Thadiun Okona

If anyone wants printed replica P51 parts this century there's Authentikit https://authentikit.org/p51d/

Doing bends like this isn't actually hard just takes a little patience. You need to anneal the bend areas first but you don't heat the metal while bending it. Al this thick will req a few cycles of annealing, which itself is super easy. Just draw Sharpie marks on the target area and use a simple plumbing torch to heat it just hot enough to burn off the sharpie marks. If 3mm or less a single anneal can get a 90deg bend out of 6000 series, thicker pieces will req more annealing to get that far. This looks like 1/4" or 6mm and a 45 deg bend so would likely take 2-3 anneal cycles before getting there. The reason metal cracks when bent is it work hardens at the bend line. You anneal before bending because it relaxes it's molecules since raw stock is already pretty work hardened from the process of shaping it. This allows it to go farther before becoming work hardened to the point of cracking

Oh my.. those look big enough to use for pedals or a monster warbird stick like VO101_MMaister has been itching to build since forever . How hard can they be driven with the mosfets/psu arrangement on your drive board? Unrelated but wondering if the 57BLF03 motors you use have a D shaft... I'm toying with the idea of using shaft-winding for power transmission vs belt drive since it can be made really compact even at high ratios. With a round shaft the native 8mm could be used on the drive end but if there's a flat a bigger hub with full round would be needed.

VKB T Rudders are similar and probably cheaper though you might have to cobble your own damper to it https://vkbcontrollers.com/?product=vkb-t-rudders-mk-iv There's a bunch of knockoffs of them on aliexpress too I think but not sure how the quality is or mod-ability

The Virpil pedals would be better for helis and I think cost less too

It was suggested to remove the spring (for centering) and switch cams. I pointed out that without the spring on it, it doesn't matter what cam profile (different cam profiles have different centering feel) was on it. Helicopter controls don't have spring centering so people usually use damping to give it *some* kind of feel and helps with precision. Crosswind pedals have the option to also use a nice damper on it made for motorcycle steering. If you were using it for helis without the spring, you can adjust the damping force from really light to really strong to suit your taste.

With the spring out it doesn't matter what cam is in but more importantly for Helis if op goes that route be sure to get the damper for it... they'd be very nice with like that with the damping dialed high enough

Mostly just see them in simracing but never seen anyone disappointed with their eracing labs setup. I do recommend buying the controller directly from Thanos instead of them though... he sells direct and is very active in supporting the needs of people using it and eRacing resells them without and official agreement but I'm sure he'd still support it either way

Fantastic, can not wait. Surprisingly clear video covering a lot of general FF concepts along with specifics to your controller, especially impressive seeing as English is not your native tongue. Already downloaded the software and have messed with it a bit but this vid makes the scope of it clear. I'm curious about the fans, I only remember seeing 2 wires, is there any way to control their speed? Achievable torque with belt reduction (I don't recommend gear boxes, backlash of gears is undesirable) is perfectly fine with 03 motors but curious, is there any reason the 04 version of the motors were not utilized?

If you can't find any I can send you some in a regular letter envelope... costs $1 to ship. I've sent small amounts all around the world this way for a long time... there aren't any viable substitutes that I know of, though something probably exists? Either way, pm me if you're still stuck.. Overready is a good place to buy small amounts from though shipping cost might make it not worth it

For some quality deflection you can use skateboard bushings like how they're used in loadcell pedals for simracing. You can use them as simple bumper stops between the stick and the loadcells or run rods through them you can pretension with thin nuts etc. They're widely available in different durometers and long lasting

I love all the creative ideas but still can't fathom why not just let the roll motor/pulley for for a ride as you move the stick in pitch. It's easy to counterbalance the mass and you never saw on the stick in pitch in any form of flying though you might vigorously slam the ailerons from stop to stop. Even aerobatics pitch inputs are relatively tame but most types of flying you hold steady pitch for long periods and do minute adjustments. I mean, I understand why it was done on the MSFF II, it makes a smaller/more marketable base that follow domestic joystick expectations but anyone making one of these at this caliber here are not constrained by that yet the trend seems to be towards increasingly large and complex workarounds. Keeping both motors stationary on the base seems like a solution looking for a problem.

Print a 20mm cube. If it measures 20.00 in x/y and z you are fine. If it's off at all you should calibrate your printer. If this is not relevant to you it may be to others. It's a pain but well worth doing, even it's only a tiny bit off.. stock settings are usually just off enough to make bearings have trouble. You will need to flash the settings on your printer, so first you need a 3rd party program that can do it. I use Pronterface.. lightweight, free and does what you need it to. https://www.pronterface.com/ Start by calibrating the extruder, everything downstream is affected by that so ensure it's proper first. https://mattshub.com/blogs/blog/extruder-calibration Next follow this guide (has links to test objects in guide..) I found 20mm cubes to be great but also used 100mm xyz thing too https://all3dp.com/2/how-to-calibrate-a-3d-printer-simply-explained/ Mention was made of oversizeing holes when designing, same applies to undersizing bosses for the same reason.. interpolated circles in modeling programs either inscribe or circumscribe a series of straight line segments because curves don't exist in digital format. Another thing that might be causing issue is the 'elephant foot' that may be forming a tighter lip on your hole than the nominal id. That said, you can also heat the part/bearing to make it more compliant to pressing it in

