Showroom 12v Winch Motor Driving Simpit

You mean between the motor and the potentiometer? No, but that is always a good idea. I designed the mounts for the pots to allow flex just in case things get out of alignment. This design allows the motors to turn continuous 360 degrees if something goes wrong and not hurt the potentiometer. I will get some pictures posted as soon as they are connected to my sim.

Pics are worth a 1000 words.

ooooo......you and Pit will have to wait even longer now, lol. I woke up this morning with an even better idea of how to mount the potentiometers, lol. As soon as I get these pesky solid surface counter-tops out of my shop (darned customers) I can get the motors up and running on the bench.

This winter I can do the work necessary to have my basement configured to do this kind of tinkering but for now all my tooling is out in the cabinet shop

No worries, I look forward to what you come up with.

Ok, here we go; I finished buffing the countertops and have to wait to get someone to help me load them this afternoon so I worked on my connection idea.

Basically the shaft is 5/8" so I made an aluminum adapter for both gears which allows a good solid connection. But, since I did not want much sideforce on the potentiometer shaft from the gears I made a slide system where the tension against the shaft gear is created by a light duty spring. It should still give precision and accuracy and save my expensive pots.

So the spring keeps tension on the gears? Nice design.

Interesting idea, Similar to Noorbeast setup but with a Free join and spring. VERY clever

I like this setup, it will allow me to adjust the position with the pot and then reengage it.

Great idea! you should apply to Pit's challenge for innovative ideas and coins reward
(I don't find the link on my phone)

Thanks folks, I didn't realize that there was a similar setup out there. I should have checked the forums a bit more.

Pit, you are welcome to share this idea in your thread but I have no need for more coins

I am itching to bench test my doubled up Pololu 755 18v15's ala Pit's awesome lead with the MotoMonsters (or as Mat called them "Godzilla MotoMonsters")

So I needed a bench....so I built one. My wife has been anxious to have our home office completed so I got busy with the solid surface (acrylic) countertops and installed them today. After a year it is soooo good to have all three of my monitors back in operation. The entire right side of the room is my test bench! I should be able to tinker with the motor drivers tomorrow afternoon and I have all three winch motors converted and ready to connect to the motion platform

So....I have a favor to ask. I need ideas on a master control panel to build. My driving pit will soon go through a major revision as I want my monitors to do double duty for both the driving pit and the 6 DoF flight pit. This means that they will be removed from the frame and a sliding frame will be rigged to the ceiling allowing me to slide them over to the other pit when I want to fly/drive. What I want help with is this: I need ideas for a control panel/unit that will control both pits rather than creating separate controls for each. I am not talking about the motors/arduinos/motor drivers but the PC, transducer power supply and amp, etc.

I can hack a PC into any type of box and the electronics side is no problem. I just want an idea of what the "Master Control" box/panel should look like If I have an idea, I can create anything.

I was thinking of a mission control style console like this:






My wife and I decided to call the man cave "Mission Control" so the above is probably similar to what I will go with.



What do you all think? Ideas? Suggestions? Remember, I just need ideas about what it should look like, everything else is no problem

Good point Noorbeast, I was going to fill it with various controls such as a USB switch which would turn off the USB hub on one pit and switch it to the other (not just power but the actual USB data and power lines themselves connected to a multi-port switch). Other controls would be lighting, power supplies (for motors), etc. Granted, some of it will be sheer eye candy, lots of blinky lights

I do like your docking system, very cool.

EDIT: Also keyboard/mouse/controllers/ etc. If I make individual switches for each it will fill up button/lights spaces. Not really needed but it would be kind of cool.

So, here are the three little lovelies. All ready to be mounted on the sim. I still need to redo the electronics but I have six Pololu 755s (15amp motor controllers) sitting on the bench ready to be joined in pairs. Just need to think about my cooling options. I thought maybe I would buy CPU coolers and use my CNC to cut the bottoms to fit the mofsets on the motor drivers. This means a larger case so my Mr Fusion will have to go

@Historiker, I can't tell from your pictures but you may want to consider a set screw to act a stop under the arm of the spring loaded Potentiometer. I was experimenting with your idea shown in the image below. A stop screw would allow you to set a minimum backlash so that the spring is not pulling the pot gear tight to the drive gear. A good target is about 0.003" between the gears (A sheet of paper can be fed between the gears to set the gap).

That is a great idea Scott, I had not thought about it. I used a light duty spring which doesn't create a very tight connection but a set screw would also be a good idea. Thanks for the tip.

Had my first evening on the rebuilt rig. The planetary gear winches are louder than I thought they would be, even with extra grease packing but they should be really easy to enclose so that will take care of most of the noise. I like how compact they look compared to the old winches.

Using two Pololu 755s per motor gives me 30A of power for each, they really shake the cheezwiz out of you

Couple of problems that I have run into though;

1. The traction loss motor has too much slop in it (luck of the draw I guess) and so bounces back and forth trying to center itself. I have tried increasing the dead zone in SMC3 to no avail. I will tinker with it some more later. Right now I just unpluged that motor.

2. Motor 1 keeps dropping out after 10 minutes or so of hard use. It takes an Arduino reset to get it back online. I know that this issue has been brought up before but I cannot seem to find it on the forums. If anyone remembers please drop me a link.

I would post pictures but I have not tidied up yet

Nice update Bud, Hope you get the motor issues figured out. Shitty deals on the Traction loss motor, How much backlash is there when turning by hand, Or I'm guessing thats not possible, and only shows its ugly head when powered up and working ?