DIY FFB Steering wheel (MMosFFB ) (In Progress)

OK. After a long wait.



Just remember the motor controller side of things will be different if you have a different controller but still pretty much the same.
To choose the mode as pictured you must start the MMos utility and in the setup section you must use "PWM & DIR" mode.
I suggest to download the picture to be able to zoom into the detail.

In other news my encoders arrived. I 3D printed some gears and will test them out soon.

@Alexey thank you very much for the diagram. At least using this few components we can pimp or even build from scratch any wheel...

The diagram if you are using a motor driver like the VNH5019 from Pololu:

@Alexey @Pit : thanks for sharing!

@ quick readers, the INA, INB and PWM require separate wires.

Thank you @RacingMat but imo this should be clear on the diagram if you read the text, probably some dudes could trouble with it.

@Pit : to read the what?
and why not reading the manual?!!

mate you are a professional, why you're asking, you are not the dude here lol

just joking with you @Pit and seasoned members

BTW can you recommend a cheap but well working DC motor (12 or 24V) for a cheap DD super fast build wheel for testing purposes? BTW (2) if we will go to the south of France this year I will take along the T500RS+, we could compare it to your DD wheel if you wish to do so

You could look for a Happ motor on eBay
http://www.racingfr.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=44751&view=findpost&p=1338574

Yes, the invitation I made last year to you is still pending!

Hey @Alexey,
I see on the latest pic of your dgft you have changed the configuration a bit.
You now have a heater/honking big resistor in series with the motor and only run 1 MM unbridged.
Is that an attempt to reduce motor heating?
I would have thought the resistor would add to armature resistance and just waste power by sharing between the two, resistor will heat up and the motor will produce mech power and heat.
Cheers Andy.

Good spotting there. I was able to get a hold of a 200w 1.5 ohm resistor so I put it in series with the motor to act as a crude current limiter (with a voltage drop across the resistor also). Measured current looked to be around 9 amps which unfortunately is not enough for a strong feedback. Something around 0.5 ohms would have been better (less voltage drop, more current). I'm not going to go any further with the new motor on the DFGT as it would be more cost and time effective to get a motor similar to what Pit used in his T500RS.

I am however working on something else in the mean time. I'd love to show some progress but at the moment I am being held up by a naughty 3D printer with its nozzle getting blocked constantly. I set up a 12 hour print and came back in the morning to find the print nozzle in the air pretending to to still be printing and a thin slice of plastic on the print bed .

@Alexey
Maybe I could help you a bit by offering you a motor that is a lot more suitable for a steering wheel.
DC servo motor Tamagawa TS3081N74E18 if you want to look up specs but it is a custom run which is approx 1/3 longer in size.
It has a holding brake on the rear which is removable.
Motor is the front ones and I have included the 100w scooter motor and a couple of old large printer motors for size comparison. Biggest difference between scooter motor and servo motor is there is no digging while spinning motor.
I can also resize either end of the shaft on my lathe if desired, currently 12mm.
One end a plain shaft with 29mm diameter PJ 3 groove pulley. The brake end has a keyway aswell.



I can spare one as I have about 50 of them.
You pay post, motor weighs around 3.5kg.

PS. I would offer you as well Pit, but post to Switzerland would get expensive.
Cheers Andy

@OZHEAT very friendly action, but as you assumed rightly the cost of the delivery is more than twice of a "secondhand" motor...in turn we should offer you a new camera

I'm guessing your line of work is something to do with machining/automation?

I would love to have access to that king of gear, last time I touched a lathe was 5 years ago.

Thank you very much for your kind offer but at this moment I'll sadly have to decline. It seems that the motor is 24v and I have no power supply to power it. I do however have a 180V DC supply wink wink nudge nudge .

It's not that I couldn't just buy a 24v supply but I've promised the wife I'd stop buying stuff for at least a month.

Cheers

Ugh... I've had a setback recently and destroyed two controller boards. One was my own stupid fault as an exposed positive lead touched a part of the controller on my test bench and blew the main chip. The other one I have no idea how it has fried. I know what happened but I am perplexed as to how... I built a simple N channel h-bridge with a charge pump capacitor control system. I tested the bridge, mosfet driver and FFB controller with a H-bridge o/p of 36V and it worked flawlessly.
I then tried plugging in the 180V power supply. This power supply has a rotary switch which first activates the DC output and then varies the voltage output from 0 -180V through its rotation. This switch was in the "OFF" position therefore no DC output confirmed with a multi meter. I plugged the output of the PS to the H bridge, turned on the AC then BAM!!! Huge spark on the H-bridge and then the circuit breaker tripped in the fuse panel. The DC output was still set to off at this stage. The FFB controller also fried but I don't know how any power what so ever got back into it.

By itself the supply runs the motor just fine, no issues. Plug it into the H-Bridge and then it's a different story.

From the nature of the blowout it would seem that there is some AC element on the DC side of the supply. or at least some path to conduct it. Where that would be I have no idea because there is no logical path for it to conduct (at least to me anyway).

So its going to be a while till the new boards come in and I figure out how not to blow up the controller.

Sorry to hear that but exploring new ways can result in exploding new toys BTW if you are looking by accident for a new member slogan I can lend you my old one Hope you can clear it out!

Hello everyone.
Although long since I registered, I think it's the first time I write on here. My name is Vincent and I have known this project thanks to my Merchane friend, who is also a member of this community and I can only say that I find wonderful.
I have a 2Dof simulator and suffered a lot with the damned Monster Moto Shield (MM), burning several and found the solution when I decided to change it for two h-bridges IBT-2.
These support 43A and bring a large sink and built.


You can find it in Aliexpress looking "BTS7960 43A" is of much higher quality than the MM I assure you, you notice anything but take it out of the package and at first sight, since the mountain on my simulator will not have returned to have problems and it's been almost two years.
Alexey, I hope soon your problem solutions with h-bridge and thank you very much for sharing your project.
A greeting.

Was it the original motomonsters that you were having reliability problems with? or just the known Chinese copies?

Hello pipis 2015.
The truth is that all were brought from China, I remember that there were four, but the IBT-2 also were brought from China and the difference is brutal.
The MM were cooled with a heatsink with thermal paste and a fan at all times and always ended up burning which has not happened again since install the IBT-2.