Team SOAR - Undergrad ME Capstone Project

Hello all!

I am a co-leader of Team SOAR, a group of 6 senior engineering students at Oral Roberts University, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are all building a VR 6DOF aircraft motion simulator as our senior capstone project. We've been working together on this project for several months now, and now that we are moderately far in the build phase, it's appropriate to create a new thread in this "DIY Motion Simulator Projects" thread.

This first post displays the very detailed SolidWorks model of our simulator. Using SolidWorks to draft up several versions of our project has been extremely beneficial, both for design and manufacturing purposes. We hope to soon utilize SolidWorks' mechanical simulation properties for stress/loading analysis. The version displayed in this post is almost "complete," as recent changes now include manufacturing details like bolt holes, brackets, and mending plates. The upper platform is made of aluminum, the lower platform is made of steel, and the surrounding black rectangles are made of plexiglass.

Please give us your advice and let us know what you think of our design!

Now for a manufacturing update:

Team SOAR has spent many hours in our university's machine shop over these past few weeks, and we're proud of the progress we've made so far. The aluminum channels, brackets, and mending plates that compose the upper platform have all been machined. The most difficult part to machine was the bottom plate that affixes the chair to the upper platform because of its awkward hole dimensions, but a CNC in our machine shop helped us greatly to cut those. Next, we assembled all cut material into the upper platform, and we were ecstatic to find that our thorough design and manufacturing produced parts that bolted extremely well together.

You can see an almost-complete upper platform in the first of these 4 pictures. Note that we only attached 2 of the 6 upper rods so far because once assembled they really get in the way of everything else. Also in this first photo, see that the cockpit chair is in the back and to the left. The next 2 pictures in this post show mending plates on the triangles of the upper platform, fastened with bolts. Last, the 4th picture shows a more detailed view of a heim joint attached with the misalignment spacers that attach the rods to the upper platform.

What do you all think of our assembly so far?

As for the lower platform, Team SOAR updated our design, then ordered and received our steel material. We cut the channels to the correct dimensions, organized in the attached image below. We next plan to do a lot of mig welding to fasten the steel together, and finally drill holes that will be used to mount the motors. We do have one design concern: we've not yet figured out a good way to make the lower platform somewhat disassemble-able, which we'll need because the lower platform is bigger than the door of the room that will house it.

Any suggestions?