I saw one of those units Brandano a few years before I started this, pretty nice. I think you can buy them second hand but they run on a Mac platform I think.


You read my mind Icepick, I bought a couple of LED headlamps that I will fit inside to illuminate the panel area as its pretty hard to see the switches at the moment. I also have a couple of red filters from a military torch which give an even red light. Might also try a blue one.

As Gene posted above, unless you have access to a CNC machine it would be very difficult to machine the wire routes and bore the lamp cavities. Also, you really need to develop technique to deal with internal stress in the plexiglass sheet. For a 1/4" panel we'd start at 3/8" and using "good" quality double sided tape keep machining small cuts and flip the panels alot (important to release internal stress and give you a flat panel before you router out the wire paths). Water based coolant flow will keep the heat down.

Light silica blasting can prepare for painting, but you need to mask the wire routes and protect the lamp cavities.

Hey Choowy,

I've been drooling over your threat for some time now (sorry, i'll clean it up), that's some amazing and very creative craftmanship you display. If anything, your build got me curious about the whole battletech thing and I have been digging through the wiki for days now, wich is equally impressive. Keep up the good work!

P.S. when will the torso be added?

If you use cast acrylic instead of plexi, there's less need to worry about stress buildup, it machines really nicely. No need for flood cooling either if you keep the cuts nice and light.

Choowy, if you ever decide to go down the backlit/edgelit route - it'd be worth getting a quote from one of the many CNC shops offering their services online. I've found the prices to be far more accessible than I thought they would be.

Hey Wasp! That thing looks awesome - I bet there's a real sense of occasion when you climb into the pilots seat!




EDIT: Formatting

@Lipfert: I don't create individual lamp cavities or wire channels. I machine the whole interior out down to a depth of .2" (given a .25" thick panel). A typical Type 5 panel consists of a fully machined panel with a very thin PCB lamp board that screws to it. The first panel I built along the Type 5 lines did use lamp pockets - you can see what I did here:
http://www.f15sim.com/pre_blog_news-1.html

@Choowy: Is there a way you could post a pic of the Mech cockpit with you or someone else standing next to it? It would help in getting idea of how large it is beyond a simple measurement.

g.

Simply TOO COOL!

Stunning work.

Thanks Cold Gambler!!



Sorry for the delay Gene, been away.

The below pic gives an idea of the size, I'm a little over 6 feet tall, so its not a huge sim but big enough.

LOL @ choowy !!!!!

Heheh. Thanks. I think.

g.

To say I was now racked with pit envy with this thing would be a bit of an understatment. Very nice job.

I do have a question tho if you don't mind. I have been thinking/planning on my own mechpit, but am stumped by the controls a bit. I want to go the simple route and hack a keyboard, which is what I think you did. But you show your radar range selecter as a multi-position switch. The ingame option is a keypress, if I remember correctly, a momentary contact on the keyboard. But the multi-position switch would be a maintained contact. Wouldn't that just send an "r" repeatedly to the computer?

I want to do the same thing, use a selector switch for range select, but haven't been able to get my mind around making the maintained contact type switch work for a keyboard input. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, and again very impressive work. My hat's off to you.
George.

*edit* My mistake, I went back through the pictures and you use a selector switch for terrain or vector and active/passive. Still the question about maintained contact vs momentary contact remains.