Internet witch brews don’t work. If you apply enough of them, hopefully in isolation, one of them is bound to work. Witch brews? Yep, the ones come without reasoning. Moreover, if you want AB detent mod, you have no choice but to curve it. And BTW, a linear line is a special case of curve. I should say, a dog leg for the AB detent, then a linear “curve.” This gives me an idea of a mechanical adjustable throttle stop, in conjunction with my electronically programmable force generator! THANKS!

Like I said, my curve is useless for you, b/c mine is a Warthog. But the basic idea is that you want to reserve more resolution (movement of the throttle) to the mid-range movement right before the AB detent. Because this is where your throttle will be for fine tuning your speed to match up to the usual 309 kt/hr of the tanker. You will need enough resolution to fine tune your speed within 1 or 2 kts. If your default linear curve can't fine tune within 2 kts around 309 kts.... you are going to have a very short window of staying in "contact" with the fuel probe. Staying in sync with the tanker will be very difficult if you can't stay within 307 and 311, preferably within 308 and 310 range. I am able to make it stick to 309 for something like 15 seconds, and the I would slowing either go forward of drop backward... as soon as that happens, I adjust for one more kt, 307 or 310 to get back to the middle. You see, if your throttle can't fine tune to that resolution, you are bound to be doing 315, or 305 and nothing in between, so your window of contact could be as short as 3 seconds... so every 2 seconds you will be doing a human induced oscillation. You come in with 315... contact... and you reduce the throttle a bit... 2 seconds later, you are dropping back too much... so you bump up the throttle a bit, and 2 seconds later you are speeding at 312... so you reduce a bit, and so on and so forth. And in the mean time you are dealing with human induced speed oscillation, you are drifting left and right, up and down.... And again, if you are not curving your stick to your liking, now you have 3 human induced oscillations to deal with simultaneously.... I don't know about yours, but my brain can't compute that! Sure, once you opened your refueling door, the response curve changes, DCS models that, and that helps a lot, but if your throttle and stick are not able to provide enough resolution at where it counts, 309 kts... it's difficult.

Nah... I cleaned it out once. And it kept coming, so I didn't. It's been over 10 years. I am still good. The deal is that the main sensors are MLX90333 in digital mode. Not sure about the later model, but I doubt they would change it, because the digital mode requires a "non-standard" 3-wire SPI wiring. Changing to say the later all digital MLX90363 will require PCB change, b/c this baby uses a standard 4-wire SPI. Since they are Hall sensors, unless the shavings get into the axel or the pot in the white friction to the right of the throttle, other switches and buttons are pretty much sealed.

The shaving is totally normal. One of mine has been in service since Warthog’s release. The MIC switch had been torn down and cleaned up several times, and finally the whole switch assembly replaced. And the throttle with all the shavings is still ok. Just don’t keep tightening the friction wheel to get higher friction. When it reached equilibrium, leave it be. I mean, you don’t want more shavings, right? Let’s just say the friction is not adjustable, unless you have a lot of consumable pads; it’s a design fail.

I don’t have a VKB, but I use Warthog with the stock very strong spring. My recommendation — you need a curve for the fine adjustment of the throttle. Believe it or not, aerial refueling, and ILS landing (if you are aiming for proper glide slope tracking w/ little to no stick works) are a lot of fine throttle works.Those are not the hair on fire maverick kind of jobs. I couldn’t do F-16 aerial refueling before I did a curve on my throttle, and stick. But, after the curves…. still a lot of practices, but I could immediately see the end of the tunnel.

I usually use the trusty Ultimaker 3 first for test fit. It's always there. Sure, it takes much longer to print than my fleet of Phrozen resin printers (Mini 8K, Mighty 4K, Mighty 8K, and Mega 8K), but no post processing and all that to deal with. nullnullnullnullnullnullThe 7 screws in there proves the alignment is good.

