Peacemakers 6dof Unicorn Build

This is what I call cramped.

But I kind of like the cacoon feel surround by tech stuff.
I think in future, when there are VR cockpit and flight games where we use hand tracking to interact with the virtual switches, then it would be good to have plenty of room in front of us to reach out.
Something to think about for version 2

I am curious how you find the Kogan monitor
Im not expecting great colour and contrast performance but I am interested if any detectable lag with the image

So far i think it's great! The model down from it got rave reviews (check out hardware unboxed on YT) but couldnt find anything on this as its so new. I have acer predator x34 and that has the edge over this but i also paid 3x the price back in the day haha. The IPS wins but its still great for $600 man. no noticeable lag.

Yeah that cockpit is tight! haha. as long as its not too annoying to get in and out i dont mind

Well @JAD will be happy, i fixed my rotating actuators today haha. I also got a test in with some Dirt and put the rig and monitor through its paces! Holy cow! What a wild ride haha. I'll just need to mix in some more surge but it still feels great. Borerline scary at times lol.

Enjoy

Slowly getting Assetto Corsa dialed in. Here's a hot lap of Bathurst for ya. Yes, yes i know, fixing monitor mount next week . Also gotta get my VR working better. Got motion cancellation setup but just need to improve frame rate some more as my gtx1080 is struggling (ACC is poorly optimised!)

Updated Original post to include 3D files. Inventor, STL and STEP included. Free to use just don't try to profit.

Printed Everything with 3 walls and 100% infill, except motor spacer was 70%. In PLA X3 from hobbyking.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cYwBu5xCy5mEMSg9mgW_1AeAleIZNCaj

@hannibal Sorry mate i totally misread your question few months ago lol. Here are the dimensions. Probably a bit late now but maybe others may benefit from it, regardless.

Upper Platform is 35mm steel tube (2mm wall)
Base is 150 x 50mm Steel tube

this looks like the best setup i've seen so far! thinking about doing it this way however i have couple of questions/ideas:

1. have you though about using aluminum pipe instead of PVC one? also, i believe ends could be machined from aluminum instead of printed (cost of course).
2. assuming you're doing it again from scratch - would you use SFU1610 (10mm pitch) with those servo motors? will they be powerful enough? 650mm length?
3. if done with 650mm actuators - would entire thing be bigger due to longer actuators? like bigger base and wider upper construction?
4. what do you recon as lift capacity for SFU1610 with this servo motor?

Hey mate, yeah it's definitely the easiest setup, that's for sure. Plug and play mostly. Sure, you could do anything out of aluminium. I initially was going to use aluminium extrusion like the sfx actuators use but the only stockist in my country was out of stock and never replied to my emails. getting it from china was really expensive because the shipping was absurd. Basically it was going to cost $100+ per actuator.. this pipe cost me $7. its high strength Storm water pipe, not flimsy thin walled PVC (a common mistake when people make spud guns and the thing blows up in their face haha) You will never break this stuff and i am really happy with it. Plus its round which looks nice and almost 20mm slimmer in diameter.
I had already spent a shitload on the first DC motor design so was looking to create a cheap and durable actuator whilst still using as much of my parts as possible. Sure you could start doing bits and pieces out of aluminium but it would be more for aesthetics at this point and be way more expensive. I've done about 40 hours so far and all is good (fingers crossed). It's very easy to want to over engineer the actuators and there's nothing wrong with that but i also want to be able to service them easily too so a big part of my thinking when designing them was that as well.

As for taller actuators, yeah you would want a bigger base and platform for sure.. and a bigger room lol. In the future i'll upgrade to longer ballscrews but for now it's serving me well and i'm glad all that time and money didn't go to waste. I'm 100kg and after a couples hours of racing the max Watts pulled from all 6 actuators is 570w total! i have no problems thinking these motors could handle a 10mm pitch ballscrew even perhaps a 25mm one.. but definitely a 10mm no worries. When designing your rig have a play around with dimensions in FlyPT Mover and get a feel for its range of movement and limits etc and go from there.

thanks for fast reply! i will go ahead with SFU1610 650mm and i will try to make it all aluminum. i can see in your videos that this whole thing holds surprisingly well! i just want to be on an extra safe side. alloy tube will cost me $10 in Poland... i will also make internal rod aluminum instead of carbon (that will actually be 3x cheaper for me). i will also try to find a shop that can machine alloy end caps for me.

