Showroom No-Weld 2DOF Seat Mover On Homebrew Ricmotech RS1 Clone

I was about to admit defeat earlier today, I swapped over the worm drive and after ground isolating the replacement electronics I noticed that there was A LOT of play in the gearbox. It ended up being from the bearing not seating properly allowing the worm gear to be pushed up and down without actually rotating. I took everything back apart and put it back together with some sleeve retainer in it and it's as good if not a tighter gearbox than it was from the factory.

Out with the old, in with the... older? .. anyway it's back to being a functional motor using parts from an older retired motor from earlier in the build.

And everyone likes a good video so here's a test I did using an xbox controller just to make sure nothing was horribly wrong. I actually think this motor may be quicker to respond than it was before, the salvaged parts came off of the motor that I tested bypassing all the protection diodes and the power leads are attached directly to the brushes. The difference (if it's not just placebo) isn't major so I'm not going to touch the other motor.

Thanks armpit for the quick response. I'm really enjoying your thread. I don't understand how all this works but reading over yours has helped me out.

I got around to drilling a second pair of mounting holes in the motor arms bringing the lever center-to-center down to 40mm from 50mm. The detail I feel is a good bit better now (it feels much firmer overall, sudden bumps used to feel a little soft before because the motors lacked some necessary torque to "snap" short distances) since there's more mechanical advantage. The overall movement is reduced but I really didn't notice any negatives at all from doing this while in a shake-down test run. Happy with it, and it reduces the risk of another worm gear snapping greatly.

*knock on wood* Full "final build overview" post coming soon!

Long time no update, I just need to stop promising I'll be updating with the "final product" because I've been having too much fun using it and also realized this project will never end (in a good way)

I've been noticing the chair is getting louder and louder, more metal clicking/clanking after every race session.
I tracked it down to the heim joints, and found the tolerances are noticeably less snug than when I first installed them. I have higher quality ones with nylon races on order that should be getting here in a day or two.
Another case of cheaping out on parts coming back to bite me. I spent $4.50 for each of the 4 that have now worn out, and for just $6 each I was able to get 'moderate vibration automotive-grade' versions with the nylon races. Live and learn, never would have thought those would be an issue.

I also decided to experiment with VR motion cancellation


So far I am actually pretty disappointed with it, it made me sick pretty quick because the rolling motion was cancelling the opposite of how it should, causing me to feel like I was just rolling my head around like crazy every turn I took. I assume there is a configuration for this, I have only used it for one day so I haven't dug very far into it.

I also took some time to address an issue where the excess strap on my harness would constantly slide down and look ugly, a few stitches later and I'm lookin' sharp


Along with the spirit of 'fit and finish' I also added some rubber caps to exposed threads, and I have rubber square tube caps on order to cover all the scrape-points from the tubing.


My motor controller is also occasionally overheating and lowering its output in protection mode, so I this little guy on order coming from China so I'll no longer just be using passive heatsinks.



I also have something special ordered for my birthday, ETA this Saturday.... Get excited, give me your best guess if you want and check back!

New wheel and pedals ?

Curios why not just cut off the excess threaded rod on the top mounts ?

Not new wheel and pedals.

The excess rod is because I plan to evolve this build into having wider mounted motors, so I want the option to have the rods offset to the outer portion of the rod rather than the inner so it is further from the center of the seat for more precision and mechanical advantage. Planning to do this when I swap out the heim joints since I have to remove the complete rod to get the old ones off anyway.

Here's the surprise.... a bit of an upgrade! I'll have to make new motor mounts, new levers, pot mounts, the works. But I'm confident it will be well worth the time



I also think it's official I can no longer refer to this as a 'budget build' :/ It's addicting, this site should have a disclaimer.

I played around with a couple mount ideas, settled on the simpler angled one. I didn't want to use a huge hunk of metal just to reach up to that 3rd single mounting point, but I still wanted it to be as solid as possible. I want to have them on a slight angle downward so that the mounts aren't on the same horizontal plane and to get a mounting point closer to the axle to give a little extra strength against torquing forces. Seems like it will do that in my head at least...


Tested the placement exactly where the old mounts were, but these motors are too fat and will interfere with the travel of the seat structure itself. I'm going to end up swapping the mount to the opposite side of the motor and then mounting them using the same mount holes but on the outside edge of the frame to gain about an inch of clearance.