Note that, in the electronics assembly, there is about estimated 1.5W power consumption. I have no idea what this would do to the tightly packed without any air circulation assembly. I would say, probably not very good. I am printing the plates of the assembly for fitting prototype while I wait for OshPark's new PCBs. I will be cutting some fancy "channels/patterns" for air circulation/heat dissipation; if not for anything, for the looks nobody will see!

The main modeling work of the stick design is pretty much complete. The main control face plate has no cutout. This is up to you to decide what you want to have, and solder the sensors in there accordingly. Now that the face place is considered part of the electronic assembly, it will be fastened to the electronic assembly with 4 M2 screws, 2 of which extends all the way into the main body for fastening to the main stick body. They kind of stick out of the face by about 0.5mm.... I kind of like it. The top cover is screwed down by two M3 screws into the main body. I only modeled the recess for screw head and the M3 holes. But, this is intended to have 3D print screw brass inserts. I would prefer to have 4 or at least 3 screws, but there is just no "meat" for them. Two will do just fine. What're to be done are basically the LOOOONG process of customization for myself and prototyping it. No, I don't release things without prototyping. I have learned from decades of experiences that I am just not good enough to consider every little things without the repeated design-prototype-modify-prototype-modify... process, unlike some genius who could do it in one go without prototypes. I am waiting for my OshPark PCB, the thinner 0.8mm version. The regular ones I have, 1.6mm, is a bit too thick. The electronic assembly collides with the OTTO trigger. I chose the solution of buying the thinner PCB. There is still collision. I cut the back plate of the electronic assembly for it. But, most likely I will design my own trigger with optical sensors. I just "solve" the problem in case somebody wants to use OTTO trigger (very satisfying click). The optical sensors are not cheap... USD $3 to $4 a pop depending on how many you buy in one shot. I count 30 sensors fully populated. These alone would cost about USD $90 to $120 + tax + s/h. And since there are 30 signal lines... That will need two RPi Picos. No, no matrix circuits nor buffer chips. I am going for low latency. The optical sensors not only have no electric bounce, their latency are about 8 to 20 µs, L-H and H-L respectively. TODO: Print the damned thing (waiting for Phrozen's pre-order Onxy plus resin). Assembly prototype print will probably be printed in 2 halves on my Ultimaker 3. As with many of my 3D designs, NozzleDiameter is a property that you can change. Say, 0.4mm for Ultimaker3, and 0.1mm for Phrozen Mighty 8K (0.05 will do, but that's quite meaningless). So, for different printers, I can just open the file, change the NozzleDiameter, regenerate the STL file, and slice away. Adaptor to connect to the no-gimbal box. The electronics assembly prototype. Fitting of the optical 8 on CMS "hole." Design just the buttons (kind of already have it) for the NWS button and the two pinky buttons. Waiting for the D=2.5" Kevlar sleeves shipment. 2" is just too much forcing it. Then, do the vacuum thing. Write the Hemptick Pico. null null

Much better improvement, theoretically, on the CMS "wire hole" cutout on the inner tube, much smaller. And re-enforced the root of the "CMS bump." And, import the optical sensor cap v.11 as the CMS. Most likely, I will just use a longer M2 screws making it extend into the bottom of the CMS "well", and put a nut from inside (this is going to be tricky to put in but not impossible, and will have to be very carefully shield when epoxying the inner tube in.).

The holes on the "inner tube" don't have to be like that. This is the idealized computer only thing. I cut it as far as I can to see the topology and if the cuts will weaken the structural integrity of the tube too much. Anyway, it's gonna be difficult for me to cut exactly like that with a CNC mill. You probably will need a 5-axis laser cutter robot arm to cut exactly. There is no need to really cut them exact. Bend it, fit in... mark up with some marker pens, and drill... ah... about there. Stick in some grommets to make sure the wires don't chaff. For the peddle, the idea is to just stick out an OD=1/8" stainless steel rod, but with an optical button inside, since I am not using an off the shelf OTTO button for it. Why bother with a plastic cap for a peddle to press? The pivot bars on the pinky switch were designed with metal bars in mind. 3D printed feature like that would break in no time, if you are lucky to get it off the build plate without breaking it at all! I might need one more screw for them. The height of base to accommodate the peddle switch was increased by 1/8" than authentic stick, b/c my optical button has OD=0.75" making the walls frightening thin.

