tekadept

The Good ole Logitech Extreme 3d Pro is a great starter joystick, does the job well at a low price point. Mine has lasted 15 years no problems, but it may just be an anomaly :) Interesting that hall sensor mod, I might dig my old faithful out and do it for gags :)

If you could do that it would be sweet, I tried to resize the hole in the stl myself but it didnt end well :/

Blue don't suppose there's any chance you can provide the rotary switch gear with 18t config instead of Dshaft?

Ok so I finally Got the Yellow Stock in I was waiting for to do the Cockpit Panel Hazard Stripes on the F18 Hornet Panels The stock is 0.1mm thick with an adhesive back. Firstly I need to figure out where to apply it to, so I do a quick VERY light engrave on the plate after engraving the text. Now I get the adhesive material peel of the back and apply gently over the area that will be cut out. then give it a vector cut with just enough power to cut through the yellow material. Now I weed out the cut material and we are left with the below, Give it a bit of a cleanup and finish the rest of the plates I'm testing and we are done. I think this method is much better, i still need to do a bit beteter on the application, the smaller piece above moved when I weeded it out, so I will be more careful next time, but overall I think this is a fantastic solution. Now to keep working on the Master Arm Panel and how I plan on doing that, along with a few options for the Rotary Jettison switch Now I have most of the Main F18 Hornet Panels done and need to start working on all the small ones.

Heya I am selling F18 Panels, and literally just finished doing up this one (haven't uploaded yet wll probably tomorrow). I'll also be uploading it to my PLOG once I get the part 3d printed over the weekend perhaps If you required I can completely customise the hole to suit whatever switch setup, or alternatively If you go the plate from me I could just get and send you that exact switch at cost price, just get in touch with what you needed.

Very clever bit of kit here good work, makes me want to blow the dust off my 3d printer :)

So the Screws have came in for the Generic Toggle Switch Box , it was harder to get black pan head screws locally then it should be. Now we are securing the panels down we get a nice finished look to the box. This below is going to be the “Standard” Sizing, enough for 4 rows of toggle switches. This unit is feature complete from the mechanical side of things, just doing a bit of tweaking on the software to act as a HID device joystick button. Also as an option I have DCSBIOS working as well, but obvioulsy harder with it not having “Generic Controls”. Now I am working on a Larger Unit, this will be F18 Specific and utilse DCSBIOS. This is going to be larger, and as part of this I am spending a bit of time redesiging the guts to make the unit much more rigid. What I have come up is utilising the DZUS Rail holders more for support by giving them an L shape, and also I am Capitalising on this design to add in a cross brace. This has 2 purposes, 2 reinforce the Sides to reduce flex and also allows a convenient place to mount the LED Strips. Below is the mockup. These are actually quite a solid bit of kit now, so I’m thinking instead of just a Generic Toggle Switch Box I am going to offer just these boxes up for sale in kit form for those who are building a pit and want something to mount panels even if they aren’t mine, as these are all standard DZUS Spacing. I might also take a segway on this train of thought and look at angled side panels as well. Also this can be more than just a Toggle box, Below I am experimenting with mounting of a Push button and LED, it will look quite smart in the final product.

Been a little bit busy with a few R&D Projects, but have managed to squeeze out a few more plates. KY58 was not certain what do do for the Fill, but I think I have sourced a decent 6pin DIN panel mount that I'm waiting to arrive, I sized the hole appropriate to that. Found a few different versions floating around, but chose the one that is in DCS. Also squeezed in a cheeky little Video Panel as well Currently I am working on the Master Arm Panel, just currently trying to work out what to do with the AA A/G buttons and the best way to handle that, but still keeping it generic for anybody interested in getting plates. Perhaps I'll move onto a few more plates while I'm noodling on that one. Another experiment to think about is after picking up some Weldon#3 I might look at welding the Top engraved plate to the middle plate making them 2 piece plates, will see how that works out. For the hazard striping I found a bit of a sample I had for silver thins stock so thought I'd see how it goes Did a usual raster engrave of white Placed the Sticker over the top Did a vector cut on the outline and peeled off the surround (it came off nice and easy which was good) Then just press and firm down in the grooves Definitely works in principle but the edges are a bit ragged, especially as when I vector cut the pieces moved a bit to their original position..

Nice, Definitely looks like you got all the switches you are going to need :)

Nice work, Loving the engine panel!

