6DOF Stewart Platform Motion Simulator

What follows is a fun story entrepreneurism, wires to China and a tale of trust.

As an entrepreneur of humble beginnings, I enjoy the opportunity to support hard working and industrial folks who chase a dream. On several occasions, I've had the honor of being the first customer or first investor. This is a tale of one of those adventures.

I'm 56 and well past my prime, but a few years back I discovered Kart Racing and have just fallen in love with weekends at the local track hitting 90+ mph 1" off the ground. It's just a rush that's hard to describe.

Last August however, I suffered a wrist injury which kept me off the track and it was during this time that I discovered Sim racing. In a few short months, I had gone from knowing nothing to building 3 rigs, and it was about this time I started to take note of the various options for motion. Of course, FB heard me talking and next thing I know, I've got a bunch of FB groups being suggested regarding rigs and sims.

One evening while browsing the sim groups, I came across a rather unusual yet intriguing post. It was of a motion sim I'd not seen before -- and it was insanely industrial. There were no frills or descriptions in the post, it was just a picture of the sim, sitting rather empty in a big non-descript room with a Chinese guy sitting on the floor next to it with his laptop. Intrigued, I messaged him and asked to speak.

After a brief exchange we connected on Whatsapp and I discovered he was an engineer living in China with a dream of building a company in Canada or the US. Over the past year, the rig I saw in the FB group had been developed by him and a friend, both engineers. It turns out they had experience building industrial control systems and decided to leverage that experience to engineer a Stewart Platform motion sim. What I had seen in the photo was one of his early rigs. He said he had sold a few to Europe, but none yet to the US. His English was good, and he was just matter of fact about the whole thing. He wanted to introduce a motion sim at a better price point than what he'd seen currently being offered.

I thought about the conversation the next day and after telling my wife I might do something stupid, I emailed him and said, send me an invoice, I'd like to buy one.

A few hours later I got a simple invoice #0001 with PayPal instructions.

Now, I'm in the security business so it's pretty normal for me to be plenty suspicious and skeptical. But by and large, my trust in humanity has been fairly well compensated over the years, so I took a flyer and sent him the money.

Much to my delight, I soon started receiving video's of the rig being built in what appeared to be a rather run-down Chinese metal factory. I like buying things, but even more than that, I enjoy seeing things being built and over the next few weeks, I would receive video after video of him cutting, welding, powder coating and assembling the rig for shipping.

Roll forward to today, and the rig was delivered via 'slow boat from China', assembled in my basement, and I've not run 3 races (iRacing) with it in the past 48 hours. Net/net, the thing is awesome, rock solid, and built like a tank.

With the rig finished, I'm now realizing it's all about the configuration, and I'm learning about SimTools and the Samkoon control unit that interfaces with the motion controllers. There's a LOT of adjustments, and it's clear I need some real help or expertise to get these settings to where they reflect the telemetry of the track.

So that's my share for the evening. Perhaps someone here has experience with SimTools and would be willing to share their expertise with me?

In the meantime, let me share some photos (and stats) of my rigs along with the new motion rig. (not in order)

Rig 1: Sim Lab PX1 TK Edition, Simucube 2 Pro, GSI Wheel, G7 32", Logitech z906, NVIDIA 4090
Rig 2: TR160 Pro, Simagic Alpha, FX Pro & P2000, Arena 7 Speakers, NVIDIA 4080
Rig 3: Motion 6DOF, Simucube 2 Pro, GSI, Neo G8

4k 32", Logitech z906, NVIDIA 4090

And a few additional photos of the rig as finished.