Thadiun Okona

Nothing you buy at a hardware store (or even an industrial supply house) will come close... damping is not a property that just happens, it's a high tech process to make it, a magic industrial ingredient usually bought in quantity hence the obscurity for retail application . I spent years testing greases to find functional damping grease and this stuff really is in its own category. I have been making friction based mechanisms like this Custom TM Cougar For Mech Piloting - Imgur or Uholy Voodoo Devil Magic - Album on Imgur ... high precision zero-order controllers (absolute positioning -no detents/spring return, no deadzone... just smooth damping but tight enough to hold whatever position they're left in) that rely on greased rubs and literally no other greases compare to the quality of movement, feeling like mechanical hydraulic damping. It was a saga to get any initially myself for the same reason, but after pestering enough places enough times someone placed a big enough order with Nye Lubricants to fire up the grease factory and make a new batch, then the world supply was replenished for a year or two so now it's back to square one. I've been thinking of contacting Nye and seeing what it would take to get enough to distribute some myself. In the meantime, I have enough that I can send enough for a hog in a baggie in an envelope for like $5 if you pm me.. *As to theories of mechanical tolerances being the source I disagree, other than a certain mechanical failure that happens time to time (a crack in the piston where a guide rod goes through) the source of the ratcheting is nearly always fouled grease and sometimes not enough was used when factory assembled. Evaporation and accumulating ingesting debris are the cause but the stock grease is not good even when new, and the amount of grease used and quality of the environment (temps, airborne dust/contamination levels, humidity, etc) is what creates the variation among users. Sanding is not really much help either though it doesn't hurt, the quality of the movement though is really dictated by the grease and its condition. A ratchety gimbal with an extension will still have the underlying problem just be less noticeable, whereas proper cleaning/regreasing addresses the underlying issue. Only use an extension if it makes sense for good reasons like replicating a long throw center stick but not as a way to stave of overhauling the base. Using a dustshield or boot substantially stretches out the TBO as well. *rebuilt many warthogs over the years, for myself and others and have gotten to see inside a whole lot of them

Heh.. I was just suggesting imgur in deadman's thread as well... not sure why so many sim scene folk use unreliable or dysfunctional image hosting when imgur has been there (free) for years and remains the most functional for embedding things you want to share and remain viewable. So many cockpit/peripheral threads have been rendered obsolete because the images associated with them have been wiped out along the way due to unreliable hosting. The only 'gotcha' with imgur is keeping your collection under 400 pics before starting a new account, otherwise you lose pics if you don't pay.

imgur has been pretty much the best free image hosting site for years now, just keep your pic collection under 400 before starting another account or you start losing pics unless you pay but still appears the best for functionally embedding pics in threads across multiple forum formats where others fail or have drawbacks that make what you are trying to share less convenient to for your audience...

Love this thread, the build is great. The little triangle thing you highlighted in red is known as a bellcrank btw, pretty common to find in real aircraft linkage for the same reasons, to transmit mechanical forces around corners/obstacles/at angles. http://richshangar.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Outer-Aileron-Bellcrank-and-Push-Rods.jpg

