Donbinator's A-10C pit

[donbinator]

OK I've been lurking far too long and distracting y2kiah and others with my own issues, so I'm starting my own build thread. I'm committed enough to feel comfortable with that. I've put off making wine this year (one of my many hobbies) to build an A-10C cockpit for DCS, which by the way is in my opinion the best combat flight simulator ever made (at least for me). I hope they are making money as it really isn't much for the arcade XBox Playstation etc. crowd. Cheers to Eagle Dynamics for taking a risk on us. I'm about to purchase another license of A-10C for the PC I'm building for my cockpit.

 

I'd also like to point out that without y2kiah, Linden, Gadroc, and many others, my cockpit would either look like a generic sim cockpit, or would have taken me about 8 months to get to where I am now, whereas with the community (folks mentioned above among them) it's taken 2 so far.

 

My philosophy is that while I'd like to get flying as soon as possible, my cockpit will serve as an outlet for my electronics/firmware/CAD/building-stuff needs. I am always starting projects because I have an inherant need to build. When work has me bogged down with paperwork, I can come home and create. For this reason I'll copy some people's work (such as the frame of the pit), but not other parts which interest me to build (such as the panels, the underlying scripts, and the electronics). Anyways, here are a couple of photos I just snapped of the frame so far.

[donbinator]

By the way, I highly recommend Parkland Plastics Plas-Tex Waterproof Wall Panels for skinning. It's tough, flexible, paintable with latex paint (I used Gull Gray), you can drill it, you can glue it, you can nail through it, and it doesn't split. Oh, and you can cut it with a decent pair of scissors or hobby knife. Its drawbacks are that it is perhaps a little too flexible. It buckled a little on the right side of my cockpit where the shape of the ribs "wrinkled" it a bit, but if you are careful you can prevent this from happening (live and learn :)).

[deaconjb]

Looking good so far. :thumbup: Is the wall panel material you describe primarily used for tub/shower surround applications? I'm just trying to understand a little more of what exactly it is.

 

Thx - deacon

[airdog]

Looking good so far. :thumbup: Is the wall panel material you describe primarily used for tub/shower surround applications? I'm just trying to understand a little more of what exactly it is.

 

Thx - deacon

GOOGLE is your friend. He gave you all the info you really needed to find out what this stuff is that he is using.

[Cali]

By the way, I highly recommend Parkland Plastics Plas-Tex Waterproof Wall Panels for skinning. It's tough, flexible, paintable with latex paint (I used Gull Gray), you can drill it, you can glue it, you can nail through it, and it doesn't split. Oh, and you can cut it with a decent pair of scissors or hobby knife. Its drawbacks are that it is perhaps a little too flexible. It buckled a little on the right side of my cockpit where the shape of the ribs "wrinkled" it a bit, but if you are careful you can prevent this from happening (live and learn :)).

 

Wrinkled, you most be going for super realism, the real jets have wrinkles, nice job!

[donbinator]

Looking good so far. :thumbup: Is the wall panel material you describe primarily used for tub/shower surround applications? I'm just trying to understand a little more of what exactly it is.

 

Thx - deacon

 

I think they use it for curved wall surfaces for things like food display counters at commercial stores. I'm not really sure though.

[donbinator]

Wrinkled, you most be going for super realism, the real jets have wrinkles, nice job!

 

Haha, not exactly what I was going for. The "wrinkle" is more like a buckle and makes the aluminum framing show a gap in the side. I'll post a pic later so you get a better idea of what I'm talking about. Doesn't look very realistic to me, but I'll go google the "wrinkles" in A-10s and see if I can find a photo of what you are talking about.

 

BTW, I'm reading a book called "Warthog" by William Smallwood. I'm a little more than half way through the book and can now recommend it. It's not a GREAT book, but for an A-10 enthusiast it's definitely a good read. It's about the A-10 deployments in Iraq, the pilots, the missions and the shifts in role for the A-10s. One thing I hadn't really thought about is crossing the Oceans to get somewhere. Can you imagine 10 hours of flying in formation through bad weather without autopilot or radar??? I can't even think how they worked the cramp out of their hands at the other side!