I'd really recommend using Flypt Mover to verify dimensions you want. Dureiken and I are also going 650mm 10mm pitch ballscrews, and after spending a ton of time futzing with Flypt Mover, I finally decided that utilizing all that travel is tricky with this type of build. The rig got to be pretty big and rig geometry was not optimal. 150mm extra extends the maximum length of the actuator by an additional 300mm, and it just wasn't working for me. We ended up going with foldback actuators and different rig geometry so we can get more mileage out of all that travel. I'm currently working on a simpler foldback actuator to use with sfu2010. I'm not saying it's a bad idea or anything, just saying worth it to investigate your rig with Mover because it is really easy to verify.

Hai Chris,

Amazing Rig you have build ( again) ... and I love the design and simplicity of your actuators ! And I am leaning to your design for the rig with servos instead of brushless motors with encoders...
I am an airline pilot and a Flight Sim and Race sim enthousiast..and this rig comes very close to our actual full size Boeing 747 Training Simulators...

I have a few questions for you and all peeps around here. Let's hear some ideas...

1 ) Noise... how do you compare the noise from the motors ( the idea of Silentchill using Turnigy Brushless Motors as well ) compared to the Servos...! ...and I guess the Spindle/ball bearing will make the most noise !? can you confirm this....

2 ) Easy setup of the Drives and Servo with the software ... ?! To get the rig moving ... do you have any info or settings on that part maybe to share ?!

3) The closed design of the actuator looks slick ... how ever do you need to grease the ball bearings and spindle once in a while ?! making a door on the cover would be an option ?! or isnt there any grease... also to reduce noise of the sliding/turning.?!

4) If you would not have wanted to re-use many parts of your old rig ... WHAT or WHICH parts would you definitely replace or design different after playing around with it now for a while... any DESIGN upgrades !?

5 )... What did you use or make ... to fix the Carbon Rod to the ball Bearing ?!....

6 ) Am I correct the spindle just sits in the carbon tube with no extra attachments or guides...?? Does that add extra noise as it is loose in the carbontube and the carbon covers the spindle ?
...What I see a lot is a littlebit different approach where they FIX the top end of the Spindle Rod on top in a device, to make it fixed and straight in the actuator ...(making it slide along 2 rods.)... and they use 2 EXTRA rods on the ball bearing of the Spindle.... (these extra rods are the connection with the sim (where you use a single carbon tube) ... (4 rods in total ) ? like in a square way... Does your design work well or would 4 tubes do a better (more stabile) job...If it aint needed than I love your simplicity...

7) Could you upload some more detailed photos of the Servo mounting ... and so on ...would be helpfull to design the actuator and order parts ...


@thefost... could you share some info and pics on your design as well .. maybe a link ?!

I know I am asking a lot of questions at once.. sorry ...

Best Regards Patrick

Hey mate, no problem at all, i'll try answer some of your questions. I know what its like wanting to order all the right gear from the start.. You can plan all you want but you always forget something and end up waiting 3-4 weeks for a $3 part from china halting all progress, haha.

1. Noise from the motor is silent, it's all ballscrew here. If you want quieter operation you will want to opt for Ground ballscrews not Rolled but these are a lot dearer (like 5x dearer) so this is purely a cost decision. I haven't tested ground ballscrews but i hear they can be pretty good and near on silent but dont take my word for it. Just what i've heard.

2. Setup is easy, mount your drivers somewhere, wire up mains power to each one and motor power cables then plug in motors and thanos controller. As for setup theres some test setups that come with FlyPT mover you can start out by trying or follow one of FlyPT's videos which is recommended so you get an understanding of what you're doing and what the filters are doing but you can always have a play around with the software before connecting your rig up which is the beauty of the software! Then jump on discord if you need and theres plenty of help available in the Thanos and xsimulator discord channels or ask here as well but it can take time getting responses on the forum.

3. servicing.. sure you could easily make a door for greasing but it's quite simple to get access. You remove the 4 bolts holding the linear bearing and then 2 screws at the top and the hole tube slides off giving you access to the ballscrew. A door would be easier i guess as long its in the right place to gain access to the grease nipple.

4. I would probably go a longer ballscrew, say 600mm for bit of extra travel, if you like flight sims you will benefit from the extra roll and pitch angles. yes i can get decent roll and pitch as it is but you have to remember you are also using the same available stroke to mix your DOF's so if you used full pitch available then went into a roll you wouldnt have any travel left from the actuators to give you that roll as well so you end up tuning a profile where you can get full roll and pitch and yaw etc without hitting your actuator limits, this reduces the total amount available so having more stroke means greater movement. I know that sounds obvious but its easy to think "i have 350mm travel thats heaps of pitch or roll" but in reality you don't have that much. But i'm still happy with what im able to achieve with 350mm travel, just would be nice to have a little extra, you know Also maybe incorporating the igus bearing sleeve into the top design would be cool, like silentchill did, but yeah i had the linear bearings already so no biggy.. Maybe i'd consider a 10mm pitch ballscrew for faster movement.. but its plenty fast as it is for me. Nothing else i would change.