One of the things that makes MSFFII such a good stick compared to others is that it does not use PWM (like cheap cnc machines use), it uses a real dc servomechanism in the form of an H-bridge circuit regulating variable current to DC motors... smooth variable l/r power output (like high end cnc machines use). It's also possible to slightly modify the original Ms circuit/power supply to generate 400% the torque, which if applied to bigger motors/better mechanicals it's a huge leap in power in without sacrificing it's many built in finesse. http://www.simprojects.nl/ms_siderwinder_ff2_hack.htm For power transmission, gears are really a compromise for this as they have backlash subject to wear, precision tolerances for incorporating, they create unwanted 'cogging' effects as you can feel the teeth meshing and is really done to make manufacture simple and the base compact at the expense of performance so if you're rolling your own, not something desirable to emulate. A better method for power transmission is 'shaft winding', where you drill a cross-hole in the output shaft of the motor and feed a steel cable through it and wrap a few wingdings around it, that go to a pulley/bellcrank hooked to the stick's axis. It allows 100% smooth transmission of power, and extremely easy to achieve the 'gear' ratios desired. Roland van Roy (same guy who came up with the hack above, who's site is bar none prerequisite reading on the subject in general) has an example of this in his yoke: http://www.simprojects.nl/forcefeedback_yoke_ii.htm I've been watching this for a while with interest and have almost commented several times but ultimately deleted them cause I'm not sure if it's helpful but I'm not sure exactly what this thread is trying to solve. For a DIY FF setup honestly the easy part is making the hardware, which is pretty well known stuff. Interfacing with a sim however is a completely different animal, and is something putting it mild will be hard to beat MS/sim dev's collective efforts at so anyone interested in really using FF might as well perform the hack vs reinventing a wheel that might not work as well. http://www.simprojects.nl/diy_force_feedback_interfacing.htm -basic interfacing explanations I sort of do this for a living (work with motion platforms and this company supplies professional control loading hardware too but spend a lot of time picking my boss's brains as well) having dabbled with this since 2008 myself. I also came up with a way to interface with sims and came up with a functional scheme (including an electromechanical loop error circuit to turn digital>mechanical) based chiefly on airspeed data. This needs to be extracted in real time from a sim/game (sometimes a feat in itself) to run through the circuit. It's easy enough to generate variable centering force based on airspeed as well as incorporate offsets like trim (though each different game/sim needs its own extraction program) but that's where the 'free' lunch ends. Every. Single. Event. beyond that needs to be manually generated from a library of carefully sculpted sine wave 'effects' to replicate things like like stall shakes, landing bumps, fluttering control surface, turbulence effects, machine gum bumps etc. Not only does a library need to be scripted (and variable versions of certain effects), but each one of those events has to be programmed to be triggered from a variable inside the sim which is a much more complicated parameter extraction/generation program. Each sim will require it's own version, and also that they're tuned for each plane and each effect ad nauseum. I deemed the effort to be well into the zone of diminishing returns... spent a lot of time wondering 'if I could' vs 'if I should' and determined while DIY interfacing si entirely possible it was not worth the effort unless it was being made for a single high fidelity simulator for study or training level that didn't have built in FF signals to work with already. So... in the end it's still more advantageous to hack an MSFFII which has done the hard stuff at the dev logic level already and generates high resolution output that only lacks power, which luckily is the easier part to solve. Mod circuit/ps and make better mechanicals with bigger motors and you will have something already able to work pretty well with nearly everything as well as having supplementary support programs to get it to work with games/sims that don't immediately support it... ...it's possible I'm totally missing something here too, and I hope my advice is not taken as disparagement.

You probably could have avoided pinching off that wire if you knew there is a caution that needs to be followed... there is a relief notch in the articulation sphere that allows the wires to pass through... if you put it back together backwards it pinches the wires just like you experienced. You also could more easily solder-repair the broken brown wire, it's gonna be a pain to solder all 5 without screwing it up if your not already good at soldering, plus they also use a bit of hotglue as a strain-relief after cause they'll break too easy if not so you need to put that back as well, though a dab of silicone would likely also suffice. The stock red grease is indeed garbage, and only gets worse if you let dust/cat hair etc build up in it. When you regreased it, you should have used Nyogel 767a, which is a damping grease that adds a vital missing damping element, nicer than simple lubrication like Molykote but even that is a huge step up from the stock junk though so probably not worth re-re-greasing it with Nyogel though I know people that have and they didn't regret it. Now that it's clean and fresh grease though, use a dustshield to keep it clean and it will last a lot longer before getting munged up. http://www.dualsticks.com/dustshields/ I put the size specs at the bottom of the page on my site if you want to cut your own out of plastic instead of buying the ones I make, but they do a good job at keeping out most of the contaminants that foul the grease. Alternatively use a section of a black sock and some zip ties to make a boot but best not to leave the neck open like it comes.

Hmm, I don't know any specifics on the deadzones, as far as I know there isn't one or else it would have worked weird with trim in the sim I was using (Condor, sailplane simulator). I can trim pitch fwd/back and there is no area that becomes unresponsive to inputs. If there were a mechanical deadzone, it would be very noticeable since I'm constantly changing the neutral position of the stick in pitch. It's possible that whatever sim you are using it in is imposing one digitally... hate when devs do that but it happens sometimes. As to hot rodding one, yeah follow his formula... dude is an electrical engineer that knows a lot about FF systems and DIY in general. I've found some of those Glentek motors on ebay for as cheap as $200, but super high quality DC servomotors are *not* cheap. What makes the Glentek's so amazing is the helical armature, which prevents 'cogging' from the staters and windings lining up parallel to the axis. Most motors do not have that feature (and are much cheaper as a result), but this is a finicky application that req high quality (smooooth) torque.