[donbinator]

Hey has anyone besides that one guy in France tried for character recognition for the CMSP? I've been playing with Tesseract (open source OCR) and would like to create a learned font for the countermeasures display. I tried it with the default set and that...uh....didn't work so well :). Where the heck is that font anyways? The lua script calls for font_CMSP, but I don't know how to find the font. Anyone know where it lives?

[donbinator]

I ordered one of these and will hopefully get it any day now. I'm a little worried because they haven't been able to give me a tracking number yet even through they claim to have shipped it from California last week...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-CUTTING-ENGRAVER-50W-CO2-LASER-ENGRAVING-MACHINE-UP-DOWN-PLATFORM-f6-/230833149220?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35beba5524

 

If anyone is interested I'll let you know what I think of it. It's cheap for what it is (DSP based 300mx500mm 50W) but I'm pretty handy with Windows, drivers, and software/hardware in general so I'm *hoping* I can figure this thing out :).

[agrasyuk]

congrats.

just make sure you have very good ventilation for the fumes. those are nasty

[Mr_Burns]

Few of these on ebay lately - let us know how you get on, I just cant justify it unfortunately!!

[Gremlin77]

I also thought about buying one of these directly from asia. But then decided to order one here from Germany,'cause if there are any problems, I have a reseller here next to me. My reseller makes the import from china and does some safety modifications. (laser turns of when you open the box and so on). And if you need any spare parts, the way and delivery time is much shorter. But overall, my laser is also a "china burner" and works fine for three years now with the first laser tube.

And asar is right, the fumes cutting plexi are very nasty. I just installed an additional ventilator to bring out the fumes (a boxed vent from a cooker hood). The original vent is much to weak, so the hole basement smelled like a 4-week-dead cat when I worked on my panels.

So have fun with this fantastic tool!

[donbinator]

Thanks for the info all. Noted about the fumes. Mine will be in the garage with the exaust pipe out the window. I'll see how that goes and if I need to I'll likely end up putting a bigger fan on as well. In terms of parts they do sell parts, but it's operated from China so...:).

[Gremlin77]

oh one tip if you have it in the garage. Don't know how cold your winters are, but I once had the problem that my cooling fluid (simple demineralized water) was frozen and destroyed the pressure instrument.....for my luck not the laser tube

[donbinator]

oh one tip if you have it in the garage. Don't know how cold your winters are, but I once had the problem that my cooling fluid (simple demineralized water) was frozen and destroyed the pressure instrument.....for my luck not the laser tube

 

By pressure instrument do you mean the pump? Our winters can have periods of cold so I'll keep that in mind, thanks! My pump is a simple water pump, I provide the bucket :). I was just going to use distilled water (I think that's the same as demineralized?). Do you have an actual chiller? Should I be worried about the water getting too warm?

 

BTW it arrive this morning and is WAY bigger than I had expected. Not exactly sure where I'm going to put it :cry:.

[Gremlin77]

Yes distilled water is the same. With pressure instrument I mean a small sensor that guards if there is waterpressure on. If not, no cooling -> no laser. I use a 10 liter bucket with an aquarim pump. Thats enough and I think you won't run the lasers for 10 hours without a break, so think it won't get to hot. To check, just hold a finger in..... ;-)

[donbinator]

Yes distilled water is the same. With pressure instrument I mean a small sensor that guards if there is waterpressure on. If not, no cooling -> no laser. I use a 10 liter bucket with an aquarim pump. Thats enough and I think you won't run the lasers for 10 hours without a break, so think it won't get to hot. To check, just hold a finger in..... ;-)

 

Ah OK, I'm not even sure mine has that feature. I think I just realized what you are pointing out though, if the water is still in the laser when it freezes...kind of like my boat when I had to buy a new engine for it :mad:. So...basically I have to make sure I "winterize" my laser :). Thanks for the tip. I bet I would have been caught by that at some point which would have really sucked.

