2DOF motion simulator build

Looks great. Can't wait to see the video after you have fine tuned the rig.

Here's a video of my sim and asetto corsa. I do couple of laps around Silverstone in KTM X-Bow R.
It took me a while to get the two videos synced manually, and to find a software that allows me to edit two videos to play at the same time.

I really need to get bigger U-joint as the sim is swinging side to side really badly.

+1 with OBS @noorbeast recommended it in another post so I tried it out and it's realy good, for me I found it better quality and much smaller file sizes so win win (fraps needs work before upload OBS u can upload the raw file if you like )
And it's FREE

The u-joint post is solid steel, but the U-joint itself is pretty small. It's from a steering wheel column. It is the part that allows the swinging. I'll have to pay a visit to a scrapyard to see if I can find one from a cardan.


After some time in google I ended using a video editing software from flashintegro called VSDC free video editor. The name of the software sounds pretty dubious and the installation part of the software wanted to install a bunch of other software, but you could untick all of them. It's pretty much the same with most of the freeware software nowadays. Using the VSDC to create PIP videos was pretty easy. Just import a video file, scale it how you want it, add another video and scale it. I also tried software called shotcut, but gave up on it pretty fast as it seemed pretty difficult to use.
I used Nvidias ShadowPlay to record the game video and my dslr to record the movement of the sim. The ShadowPlay is pretty straight forward software to use, plus it's bundled with Nvidia Geforce Experience. I think that the ShadowPlay also allows to record a webcam video on top of the game video (like OBS), but I could not get my webcam to work, so I had to record the movement video with my normal camera and sync them manually later.

I tried OBS some time ago to mirror Asetto Corsa from Oculus Rift to my display so other people could see the driving, but unfortunately my computer is a little slow and it rendered playing impossible. The frame rate dropped pretty badly. I think it might work if I just set it to record without showing anything though.

@tombo had some success with adding gas springs to help with the gear slack so I decided I'd give it a go, so thank you for suggesting it!
He used 70N ones but the minimum gas springs that I found from the local shop were 150N. I've only attached one spring at the moment as the mount for the other one is printing as I write this. Initial tests with only one spring attached seems to remove some of the jerkiness from the sim, so I'm excited to add the other one and test it.


If someone has use for the mounting part, I have attached it to the post. There's skp (sketchup) and stl files included.
The part clamps around 30x30mm tube.

Hello,
nice it helps you. And thanks for sharing your 3d Print files, as i think of getting printer soon this can be useful

As the 3d printer files that I've made for this project are scattered everywhere in this thread I decided to put them all in one nice package. At the moment the zip file is in my dropbox as it was too big to attach to this post (40MB)....
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28646230/3dprintterParts.zip

Here's the part list:

CapHolder
It's basically a mount for a nut that you can screw to somewhere.


Case:
Never managed to print this...


Diode Holder:
I used this to keep 2 diodes in place to stop reverse current reaching the PSU's


Gas spring mount:
Part to hold gas spring in place. It clamps around 30x30mm tube


HBridge Holder:
You can screw a cheap chinese H bridge to this


MonsterMoto holder
You can screw monster moto shield to this


Coulus Camera holder:
This part slips inside 30x30mm tube and has a hole in the middle for a camera mount screw.


Potentiometer connector
just a tube that goes over the potentiometers shaft and can be glued to the shaft of a motor


Potentiometer holder:
I used this to mount potentiometers next to the motor. the holes are in line with the motor mount holes. I can't remember the model of the motor that I have...you can find it somewhere in this build thread.

PsuHolder
Never used this, but it was meant to hold the psus in place.


SwitchHolder
little part to hold a power switch in place

So why exactly did you add gas struts ? ok so I went back and seen the Gear box slop your talking about, But as far as i know All of That Style gear box have the same amount of mechanical play Built into it....The worm gear cant be THAT close to the main gear or they will wear A LOT faster and wont have as much efficiency due to sheer friction. YES i have experienced it this osccilation, but Not with Myself in the driver's seat, Only if i jump out and give the seat a whack on one side will it start to do a little wiggle but then stop on its own after maybe 1-2 seconds.

This is a Balance issue your having, You need to have Some weight on the motor's, Not be PERFECTLY balanced on the U joint. If you had a little weight on the motor's this would 100% prevent this problem.

or it could be for looks to keep the frame upright when power is off......

I managed to fix the oscillation problem by tuning the PID in smcv3, so that's not a problem anymore.
As you said, the problem is that my sim is pretty well balanced when I sit in it. I get backlash movement when the sim moves in either direction. The gas struts are there to add "weight" to make the sim little unbalanced to fix this. I also could just have added some weight as you suggested, but I decided to give the gas struts a go.
I'm not 100% sure about this, but in my head the gas struts helps more with the backslash movement opposed to adding some weight to the sim. My reasoning is that the gas struts have ability to resist fast movements in either direction. It will not remove the gear slack / backlash completely, just smoothens it. just adding weight to the front of the sim would still leave the jerky movement in one direction. I have no idea if I'm correct about this, but I'll see pretty soon.

Incorrect, you dont feel the backlash when the motor's are loaded a little bit. Also removing the ability for the motor's to oscillate or have Quick direction changes isn't exactly ideal, You want the motor's to be able to do what they can without anything working against them

You can also brace the steering column Uni like this to stop it twisting (see below), as used on many so called 'high end' (expensive) commercial sims. It basically is a steel rod which has couplers on each end that only lets the seat move in two planes and not twist.

yeah, they are using about $14k of parts with something 600% markup, obviously they cannot afford a decent uni joint

I tested the gas struts and they were too powerfull, so it did not work. The H-bridges just gave up after a while. I'll have to try to add some weight to the sim to make it a bit unbalanced and see if that helps.

I bought dirt rally and it is working like a charm with the current setup. probably because the sim is constantly moving. The problem is with flight games where the movements are long. In those movements the movement becomes jerky.

On my 3dof "platform", I used a spline shaft and coupler = 0 twist - at a cost of 130.00 us............but works great.

T

Very cool Sim!

I am inspired me in your work to do mine, I'll soon be posting here in the forum.

I ordered 2 MMs some time ago to add to the ones that I already had. They arravied earlier this week and today I finally got them installed:


Now I have twice the power and twice the FUN!!

It's time to test my newly acquired power in dirt rally.

Thank you! you'll find a lot of information here on the xsim forum.

I did some cable management today. Now it is much easier to get into and out of the sim. Earlier I had to make my way to the sim through a wire jungle.