Starting build soon

[SC-Maik]

Looks so good!!! Great job.

[saxon]

That looks amazing.

[oijando]

Beautiful! I'm a sucker for metal and wood designs. Only thing that would look better is if that was done in brass

I look forward to seeing how it flies for you once you get the range of motion tweaked and the electronics installed.

[jeruw]

Thanks everyone! I like how it turned out. I'll probably tweak a few pieces later on. I'll post updates as I do. I'm attaching a zip archive with my SVG drawings in case anyone else has access to some sort of CNC and wants to try making one in that way. You might even be able to get away with laser cutting out of plywood or acrylic. You'd probably want to remove the pockets on the pivot arms though.

Some of the SVG files might already have toolpaths saved from MakerCam.

[jeruw]

Beautiful! I'm a sucker for metal and wood designs. Only thing that would look better is if that was done in brass

I look forward to seeing how it flies for you once you get the range of motion tweaked and the electronics installed.

Thanks! Brass is an interesting idea. I'll have to check for some next time I'm at the metal place. That could look pretty classy! I still have a lot of cleanup I could do, but I was impatient and wanted to get this thing flying. I might take it apart again and clean the parts up, or maybe just cut another one. We'll see. Cutting the parts on the Shapeoko was a fun learning experience. About the only thing I wouldn't look forward to with building another is tapping those damn holes. I snapped 3 4-40 taps off in various parts. You can see in one of the shots a spring retainer held down by only one bolt. *sigh*. I think I'll go check out McMaster Carr and see if there are some threaded inserts for metal before I build another.

Even without trying to tweak the range of motion it flies awesome. Spent some time with it last night. What a difference! If you've flown in Elite: Dangerous, it made my ASP feel a lot more like my old viper for maneuverability. I had no idea how much using a keyboard for throttle and thrusters was holding me back.

[jeruw]

Went into the shop yesterday and cut out a wood base for the throttle from some walnut to match the handle. This will give me some space under the aluminum plate to mount the controller and run wiring to each pot. I haven't re-wired it yet, I'll probably try to do that this week.

The Shapeoko doing it's thing.

[jeruw]

After having completed this base, I think I may try to redesign one that's more triangular and tapered like the current handle design. I think that would provide more stability particularly with forward and lateral thrust applied, and might look more interesting too.

[SC-Maik]

This is a piece of modern art!

Thumbs up

[jeruw]

Took everything apart last night to re-route the wiring and clean things up. I drilled holes at each potentiometer to route wiring and drilled a central hole for button wires. While I was at it I spent some time with the various sanding tools and tried to remove some of the tool marks from the aluminum parts and just generally clean things up a bit more. I also added some bronze sleeve bearings to my 3/8" pivot shafts to shore up the springs a bit and try to eliminate a squeak I was getting during movement.

Here she is back together:



Close up on wiring, in lower light the red LED from the Arduino sends a glow out of the center hole



Another shot



The bearings are working great. Movement feels smoother and no more squeaking. It should be better on the parts too, the steel spring rubbing against the aluminum shaft was probably not the best idea. I also installed some proper set screws on the shafts as well, at least for the potentiometer. You can see I'm still just using the 4-40 screws as set screws to hold the pivot arms in place.

I was going to pick up some right angle headers to do the wiring hook ups, but I was impatient. I soldered leads directly to the board instead. For ground and vcc I soldered a short jumper and then soldered several runs to that.

[zdayton]

That looks so good, I might have to make my own