[donbinator]

Laser works!

 

Well the laser thing works. Did this today. I'm using 1/8th inch for top and bottom and 1/4 inch for the lighting layer, but I'm having a heck of a time getting it to be green when lit (or at least as green as the TM throttle).

[donbinator]

BTW, when I said "did this today" what I meant to say was "plugged other peoples work into my laser thingy and out came this today". Thanks dimebug!!! I did have to suffer through the expected bad software and manual (or lack thereof). The manual for RDCAM 6 is pretty bad, and there's no in-software help. It's also quite particular about how you configure stuff. Overall not unhappy though. Y'all are right about the fan though, it's underpowered and my garage does indeed smell like a dead cat now. I think my 10 year old son described as "horrible dad-garage-thing going on".

[Gremlin77]

very nice result! And what do you say? Great tool such a laser, isn't it? I love this machine!!

So have fun with it!

[Gremlin77]

BTW, try less power or more speed on front panel engraving. just laser away the only top slice of it, then your engraving will have no "structure" and problems like the middle point of the "R" right next to APU GEN PWR", that has disappeared won't occur.

[metalnwood]

I cant see the image as the ED forums have been slow as heck with a bunch of images never coming up. Even so the thumbnail looks good. With a bit of playing around you will get the best out of the laser so while I cant see how good it is, you will get it better :) If you are happy now, you will be happier :)

 

HAve you done something about the fumes? If you have children about, babies etc you want to be careful with acrylic. If you start cutting wood it will be smokey!

 

I bet you $5 you have already been on the net or thingyverse etc looking for all sorts of other stuf to do with the new toy :) The latest thing for us is making some model parts for an HO scale trainset. Today I played around with engraving bricks on to balsa wood for a building. It came out OK here https://www.dropbox.com/s/6tph3ifr68ls32v/bricks.jpg , I am sure you will get sidetracked too lol

[donbinator]

BTW, try less power or more speed on front panel engraving. just laser away the only top slice of it, then your engraving will have no "structure" and problems like the middle point of the "R" right next to APU GEN PWR", that has disappeared won't occur.

 

Thanks I'll try that. To begin with a did 5 strips at different powers and 200mm/sec and ended up picking the one that looked the best, but you are right that it has engraved through the paint and into the plastic a bit.

[donbinator]

I cant see the image as the ED forums have been slow as heck with a bunch of images never coming up. Even so the thumbnail looks good. With a bit of playing around you will get the best out of the laser so while I cant see how good it is, you will get it better :) If you are happy now, you will be happier :)

 

HAve you done something about the fumes? If you have children about, babies etc you want to be careful with acrylic. If you start cutting wood it will be smokey!

 

I bet you $5 you have already been on the net or thingyverse etc looking for all sorts of other stuf to do with the new toy :) The latest thing for us is making some model parts for an HO scale trainset. Today I played around with engraving bricks on to balsa wood for a building. It came out OK here https://www.dropbox.com/s/6tph3ifr68ls32v/bricks.jpg , I am sure you will get sidetracked too lol

 

Yeah I'll definitely get side tracked :). The fumes aren't so bad, but I have to wait a while for the fan to empty the fumes in the box before I open it (I route the hose outside). You can definitely still smell it no matter what, so I'm mostly keeping the kids out of the garage while dad plays :). While investigating router vs. laser I did come across some of those web sites, but haven't gone back to try anything yet. I'll get there once I get further along with the cockpit. I think it would be fun to cut projects for the kids. They are always asking for projects to do, I can just hand them a pile of plastic parts and say "here, figure out how this goes together" :).

[Gremlin77]

In the past I used painted acrylic, two. Now I use a double layered plastic you can buy for laser engraving. It's a white plastic with about 1.6mm in thicknes with a thin top layer of black plastic you laser away to see the white plasic. This gave me the best results and the black top layer is not as sensitive to scratches as paint is. BTW you can buy a lot different color combinations. Look at ebay or a shot for engraving equipment. The one I use is named LASERPLY.