Added CMS "bump." Like I said, the "stem" and the trigger "forms" are based on TM Cougar, see the last screenshot. So, no surprise that when the CMS "bump" is modeled, it looks like the one on Cougar (the sharp triangle does not exists on Warthog, only on Cougar), see the red circle in the first screenshot. The cut out for the 5-way CMS HAT is designed to house my own design of 8-way optical HAT switch -- exactly the variation for the TM Warthog Throttle's MIC switch (a drop-in-replacement). You can probably drop in a TM MIC switch (but not fixing it in place). Also, one of the major gripes when I first got my TM Warhog stick was... man... where do I put my thumb? The CMS switch is so close to the main control "head" so that there is no space for my thumb. This solves the problem -- return to the Cougar form. I like the feel of Cougar stick better with which you put your thumb in the nook under the head (right above the red red circle in the first screenshot. But I did not like the form of the Cougar's control head form. Moreover, I subscribe to the Bauhaus school of Form Follows Function... well... I try to... most of the time. The last screenshot was the unfinished Cougar stick model. I stopped working on that one years ago because I didn't want to go the function follows form route. As years ago, I did not have the 8-way optical switch design, and I didn't want to use the "authentic" switches. BTW, the wall of the CMS "bump" is a bit thin... only 1mm thick. Should be ok... but I might re-enforce it on the inside at the root where it connects to the main body by thickening it a bit. Also, I ran out of space for the electronic assembly... colliding with the OTTO trigger a bit. So, I had to order thinner PCB, 0.8mm instead of the regular 1.6mm, from OshPark... still waiting for it. Next to tackle, the detachable "hand rest", and pinky switches. This will NOT be height adjustable like Saitek's. Put on some pads if you really want to adjust the height. Why go complicated?

Faceplate cut off, top cut off, and a nekkid machine picture. From the nekkid picture, you can see the main design idea -- the components go in, the tube provide the main structural integrity for force transmission. The 3D printed stuff is just the "filler" to hold stuff in place, to transmit mainly compression forces to the structural tube, and for ergonomics. The outer Kevlar epoxy layer is just there to provide additional integrity for the plastic. I suspect if I print it with stuff like ABS or Phrozen's Onxy resin (8 seconds per layer) or the spanking new Onxy II (18 seconds per layer). The Kevlar/Epoxy layer can probably be omitted. nullnull

Cut off the top to facilitate Kevlar/glass fiber sleeve vacuum bagging method. I might still cut the front control panel to facilitate easy install. The electronic assembly will have 4 stainless steel shafts protruding out. Might be a bit difficult to wiggle in. From the screenshot here, you can see better the relationships among the electronics assembly, the trigger assembly, and the NWS/MSL Step button. I want my WPN Release button to also be a 4/8-way HAT with pushbutton, instead of those ugly stick on. Now how the "cap" of the WPN REL button is going to look like would be interesting. I am leaning toward something looking like a red WPN REL button, but with texture to facilitate moving in the 4 directions. Also, as you can see, the OD=1" aluminum tube has provision to attach a "hand rest" if you wish. Of course, I still yet to design an adapter/connector to hook it up to the stick base no-gimbal. nullNext thing to tackle, the CMS switch.

8-way optical PCB. Again, this doubles as the button PCB as well (small cut of a trace). As you might have guessed, this is exactly the same thing the control stick uses. (I imported the layout and replicated it). The F-16 control stick head actually imported the the solid of the outer can of the 8-way 3D model. and merge. So, if that v.11 ever needs to be tweaked, the changes will propagate to the control stick head. No big surprise that this has 4x optical sensors (plus 1 more below for the pushbutton). Again, the trick is figuring out how to synchronize the force feedback (the click) with the interruption of the IR beam. Making work reliably from parts made at hime is the difficult part in the design. Notice that Quest 2's trigger doesn't click? It's actually a magnetic sensor. nullnull

This is the optical core for one of the 8-way HAT switch. It's not complete. There are four more machining step to do -- cutting two slits, sawing the two apart, mill off the bottom remnant, and lapping. But this video is the 10x speed video for machining the very core.