I have been doing Custom Engraved top plates for X55/56 HOTAS for a while now. I am now doing Warthog plates for Elite Dangerous controls Having doing this It got me wondering if there is any interest in customising plates for other fighters controls outside the default A10? If anybody was interested in helping me come up with ideal controls to engrave for different fighters I am willing to offer a discount and fully customise a solution to suit. Let me know if there is any interest if not at least I know its not worth pursuing :)

After a bit more Playing around with the design, I discovered that firstly 3 DZUS holes high for each toggle row was just a little 2 tight, so first thing, is I increased that to 4 holes high (38.10mm) Then upon a bit of reflection I felt that it definitely was a bit overkill having the plates interchangable for each row, so I ended up settling on make it 2 rows of switch per panel. This meant each panel was 8 Dzus high. So time to get cutting new base and middle plates mount the switches and we end up with this Shortly after engraving the 2 top plates we are now starting to look like below. Definitely taking better shape and looking much nicer. Note that white line between the plates will practically disappear once its screwed down. I have had to order some black m4 bolts from EBAY, the local hardware has nothing but zinc and I’d rather not go the route of spray painting bolts ! Now to throw in some LED backlighting to see how this looks,and it definitely pops looking smexy. Next up is getting these bolts in once they arrive , and getting the guts on the inside and some cable routing.

No problems, I also have a CNC i've used for routing acrylic many a time and the key I found was firstly a single flute endbit, and making sure your get the RPM and feedspeed correct (different for each machine of course) Once I found the sweet spot I can cnc acrylic without a hitch. I still use it for 3d profiling cuts. Another thing is to use cast acrylic as extruded acrylic has a lower melting point. That being said you can't beat a laser cut edge and a K40 is a good start :)

Now that I look at it with your pic with it stretch it looks clearer that that yeah you could make the left the 2 segments the 1, and squeeze in the second digit in the right 7, just couldn't conceptualise it at first :) thx

No they are double.

Nice work looking good. One question as I am thinking for when I undertake this, with the Comms chanel LED, you Went for single digit, do you envision going over 2 digits, if so how do you represent it? I was thinking of using the dot so denote >9

Yep 50W CO2 Laser

Ok I have gone through and done some more work, first up the ECM panel Here I went for some Mattisse Acrylic paint to infill for the hazard striping. This looks better than the spray paint I think. I have some thin adhesive material on back order, but until that comes in to experiment I'm happy withthis result. Here is the ELectrical Panel. I have a stepper motor gauge on order to play around with before I do any housings etc for this panel Flight Control system panel done, just need to get a flip toggle cover, but the sizing I went for matched all the standard ones I saw online. Exterior Lights redone Ground Power, here the NATOPS didn't show "auto" , but DCS does.. without knowing why NATOPS has it missing I went for whats in DCS. APU sorted, this is one that will need the post paint on the bottom plate to mask off I believe. Interior Lighting done.. Next panels to work on is the Master Arm Panel and KY58 and the comms panels..

Hmm, well for personal use, you can get away with a K40, you are on the rigth track witha new control board, you really want something to be able to use Lightburn. IE lighobject, or a smoothie board. 40W will more then do what you are after. For the cheap chinese laser aliexpress is probabably your best bet vs EBAY . If you don't want to bother with upgrading the board you need to look for one that has the M2 Nano control board then you can use http://www.scorchworks.com/Blog/k40-whisperer-k40-cheap-chinese-laser-control-software/

I use a 50W Co2 laser

For 8 pos rotaries Rightstuff put me onto these Ive got a few ordered. http://s.aliexpress.com/ja6BrIZR If anybody is ever interested in a Smaller profile Switch with a large handle hit me up. I got a custom batch made up as I couldn't find a supplier for them. Small body, 12mm hole with a large throw handle. Available in (ON) - OFF - (ON) ON - OFF - ON ON - OFF - (ON) ON - ON

You can have a read of how I make my panels here https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=245746 I am starting to offer plates for sale as I make them, if anybody is after something custom like what I've done for this box I'm happy to look at that to. I think I have decided that a single row is too much for a finished product and perhaps over-complicating it a little for a configurable toggle box. As JG14_Smil it would get a bit much configuring all those. What I'm working on now is doing it split into just a single larger plates for the bottom to mount the toggles and rotaries etc, and then doing a single top plate that a client can ask to be customised, as I'm figuring once they know what they want they wouldn't swap individual controls much. Just whole plates for different jets. The main reason for this is once backlit with the split plates,Below is rough and it wouldn't be THAT bad once fitted properly, but definitely looks average with the light leakage. Will post up pics of the single variation soon.

Thanks, I make them myself.

Awesome work I'm just starting to do some reasearch on how do dials for later. I imagine there would be some kind of calibration required to zero the dial?

Look pretty good. going to try for a throttle as well?