And here is a shot with the start of my home-made joysticks clamped in place. It wasn't until I was halfway in that I realized a wrong move would result in a cheap home vasectomy.

If you ever want to publish those as CAD drawings, let me know. I'd be happy to tweak it for cutting on a CNC router. It's such a nice and clean design! Little slots to auto-align the seat and other parts would be easy to do as well.

I wouldn't recommend MDF unless you want to nearly triple the weight of the setup. I'd actually recommend using an 18mm (3/4") Russian Birch instead.

g.

Thats a very good looking sim-pit. I am digging the curved cuts, it looks fairly streamlined!

That is also a very nice looking hardwood floor, are you thinking of placing some rubber edging on the feet portions. If it is very heavy, have you considered mounting some wheels? Find a few old skateboards/roller-blades from the garage or a thrift shop and you could mount those in pairs on each foot section.

Again, great job!
Derek

Gene, if anyone is interested in building something like this I can put up the Google Sketchup document once I've finished adjusting the dimensions. Is sending the thing to get cut at a CNC facility cost 'effective'?

MudPuppy, glad you like it. The floors are actually bamboo! I moved the pit around them some and made sure that it didn't scratch. Once it's settled in place I WILL add something soft in between the pit and the floor. A bit of sand caught under one of the legs+my weight in and out of the thing would really do some damage.

I'd love to give it a go myself, just for giggles. There's a "CNC facility" about 100 feet from my front door, so it's VERY cost effective.

If you could arrange the SketchUp model to have it both assembled and broken out to flat parts, it makes it easier to bring into AutoCAD and Inventor for design tweaks. After I'm done screwing it up, I'll be happy to send the CAD files back to you as well as the VCarve or Aspire data files needed to cut them on just about any cnc router ever made.

g.

Ok Gene, thank you! give me a couple of weeks to finish getting the dimensions right and I'll put the file up somewhere. I just tried to upload it to this post but it doesn't seem like I can.

You're welcome to throw me a PM and I'll give you my email address.

g.

This is looking very nice! I'm excited to see where this goes!

I suspect with a tweak or two, it might make for a nice driving rig too.

g.

Hi all, sorry about the lack of updates recently. I've been working on the controls and so I figure I'd let you know what's been happening on that side too. Not a lot of time right now so just some pictures.

I started by seeing how nicely a pair of ball bearings and plywood/MDF would play.



It worked relatively well but I didn't think it would be stiff and durable enough.

I bought some plastic and designed some gimbals around that.




Unfortunately my machining skills weren't up to the task and the thing turned out to be a bit of a mess.

Hunting around the internet I found some plastic that becomes soft, like putty, when immersed in hot water. It then remains in that state until it cools down a bit so it can be shaped. I liked THAT! so I made a little prototype.




The theory here is that I'd make sure that all the parts that had to be on the right axis would be as a result of using metal rods to locate elements around that axis. All the bits that aren't' dimensionally or axially critical could be held in place with the above mentioned plastic.

It worked out well and I felt that the parts would stand up to some use.

More photos of progress as soon as I take some!