Universal 6DoF Recessed Simulator

Been quiet for a while, any update?

Mostly boring stuff really, parts and more parts, but the list of completed parts is now quire a bit bigger than the uncompleted.

I'm currently working on the electrical and electronic stuff. I couldn't really find any decent battery connectors so I made these.



The cabinet came out really nice...

With all that ballast it should be very stable.

It ads about 60KG to the center of the base so it certainly does help, ideally you would bolt it down or perhaps use something like suction cups, alternatively some 8" steel round bar weights as well if needed.

I guess you have had your head down building, any progress or pics you can provide?

Good day sir, on Friday it will be one week since the new website is up and I'll be posting some pics every 2nd day after that until the 25th.

Great looking forward to seeing it

Some more small parts. I've started assembling the pistons, you can see the tracks on the tube, other designs use two belts which is much cheaper to do, but by doing that the profiles don't match well. Which was the main reason I decided to machine the tracks. The flash makes the parts look a little dirtier than they are, but they will get a finishing cycle before we use them.

Anyway for now, more parts, on Wednesday I'll show the mechanical assembly of the actuator.

These are the lower bends on the base. We use 6 sets per Sim.


These are the upper bends on the platform, we use 19 sets per sim.


One of the very few parts that isn't made, it's an automotive universal joint core, the yokes are obviously machined.


The finished piston, the tracks are made in 100mm sections then joined in segments.


Like I've said before, most things are half way done, so the parts are on the final cycles, expect more frequent pics going forward.

And here we go, test fit before finishing:

Looking Good, can't wait to see a video of it in action.

Come back tomorrow night

I had some issues with a dead battery and got it sorted today, so first test. Adding load doesn't change much. These gearboxes are a little noisy, the next ones will have a reduction. There are also a few things we can do to reduce it, it's not particularly loud though, considering the speed. Anyway here is the link:

Looks like you have good speed, be interesting how they work under load. Looks very responsive in direction change too. You are making great progress, can't wait to see more.

I'm not too happy about the response to be honest, okay fine it doesn't change with load but still, I think it could be faster with a better motor driver. So we'll employ something a bit better.
I've also ditched the gearbox and I'll have a dual belt reducer, in future it will come down to a single belt reducer, which will have less noise than the gearbox.

Was just checking out the http://insecta.tech website and it’s very cool with that "interact with the dragonfly" feature. The speaker boxes are an interesting feature. Looks very nice.

Thanks, should get tubes back from coating tomorrow and we'll see what we can do.

This looks awesome. Do you have any timeline and price estimation?

^^ Its on the website linked above by Zed

Hi, impressive work, and nice part, machined part are always a pleasure to look. Good idea to work with battery to have a very low continuous power consuption.

I see that you are already selling it until the first prototype is ended, and the price are very low regarding to the work needed. If I was you, I will wait many month of test to be sure it are reliable. Because if you sell 10 simulator like this and starting to have many reliability problem few month after, it will be very complicated situation for you...

about belt drive, I agree with you, I thinks it's the most efficient and quiet solution, but more complicated than ballscrew. I thinks the teeth rack for the belt are useless.

I see the way you wan't to join all tubes togethers, in my mind, this kind of bended join are not strong enought, glue or tube will break with the time, I'm almost sure...

The technology is quite mature, the epoxy is made for long lasting structural integrity, the joints are coming out nicely.

You are right, the rice is balanced to the product maturity, so it will go up a bit as the product matures more. I might drop the standard platform and only offer the carbon version to compensate since it's a lot of effort to get the tubes finished, then prepped for epoxy. Carbon is quicker. So that would be one option or alternatively the standard price might increase a bit...

the teeth rack makes for a rigid bearing and tube design, it's incredibly stiff, which is a requirement for the long stroke. Making steady progress, unfortunately the seat couldn't be done on my friends router, after two errors on two different sheets I've decided to play it safe and machine it in smaller blocks on the VMC and then Lego it together instead.

So far the finished stuff is looking really good