The followup question is: has the printer ever been precisely calibrated? *Most are not accurate out of the box... they're close enough to make parts that fit with parts printed on that particular machine but not precise enough to reliably press bearings into. Bearings are made to standard dimensions so if your printed part has a hole that's just slightly off no matter what orientation it's printed the part will crack. *Prusa's are the only ones I know of that are able to print dimensionally accurate parts without first manually verifying or calibrating x/y/z and extruder axes, and even then only because Prusa calibrates them at the factory and the cost reflects it.

Roland's page is still in tact http://www.simprojects.nl/ms_siderwinder_ff2_hack.htm

To use your grip on a Warthog base it needs a board inside the grip with I2C shift registers to turn the 18 or so buttons into the 5 wire output the base expects. You can scavenge the board from a Warthog or Cougar grip as well as from older FLCS units. There might be something made by the community to fill this role as well

The roll axis motor is at the bottom of the carriage below the pitch pivot and the pitch motor is on the fixed frame, looks sensible to me. The roll motor will not be easy to cool in a pocket like that, also no provisions for belt tensioning yet.

I hope I'm not contributing to thread drift so my apologies to Propeller and those following if so. Huh.. this is an interesting approach I haven't seen or considered before. Would have to do some investigation to figure out the mechanical advantage required to achieve desirable forces is practical or not. Even if the printer type x/y gantry design as is not practical, the underlying concept of Cartesian-drive for force feedback is intriguing and can take other forms. Like a small but powerful ballscrew x/y mechanism at the bottom and the spherical joint at the top might be able to be quite strong yet still compact. An advantage that jumps out with this form factor is that by adjusting the vertical/z-distance of the spherical bearing to the x/y plate driving it you could directly adjust final mechanical leverage and achieved range of motion in one swoop. The practical advantage of that is being able to easily compensate torque/range of motion for longer or shorter shaft lengths using a universal base.

It's a neat form factor that looks easy to keep cool but a few things jump out to me that might be a problem. The shaft is only 3mm dia with 5mm of projection which could make mounting/coupling a pain but maybe there's nifty heli prop mounting solutions? It's also heavy -nearly double the weight of the APS which is probably why it's more powerful. It also seems like it's optimized for high rpm being aimed at RC helis, where do you find info that it's designed for torque/low rpm?

Nice, I'm on almost the opposite path lol. I'm not doing any mechanical until I've got the hardware/electronics/digital fully accounted for first. Not until I have a clear and coherent parts list and related software readily available. Without the software (cog smoothing/drive stuff, middleware to interpret DirectInput from sims, interface to adjust parameters, USB board stuff etc), this $3-400 of hardware will be a lifeless pile of metal and magnets plastic and silicon. If I understood the digital underpinnings I would have already built my own ages ago, which is why the hot rodded MSFFII approach had so much appeal to me. Once parts and more importantly software gets sorted/is made available I'm going to build different gimbals to incorporate them. For me there are still too many unknowns related to key ingredients to fire up Solidworks and do design work let alone print parts cut metal or order hardware. For me the mechanicals are the fun part of the meal though, like dessert. As much as I want to eat this yummy pie it's best saved until after the meat and veggies, especially since mechanical is where most of the cost is sunk.

I love the weathering on these, really makes them not look like printed parts.. same with the texturing like the faux turning grooves on the face of the trim wheel, nice to see attention to detail like this, temps me to build a WWII pit even though I have little interest in those planes

Awesome. I'm nearing a point where I'm ready to start ordering parts and diving into this, but need a sanity check before committing and also checking on the status of the firmware and whatever software is needed to smooth out the bldc motor as well as to communicate with the computer/sims, without which the hardware is useless. I'll likely use an odrive (clone) for the drive, assuming you already made firmware to make it work with this motor? There's still some parts I'm unsure on like encoders.. don't know what type/spec/values to use for this. Also unclear what type of brain/main board you are using for interfacing the drive to the computer and also what software is being used to interpret DirectInput signals from sims/games to the drive which is one of the key ingredients. My plan is to run at 24v, since it's a common psu size and halves the amps from 12v at the same wattage. part model qty APS motor 5065 x2 Encoder ????? x2 odrive clone v3.6 x1 psu 24v/20A x1 USB/interface ????? x1 Besides power transmission and gimbals parts, is there anything missing from that list?

Yes but there are no motors listed by APS with 5063 as their designation. Lots of similar numbers but not that one.

Nice to see some progress in this thread. Any chance of just posting a complete hardware list of the mechanicals? I'm really interested in the specifics on the motors/drives/software to smooth their response or adjust parameters and of course to communicate with computer/sims. Beyond that I have my own designs for FF gimbals based on craft I intend to use it for (sailplanes, pitch coupled 50mm longer than roll) and enough basic engineering knowledge to integrate the hardware.