I've been tooling up and producing left hand versions of the Warthog grip. If no one has started making an F-18 conversion kit for the Warhog HOTAS by the time I get my 3d printer (SLA high resolution resin printer for prototyping, production parts cast in pigmented urethane plastic), I will -definitely- make this grip set. I would have already done this honestly, but was waiting to see whatever became of Hegy's project cause I'm not one to step on toes, but I think it's safe to declare that project dead. I already had a good handle on working mold making and working with the relevant materials, but I've also spent a long time experimenting and refining techniques for working in the resin I'm using until I had consistent results I was going for and my grips essentially look factory made. Here's a few pics: http://www.dualsticks.com/

edit: looked at pics before posting, you likely already did Roland's mod, at least part way... You may not realize, but with relatively minor mods to the board you can get 400% the current/torque of the stock circuit and you only need a single MFSSII. Changes to the pcb are pretty minor, but you use your own power supplies (v easy... 24vdc power bricks) and dc motors. Roland van Roy has this mod well documented, including motor recommendations and also has great explanations/examples/pictures of a better means of power transmission (often used in professional control loading setups), called 'shaft winding' where you use pulleys instead of gears, which are pretty easy to make. You drill cross hole through the driving shaft, a steel cable passes through hole and winds in shaft a few wraps before going to the bellcrank/pulley. Easy to achieve your desired torque/rpm ratio, but more importantly is free of all tactile report from meshing gear teeth and of course there is no backlash once you tighten the cable. http://www.simprojects.nl/ms_siderwinder_ff2_hack.htm

After reading the above post, a pro-tip that VKB should pass on to their customers buying adapters for Warthogs: Put a piece of electrical tape securing the trigger to the half of the grip with the thumb hat on it (all electronics/switch stay in that half as the other lifts away). This will prevent the trigger from dislodging enough to launch a spring, which btw comes off fast enough to take out an eyeball so you may want to wear safety goggles just in case.

There's a simpler solution. Use Nyogel 767a... it's not consumer stuff from a hardware store. Its a complex engineered damping grease that is very stiff yet will not bind the least bit when moving from a dead standstill. http://www.oveready.com/nyogel-lubricants/nyogel-767aa-dampening-grease-10g-tube-/prod_421.html This is not a property that greases casually have. It's either engineered to be this and sold as such, or it does a miserable job over any length of time. I've been exploring greases for damping since 2012 because I made an aiming joystick for mech piloting that relied on it. I've tried a lot and nothing comes even close. My ranting about Nyogel 767a caught the attention of VKB and they did their own experiments with it. This is what led to the biggest feature change of their upcoming joystick base, the Gunfighter, that being their 'dry clutches'. Those are radial versions of the axial friction mechanisms I made for my mech stick and another experiment of a centerless x/y friction gimbals. The properties that allow it to excel at that extremely demanding task make it more than suited for other friction mechanisms such as TM's throttle rails, and others have already used it to good effect.

If no one here has what you are looking for, I'd comb the reddit wiki and maybe ask on the laser cutting sub https://www.reddit.com/r/lasercutting/wiki/k40 https://www.reddit.com/r/lasercutting/

My guess is because the optimal kinematics of a ministick and a 4-way are pretty much opposite. If using a ministick, you don't want any mechanical hindrances/influence to movement but with a 4-way it's best with distinct tactile reporting every time you press a button. From a kinematic perspective, my assumption is it will either it be a good ministick or have good feel for the 4-way but I do not believe it can be great at both. My guess is it's a good minstick but as a 4-way will not feel as precise as using a mechanical switch assembly dedicated to that function.

I make left hand/mirrored versions of the Warthog grip, but not the throttle. http://www.dualsticks.com/left-hand-grips/ Since you have an rsi account, here's the thread that shows how they are made, which gets more interesting from p18 onward but threre's stuff throughout: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/167306/dual-warthog-mount-design-build-thread/p18 ... and continued here on Spectrum: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50174/thread/left-hand-warthog-grips

Makes me cringe seeing this gimbals used for such easily achieved kinematics... literally the lowest hanging fruit on the vine is center-less damping and can be achieved with a much simpler mechanism than VKB's beautiful cam centering gimbals. It's like watching someone use a horse to pull a sports car while they sit on the roof :p Here's some dead simple gimbals that behave exactly as this configuration in the video, http://imgur.com/a/jTw6H which unless I'm mistaken are technically related since the friction rubs I've been making which rely on Nyogel 767a (heavy damping grease) like the those are sort of what led to the 'dry clutches' in the first place :)

Hi Hempstead, I was planning on contacting you about this for many months already but have been busy and kept putting it off, but I've been making these dustshields for Warthogs (retail and wholesale) and was planning on offering replacement o-rings as well but didn't want to step on your toes so will gladly relieve you of this seeing as you want out. www.dualsticks.com/dustshields All PTFE is very soft and has what is referred to as 'high memory', meaning once it deforms it does not spring back into shape unlike most other plastics hence why the groove wears into it and the ABS is stable, though I'm sure softer grades this happens faster than the harder ones. It's also available with acid etching on one side, to facilitate PSA or glue.