The new heim joints with the nylon raceway compared to the old


I swapped the shoulder mounting points to the outside edge. This was the part I was dreading the most.... I didn't build these mounts really well and they originally took a good bit of hammering to get everything to line up. I had to repeat most of this hammering again, but I'm hoping the work pays off with the wider mounting points to give more granularity to the roll movements


Planning to finish the motor mounts tomorrow and then start work on the axles and levers

Measure twice and mount once, That way little to no "hammer" action would be required.

Duplicated the motor mount design for the other side and rounded off the edges


Mounted the motors up and they feel very solid. I cut some 12mm rod to use as the axles and pinched it in place.


Out of time for today so the levers will have to wait until tomorrow. Still waiting on the the 12mm->6.35mm coupler for the potentiometers

PLEASE use Nylon nuts, Or at minimum run Double nuts to prevent anything from wiggling loose.

Hey Nick, which part are you referring to, the nuts on the axle clamping it in place?
My specialty place didn't have any nyloc fine thread to match the 12mm rod, I didn't think it was a big deal and was planning to butt up another nut during final assembly with the lever but I'll go ahead and get them to bring some nyloc into stock for me.
For the motor connection to the mounting plate it was slim pickings for 7mm at Lowes and none at Home Depot, I bought lock washers but the only length bolt they had was too short to allow me to fit it in there. I'll see if the specialty place can put a handful of 7mm nylocks and maybe longer bolts on order, too.
Nylocs all around coming soon! Thanks for looking out on that

a Double Jam nut would work the same, but i would feel much safer with a nylon for the jam nut, its just extra security, there's more than a few of us around here that have had them wiggle loose over time. So the Safer the better.

Just saw the felt fabric on the base. Excellent idea! There’s a guy at work who wants to do a motion sim with his son over the winter and I’ll mention this to him. Makes for a really nice look!

Thank you very much for that. You just solved several road blocks to start my build.

I made some simple levers and have them pinched in place temporarily for now until I get some nylocs based on Nick's advice. I don't know what to expect for performance for these motors so I made them with two mounting point lengths so I can use the shorter side if they don't have the kind of torque I am expecting. ETA for the potentiometer coupler is Tuesday, the suspense is killing me, I want to see these in action! I wired this one side up and turned the pot by hand just to see some movement and HOLY COW it is fast! (These are the 25:1 gearbox) I am concerned that my single monster moto (dual driver unit) isn't going to run these at their full potential. I think I have a spare sitting in a drawer somewhere, I might try to wire everything for a dual dual-driver monster moto setup if I get too bored waiting for Tuesday to come...



I'm nervous about uploading this picture, but I want some opinions on the angle from the motor to the mounting point... Between having to shift the motor mounts to the outer edge and chosing to have the setscrew on the outside, the angle looks a little bit more extreme than what I've seen on other builds. There is no binding of the heim joints, though; this steep angle does prevent the lever from being able to rotate all the way around without colliding with the axle, but other than a potentiometer failure that shouldn't be a problem.
I have about an inch of wiggle room on the axle I can pull them in by rearranging nuts and flipping the side the setscrew is on and about another inch I can move the top mounting points outward, but that's it... I have a feeling the answer is "yes, definitely" but I'll still ask: Should I make those changes to bring this angle a little bit closer to vertical? If I need EVEN MORE, I have enough flat bar left I can remake the levers to contain some bends to compensate more.

Quick update: The couplers and heatsink came in early!



I went ahead and hooked the left side up. I noticed that the motor stalled extremely easily with just a small amount of resistance from me holding onto the top of the seat.
I had issues with the left side motor feeling weak when I had the wiper motors installed, I assumed it was an issue with the motor back then because that's the one I had apart multiple times, but this makes me think it is actually an issue with the motor controller output itself. I plugged into the other side's output and it pushed harder and harder and harder against me until it blew a 20amp fuse.

I have a spare monster moto I believe tested good a long time ago, I'm going to swap it out tonight if I have time along with some general wiring maintenance to see if that fixes this issue.

I tested it out with the other monster moto and I seem to be getting significantly more power this way, enough that I blew two more 20a fuses testing it out so these motors are really wanting to run HARD. However, this old monster moto board has a loose connection somewhere on it, and I have a feeling even if I re-flowed the board I will be plagued with issues down the road. I am going to try to do that just to get it working for now but I ordered two more boards from my known-good seller on ebay and when they come in I will be rewiring to be a dual-chip monster moto per motor setup, I want to make sure I'm giving these motors as much power as they ask for, at least up to the limit of my single power supply.

Can you share this with us?

Do you believe they draw more than 325W each?