No dead center, no sticktion, no gimbal. Provision for both spring centering and programmable force generator. It will practically last forever. Well.... that's a lie. But since you will have to make one yourself in order to get one, you certainly can make all the replacement parts to keep it up forever. null

As I said in the title, always Work In Progress. First installment is the "kind of F16 stick." All optical or mostly optical (with provision to use OTTO trigger). This is just the last part of the no-sticktion-no-dead-center force generator stick (NO FFB!). I will post some pictures of the design some other time. The stick 3D form is a bit more angular than the original. The dimensions of the stick body bent part is mostly based on TM Cougar, with the head mostly based on two different A model F16 (a hammer-head stick and a 2 HAT, one WPN release three cluster head, somewhere between the current and the hammer-head). I kind of like the more angular look. With the more angular lines, I can always sand them round. But the opposite is quite a bit more difficult. It is designed from the inside out to integrate 4 clusters of 8-way optical HAT switches (hopefully the CMS will be my own design of optical one, but off-the-shell-part is the backup in case I can't squeeze it in), with two identical PCBs (one for 4 sets of optical cores, each has 4 optical switches, and one PCB for 4 pushbuttons, the OshPark purple ones). So, you can have all 4x 4-8-way HAT plus 4 optical pushbuttons, or just 4x optical pushbuttons. This version (v.11) uses one brass CNC milled integrated optical core per HAT, instead of the v.10 hand cut brass tube sitting on 3D printed housing. The difficulty of optical switches is designing tactile feedback to be in-sync with the optical path interruption, and must have them all sit in an OD=0.75" can, plus a push button, all-in-one. The stick is designed to be 3D printed. Preferably, it's one uni-body without having to split it in two. The central channel is designed to house an OD=1" aluminum or stainless steel bend tube to take up the bending force (epoxy in). Then, the whole thing slide into a Kevlar or woven glass fiber sleeve, and then vacuum bagged. It might be possible to print molds and then use expansion form (high density) to make the "core" and then Kevlar vacuum bagging. However, with the proliferation of cheap resin 3D printers, I don't see why that would be an advantage. Note that, unlike my other website... which posted only 3D models, NOT designs. These here are designs, intended for certain materials, and certain manufacturing methods. For instance, the optical core is intended to be made with a CNC milling machine. Either you get an el 'cheapo CNC router (10 minutes milling), or you buy it from somebody else who makes it for you. Then there is drilling, lapping.... fitting, and calibration etc. etc. Please don't expect anything posted here to be available any time soon (some parts may). I work on my own speed. If I am not happy with some parts of the design, I often leave it in the back of my head until good ideas comes up, often months if not years later. For instance, the optical 8-way has gone through 10 major redesign, over a 3 years period. My intention is to eventually license these designs at very low costs for non-profit home pits, like symbolic $1 per device made or something like that, instead of releasing it in the public for some nation state encouraged thieves to steal them. The PCB design was re-done in KiCAD 6, used to be Eagle 7.x.x. Ok, enough words... from now on, there will be very little words, but mostly pictures in my postings in this thread.