5. The carbon rod is Epoxied using 3M Scotch-weld NP 460 NS epoxy (was rated for carbon and strong as hell). I got some steam pipe which was perfect fit over the carbon rod at 26mm ID i then put it on the lathe and took it out to 1mm bigger than the ball screw (29mm i think) then epoxied them together. i used a threaded bush for the other end which was 1mm under the carbon ID and epoxied that as well. not the best route for serviceability but the ballscrews are cheap and rod wasnt too bad so it would just be a throw away item if it needed replacing. Ideally you could print something up to bolt to the ballscrew and bolt to the tube if you wanted. This epoxy was hard to source and you need a special tool to use it which cost $150 lol. im sure normal epoxy would work fine..)

6. At the end of the ballscrew there is a machined end for a bearing to be fixed to with a C-Clip slot. I printed up a round spacer about 2mm less than the rod ID and secured it there with the circlip. This way if you do get flex in your rod it wont chaff along the end ballscrew rod, it will slide against this spacer instead creating a smoother slide and also minimising the amount it can flex. I am yet to see any evidence that adding more support to the rod will do anything but add to the cost and complexity. As for noise i think the only real way to combat this would be ballscrew option. I did think about perhaps using 2 different sized rods with a plastic rod sleeved inbetween them for a future design to try reduce some noise in a future build but thats years away if i ever feel the need to upgrade.

7. I will be pulling an actuator apart in the next week or two to see how everything is travelling inside and while i'm at it i will do a build video and explain the components and methods used etc so if you hang in there i should have something soon which will hopefully explain some things in more detail

Thanks for the shout out mate! Your videos are so cool and cinematic, like a movie trailer!

Haha Cheers @Thanos I was just trying something a little different, little corny but what the hell. I talked for like 25 minutes actually touching on few other areas like Discord and how its making an impact on the scene etc but i had to cut it short, didn't want to bore people too much plus i got sick of hearing/looking at myself lol.
@SeatTime whenever i get questioned at home for spending money I tell the misses to go and talk to Seattime! and Silentchill haha. I think i'll be set on the hexapod for a couple years yet, still plenty to do

Next Video project will be my first Video Tutorial.. kind of looking forward to it. Always wanted to give it a try over the years and now i have a perfect opportunity.
Here's some details on that next project for that:\

Cost Effective Direct Drive FFB Wheel Solution
130ST-M10015 25NM Motor (Medium Mige? haha)
30A AASD Driver
STM32 Discovery - Running MMOS
OMP style flat bottom Rim with 3D printed button box - Mag Paddles + 12 Buttons + 4 rotary encoders
BlueHID Bluetooth Button Transmitter
Quick release etc

All for under $500 USD delivered!

Stay tuned and i'll let you know how the progress is going. I'll start a new thread soon to document the build in the proper category.
Final piece of the puzzle arrived today. Sucks because you kind of need to wait for everything to film otherwise i would have had everything built ready to bolt on by now haha.

£500 usd delievered is a really good price

could you use these motors to provide motion ?

Sure...

Peacemaker, i am interested in your wheel build

I built a dd dc wheel a few years ago and it worked pretty good bit gets hot after a while.

Keen to see what you think of your mige wheel and where you got the parts from.

What made you go 25nm over 20nm is there less fidelity with more torque ?

Hey! So quick answer.. cost. This was $30us cheaper.. for some reason.. but it has the same low inertia as the Small Mige with more RPM and torque.. whats not to like about it? haha. The seller i use had it cheaper than the small and big mige.. every other seller has it sitting in between for price.. as you would expect.. they must have an over supply or something, who knows. I use seller: Two Win on aliexpress. think they're cheap for me because they post from Singapore, they must have a warehouse there.

Just got it up and running! Feels good but needs some dialing more dialing in. It also has a noticeable hum/vibration feel when turning.. hoping i can filter that out somehow.. could be because i'm only using a 2500PPR encoder.. not too sure. But even with the vibes it's feeling good. I'll keep you posted soon enough

Edit: yes sorry, you would want something smaller for motion.. this thing is 4x the size of my motors haha. Unless you're building a simulator for Boeing