Homemade Attraction Simulator

The most important thing in an attraction simulator is the motion base. While many dislike Universal Studio's simulator attractions I enjoy quite a few of them! And I want to take this technology home to build an immersive attraction in my own home! I have done some research on what I would like to create.

At first I thought a 4 person ride vehicle would be great and I would love to build a 4 person vehicle, but all that comes to mind is weight. The amount of weight that would be on the platform for motors would be too much for a home build. So, I thought a 3 person ride bench would suffice. Ideally I would like the ride bench to hold 3 adults. If each adult is 200 lbs then 600 lbs would be the weight capacity. As I stated before, the car would be a bench with walls on either side to block vision. I found this little wooden crate at target which is similar for how I want the car to look.



An effective design indeed, however this means the actual base would have to be a rectangle. Could that work?

Now onto the base. As much as I would love to use wood to build a motion base I know steel would be best for durability. The movements I want for this vehicle are smooth, exaggerated movements. I want the guests to feel incredibly immersed in whatever they are watching. I wanted to do a 2 DOF motion platform similar to what you see in these videos.

The 2 DOF seems cheaper and easier to manage, but the more I look at 3 DOF the more I like it!

This was a lot I blurted out and it may be confusing to understand what I am asking, so here are my main questions:

What torque do I need to move 600 lbs smoothly and efficiently? I found an AC motor with 65 Nm torque, would that work?

If it is a 3 DOF system, could the torque be less because you have 3 motors working at once? How might I understand the distribution of weight? Does it matter?

What would you guys like to ride that would make you feel immersed, a 2 DOF or 3 DOF?

And finally, where should I begin? Should I make a model on the computer? What program should I use? Or should I take some measurements of how big I want the ride vehicle and start building a steel base?

If you made it this far, I can't thank you enough for your time! Hope all is well!

Thank you for this!!! The 2DOF does seem much easier, especially for an inexperienced builder like myself, but the basic motion with a large screen should be immersive enough!

I’ll take a look at the calculator to see what I can come up with and how to build it! Thanks again!

After some consideration, I thought about using pneumatic cylinders for a 3DOF. They are cheap, and have a payload of what I’m looking for! The only problem I have now is how to control them? Would it be possible to control speed and position? Could I control this with an arduino? Mostly I came here to see if this was a stupid idea or not. It seems promising for sure! Would you know anything about this?

@Joey Bennett
Hi!
I gathered some information on pneumatic rigs in the FAQ
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/pneumatic-actuators-for-2dof-and-more.383/

Thank you for the info!

This was extremely helpful! Thank you!

IMO. AC servos are what you want. I have tried two people on my current sim and the motors handle it easily.

Because air compresses it,s allmost inpossible to get position, fast valves are expencife
and still very slow it give a low resolution becauce off this
It,s old school ,electric motors are it these days in industry
Sorry for the bad english
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I’ll have to look into those, I changed my design a bit to create a cabin that will hold 4 people. Similar to star tours. My three big concerns are payload, smooth motion, and ease of programming. Do you recommend a certain brand or control system?

Electric does seem easier and requires less maintenance.

They will easily do all that and are not really that expensive for what you get, as they normally come with a match driver, positioning system (encoder) already fitted to the motor and can be powered often directly from your house power. They can be also easily controlled by the Thanos controller, or now a few other options. All directly compatible with Simtools and a few others. For what you want to do, really your only option. You will of course need a suitable gearbox of some type, to take all that weight, which are not cheap, but what you are building was never going to happen on a small budget.

That’s very true, I just want to save money where I can. I’ll look at AC servo motors as they seem to be exactly what I’m looking for! Especially connecting to house power. I’ll browse the internet and see what I can find. Your help really means a lot!

Well after looking at pneumatic motion bases, electric motion bases, 3DOF, and 2DOF, I have come to the conclusion of what I would like to build. My final design will be a 2DOF electric motion base. It just seems like for a homemade attraction I will get the most bang for my buck. Below is a picture of what I would like to build:




This is a motion platform produced by Active Game, the base can pitch and roll up to 60 degrees and can have payloads up to 500 kg. Naturally, I have a few questions concerning this build.

- It’s obvious these are AC worm gear motors (probably 220V). I have reached out and asked for the torque of these motors. They have not responded. So, using SimCalc I came up with a needed torque of about 200lbs*ft or 271 N.m. I have no idea if these are the right numbers or if they even sound correct, but I just might round the torque up to 300 N.m. Just to be safe to move 500kg. Does that number sound okay?

-Next, where could I buy motors like these? Alibaba seems to have a ton of them for pretty good prices. Have you guys used a particular seller on there? Also, if they are 220V, could I use one converter for both motors because I would like to plug it into my 110V house power.

-Controlling these are my next question. I have seen people use Arduino to program their DC motors with Simtools. What controller could I use for 220V AC motors? And could it run Simtools?

-Finally, what are the parts called that connect the gearbox to the base and where can I purchase them? Are they called foot flanges and rods? Please forgive my ignorance.

Well, it looks like that’s all the questions I have for now. It looks like purchasing what I need is the next step to this process. Can’t wait to hear back from you all!

Recommend you use modern servo motors, not these old AC motors.

Would you say something like this:

this particular motor has a torque of 19N.m.

Maybe, but the motor alone is useless without the proper servo drive..

Better see these:
-750W AC Servo Motor Drive Kits NEMA32 80mm, AASD-15A: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32973113245.html

-Matching 50:1 planetary gearbox: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32835293950.html

350Nm max torque (or 120Nm constant).

This is very helpful! Just to be clear, the servo drives are what runs Simtools? And do these drives connect to my computer?

None of these servos, or previous AC motors with VFD inverters you linked will connect directly to simtools...

You need a motion controller that sits between your PC and these servos and interprets the motion commands from simtools to digital pulses for the servo drives...