Ok... Let me answer some of OP's questions here as well in public, as I think some other people will be interested as well. PTFE is indeed Teflon. But Teflon is a Dupont trade mark... best to avoid using it. PTFE is known as the slickest substance known to wo/men. It has several grades. It's usually a soft material. Very annoying to machine as clamping and machining often distort the material, making precision machining difficult. If you see some white plastic that is really hard, and also very slick, it's usually the other slick substance -- Delrin. Delrin is quite hard, approaching aluminum, but also very slick, a great candidate I also considered but decided against. The PTFE ring dimension is 1/8" thick, OD=64mm, ID=53.5mm. I have no idea what the 40th Anniversary edition Warthog's O-ring size... The ideas of the design of the PTFE ring is as the followings: a). There is a slight relative movement between the rim of the gimbal half ball and the spring piston platform (very slight, but there is about 0.5mm to 1mm movement). b). Due to the slight relative movement, I chose the slickest substance PTFE to reduce the friction. c). The biggest problem with the OOB 2-layer construction of rubber ring is that it's too flexible to hold in position by itself so it was glued down with something like a double-sided tape. This... often got attacked by oil and grease due to "enthusiastic" oiling/greasing. And eventually, the rubber ring got out of position and got pinched and broke (or the thin slick plastic layer simply wore out). d). To resolve #c... the PTFE ring must be stiff enough to hold itself in position without requiring glue or other mechanical fastening. Several experiments like one-side bondable PTFE backed with an aluminum ring etc... showed that eventually, a 1/16" thick solid PTFE ring would suffice. It would be stiff enough to hold itself in that space without any glue or fastener. e). I made it 1/8" thick because the thicker, the stiffer, the more "meat" for wear and tear. At this thickness, it's slightly too thick... so that you lose a bit of extreme deflection of the stick movement. However, after a week or two of use, the PTFE ring will get "pressed" out with a groove, reducing the effective thickness, and you get back your extreme deflection. Therefore, I would recommend that you calibrate when you first install it, and then calibrate it after two weeks of active use. f). Theoretically, since PTFE is the slickest substance known to wo/men, you shouldn't need lube, right? Well... I use PTFE-based grease, SuperLube, which basically is some kind of gel with microscopic PTFE balls... meaning rolling friction is better than sliding friction. it is indeed much more smooth with SuperLube. I disassemble and clean/re-grease about every 500 flight hours. My prototype #0 hand cut PTFE ring since 2011, with 3,000+ hours (if not 4,000+ hrs) on it still look brand new. A lot of Europeans favor Molykote, I don't use that... but what I heard is that it works fine. Basically, you can use grease that is plastic safe. g). The other property about PTFE is that it's very inert. It almost never react with any chemical. It's often used as the coating of magnetic stirrer in beakers in chemical labs. You probably won't have to worry about whether the grease is compatible with PTFE rather whether its compatible with the steel and plastic in the Warthog. Still, I recommend using some plastic and electronic safe grease. Just in case, you know. h). Even though PTFE is soft... it's quite a bit harder than the OOB rubber ring. The rubber ring also causes a buffering cushion effect. So, with a PTFE ring, the stick feels a bit more "snappy" than with a rubber ring. Most people like it, but not everybody. Softer or snappy... does not affect the resolution or accuracy due to the MLX90333 Hall sensor used (if it's a traditional gimbal, this "cushioning" effect would affect your accuracy, very undesirable). The other thing about just getting rid of the rubber ring and run naked. Well.... of course that will work. And a lot of people swear that no wear and tear is observed. Well... knock yourself out. It's not a great engineering practice to let plastic butt against steel with relative movement (small) without a sacrificial/buffering material in between. But, hey, it's your stick. Moreover, it really depends much to the surface roughness of the steel plate in the spring platform. From the two Warthog I have (both pre-ordered), it's made of cold roll steel, usually smoother than hot rolled. But if they change that... or the Chinese OEM factory apply the common 差不多 (about there) mentality and swap the supplier and went for the cheaper hot roll..... YMMV. My recommendation is... don't do it. And if you must, grease the hell out of it. I am not "eager" to sell more, as I view this PTFE ring thing as a community service. I pretty much don't make any money (if I charge you hourly labor rate as a software developer, I certainly lose money on it). So, I am not giving you an ad to advocate buying PTFE rings. I am giving you an honest opinion on best practice in engineering. You make your own judgment, and bear your own consequences. if you want to make the ring yourself... go ahead and knock yourself out. If you still want to order PTFE rings, then drop me a message on this forum. I will send you instruction on how to order. BTW, it's still the same USD $8 apiece. Limit to 2x PTFE rings per Warthog, please.