Griff's 6DOF upgrade project

After about 2 years of running a 4DOF rig I have decided to upgrade to a 6DOF. Still in the planning phase so I'd like to get some input from others...ALL input is welcome.

Here are my constraints:

• I will be reusing the 4 X 90ST-M02430 I already have and have placed an order for 2 more for China.
• Smallest footprint possible to maintain the use of my home office. I'd love to build a BIG rig, but I just don't have the airconditioned space for it.
• Primarily used for Flight and Racing simulation in that order.
• Reusing the @Thanos controller

I have already built a new PC for the task and placed an order for a Vario Aero. My son and I are both pretty excited for the upgrade. He wants to become a helo pilot in the Army so the sim time has some actual real world benefit for him. I love to fly and got my pilots license back when I was a teenager, but I have a fun little track car I race so the racing sim is fantastic to learn tracks like COTA just up the road from us. My hope is to one day run my little car in a Time Attack event just to see how we can do.



PC specs:
AMD Ryzen 5950X 16-Core 3.4 GHz
128GB (4x32) Corsair DDR4
Gigabyte x570 Aorus Elite
2TB SSD
1200W Corsair power supply
Nvidia RTX-3080 Ti (12GB)

Should be more than enough to run the rig and VR without any hardware slowing it all down.

Currently I am printing up a few parts from @SilentChill and @Peacemaker105 I am modifying for us US based folks. Who would have thought metric u-bolds would be so hard to find here in the states? I plan to try the 3 rod design actuators I am seeing out there .vs the single rod design. If anyone has parts files for that design I would love to get my hands on them.

More photos to come as I learn to use Sketchup and get some of the hardware in.....

You should have a look into possibly using aluminum frames for the actuators... check out these free plans here:

https://departedreality.com/

NICE!!!! Thanks @Thanos ! All I would need to modify is the motor housing portion to hold the 90ST-M02430 and I would be up and running. I like the idea of building them from from t-slot too for the flexibility. I will also reach out to them to see if they have any drawings for the hexapod frame itself. All of this together would save me a HEAP of R&D time.

It can't be stated enough how amazing this community is about helping each other out with free files and help!

and BTW.... your controller has been AMAZING! Thanks for a quality product and customer support.

Well.... after looking over the part files and drawings for the Departed reality actuators I decided to order the parts and get the ball rolling. I may decide down the road to revise the actuators, but at least I will have a working rig with tried and true design.

Lat piece of the puzzle is the hexapod design. Any dimensions out there for any of the Departed Reality rigs?

You can get approximate an idea on his youtube channel videos:

https://youtube.com/channel/UCSo_PgDqNphj8f2jGHOqBYg

Hopefully detailed plans for the dimensions will be available soon. It's very new venture as you can see, but really promising.

And the best part is he just so happens to be 2 hours from my house. Small world.

Basic build done and testing started. Need to tweak a few things in the chassis design, but nothing major. I made a mistake when ordering the ball screws so I have new ones on order but decided to go with http://www.x-long.com.tw/ ones for the final build.

Thanks for all the help and input folks! With any luck I will start motion testing next month!