I have a white one I can get a pic of in a grip next time I open one if you like...

Tight fits like that happen from time to time, when the tolerances on 2 mating parts converge where the female component is at 'least material condition' (LMC) while the male component is at 'maximum material condition' (MMC). Still, it's a scary leap to figure out if that's the problem of if you are doing damage trying to mash a square peg through a round hole... :p glad to see you got it sorted and that people are happy with their grips. gogogo VPC!

I don't remember offhand, but looking on FlyFoxy Cougar site where those switch cases were derived suggests 10deg counterclockwise. http://www.cougar.flyfoxy.com/mods.php#speedbrake http://www.cougar.flyfoxy.com/mods.php#IJ_casing

I have a throttle I need to open up soon, if you haven't got the dimensions by then I can make a dimensioned drawing, there are a lot of features that req measurements, but I'm interested in these myself for reasons you can probably imagine :) These aftermarket metal ones are also corrected for actuation angle, to orient the slide action the correct direction as it's slightly off on TM's throttle grip.

Here's the best starting point for researching this: http://www.simprojects.nl/ms_siderwinder_ff2_hack.htm Following Roland's relatively simple hack (some resistors/diodes and powerbrick power supplies) yields 400% the current/power to run suitable motors. He also has really good documentation on cobbling motors to hardware. Basically if you have the room, the cable/shaft winding technique is best... easy to get the ratios you need and there are no 'ratcheting' effects and no backlash of power transmission like you get with gears. Now that Condor2 is announced to be in alpha and releasing likely this year, I'm resurrecting my sailplane cockpit project and will be using Roland's hack for sure though those Glentek motors are hard to find on the cheap!

You are correct, it does not need to be done in cnc, though it could be done that way it would be a waste of expensive machine time, especially since from a machining perspective (manual or cnc) this is a complicated part. It really just needs to be done by someone that understands the nuances of casting metal and appreciates the details of the implications since all metal shrinks and distorts various amounts when freezing back into a solid, and the effects need to be preemptively accounted for for the final result to be correct. This means original patterns need to be slightly different than the final form, definitely in size but sometimes also shape to a degree, for instance how thin x-sections behave differently than thick ones. I am already working on this project, and once I have my own printer to work with (Shapeways is horrible for prototyping like this... it's expensive and takes a month to get your parts) I'll be able to go through the trial and error of finding the correct distortion to end up with the correct part after cooling. I happen to be years fluent in metal casting, and have been slowly tooling up for larger scale investment casting to do grips and such but I already have the tools to cast small parts like this in bronze, though I'm aiming to make new articulation spheres in pewter (reusable molds) if I can get away with it. Pewter should be fine though, seeing as the ABS part is *almost* strong enough as is and pewter much stronger than ABS. The only alteration I'm going to do is putting a relief for wires on both sides of the slot, which will prevent people from putting it in 'backwards', which leads to pinched off wires. There's no fix for the magnet plinth other than replacing the bell though, and there's no point in making that part out of metal since by that level of involvement one can make superior gimbals since the function of the design itself is questionable (yuuge center detente, 100% crosstalk between x/y axis, etc) to begin with.

The stick is not plug and play but the adapter kit is literally that... the new wiring scheme requires you to add a little box (20x30x5mm or so, it mounts under TM pcb) that converts the 5-wire to 3-wire. To accomplish this there is no soldering or any real wiring being done, everything is microJST1.25mm plugs. You unplug the TM connector from the board and plug the VKB connector to the little box that in turn plugs into the board.

Recently used one of these Natami racing seats in a motion platform for a client, it was nicer than I thought it would be for the $145, though might not work if your a fatty https://www.amazon.com/NETAMI-NT-5105-Racing-Carbon-Texture/dp/B00OW7J5SA/ref=sr_1_12?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1491079447&sr=1-12

Don't buy 'cheap' pots, buy 'inexpensive' ones. Shop ebay for 'sealed' 'linear' pots made by Bournes, Vishay, Spectrol, Watts, or anything Mil Spec. You probably also want 'panel mount' (threaded collar to mount through holes in panels), and shafts will be determined by your knobs but most will be 1/4 or 1/8", with or without a flat.