DYI G-Seat

[Michal Burisin]

So I finally got to the point, where I can start working on the G-Seat.

Here is my latest progress with the rig in general.

What's important for G-Seat part of the project is tactile installation on the seat, which consists of 3 BK Concert + 1 TST 239, so it's pretty powerful tactile, so I must make sure nothing rattles, this will be challenge as there will be many moving parts.

I'm using Kirkey Aluminium Seat, link is here.

I have 17'' version and it fits me like a glove I'm 168 cm, around 66 kg, quite thin with broader shoulders and it's so so, especially with the G-Seat paddles. I'm striving to take around 2,5 cm of space from the internal volume with paddles.

Here is the parts overview:

A) Bottom paddles - with big space between them - I don't want to simulate heave, maybe just a little, but it's intended mainly as pressure from the sides.

B) Main back paddles - narrower gap between to allow for some pressure during acceleration.

C) Additional back paddles for sides - just for thin guys, I made them removable to allow someone with bigger butt to fit in there

I spent day and half measuring etc., here are some images of progress:

Now when I printed it on A3:

And with additional paddle from the side:

I'm really happy it worked so well! I just have to correct 2 lines where the plate would be bent and that's it! I don't need to tweak the shape any more, it fits perfectly!

I will be probably using 4x ASME-04A servos for 4 paddles and 2 for seat belt tensioner.

The servos for bottom paddles will be located on red profiles like pictured below, on these profiles will be also servos for seatbelt fastener.

Servos for back paddles will be mounted to the seat.

The servos axles are goint to be extended by this connection - 8 mm to 12 mm, for 12 mm shafts I use aluminium hollow shaft with 2 mm thick wall.

The shaft will be like 0,5 m long, so at the end, it will be fixed in ball bearing with housing connected to the seat to prevent shaft bending.

Along the way there are going to be 2 points on each shaft with fixed clamp.

 

[Michal Burisin]

The paddles arrived and I'm relieved, I measured everything correctly and they made it perfectly.

Now I need to finish 3D printer and learn with it to attach the paddles.

 

[HoiHman]

Wow this looks so awesome to do, but.... i already have the GS-4.

Still great project and i'm very much looking forward to your progress

 

[Michal Burisin]

Wow this looks so awesome to do, but.... i already have the GS-4.

Still great project and i'm very much looking forward to your progress

Maybe at least seat belt fasteners might be of some interest to you

 

[Michal Burisin]

Not much progress on my side, too busy before Christmas .

However GS-5 review can be found here if anyone hasn't noticed yet .

 

[Rodney Pierce]

Nice man!!

 

[BenKay]

Not much progress on my side, too busy before Christmas .

However GS-5 review can be found here if anyone hasn't noticed yet .

Thanks for the review link. Sounds great.

 

[HoiHman]

Michal,

How does the strength of the servos you are using compare to the 4xHS805BB+ of the GS-4.

If they are a lot stronger, i might consider modding my GS-4 with 4 of them.

Second question: Wil you be using simtools to power them ?

 

[Michal Burisin]

Michal,

How does the strength of the servos you are using compare to the 4xHS805BB+ of the GS-4.

If they are a lot stronger, i might consider modding my GS-4 with 4 of them.

Second question: Wil you be using simtools to power them ?

Hey, it's this one, so officially 260 kg . cm.

GS-4 has HS-805 MG if I'm not mistaken and that is 24.7 kg . cm so it's around 100 kg . cm for all 4 servos per paddle. This one should be officially stronger by large margin, but someone wrote they feel like half of rated torque (130 kg . cm), but no specific information was given (if he used 12 / 24 V power supply etc.).

You will have to bear with me little bit longer, hopefully I will be able to work on it through holidays, right now I don't have any free time I just tested the servo once, but it wasn't bolted down so I didn't tried it's strength.

I will probably look also into those NEMA stepper motors with gearbox, but I'm not sure yet how hard would it be to control it with Arduino.

These ASME servos work easily, you just connect it to Arduino, send signal with value of 0 - 255 and it moves accordingly. I was using some general code for controlling servos from SimTools.

Yeah, I will use SimTools, I don't know any alternatives and I already bought it.

 

[HoiHman]

Thanks Michal

I will wait patiently, the GS-4 is still working great and i love it. Eventhough it's not really needed i'm considering upgrading to stronger servos, since i already have the seat, the panels ect ect.

The GS-5 is too expensive for me personally.

It will be 3000 dollar + 365 shipping to europe, with VAT added it will be somewhere around 3500-3750 euro.

Since i already have done the DIY motion with the SFX100, i thinking about maybe copying your project by modding my GS-4.

Keep up the good work, can't wait to see the final result

 

[HoiHman]

Micha, would this project also be possible with the stronger 380kg/cm version

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASME-04B-H...0-5s-60-Degree-/302968273864?oid=302890145836

Are they just as easy to connect to the arduino

 

[Michal Burisin]

Watch out for speed, these are 0.5s/60 Degree, the 260 kg version is 0.12s/60 Degree. This one would be too slow.

I'm also thinking about using something like this I mean bigger motors with more power.

I was looking little bit into using stepper motor like Nema, which is really cheap, but didn't find much info yet how to do position control with Arduino (not much about stepper motors on xsimulator forums). Mostly people use DC motors.

If I would go DC motor route I would use another motors with planetary gearbox instead of worm gearbox as in link above. However firstly I will test the ASME servos and how strong they are on seatbelt tensioner and start from there.

I would really like to have strong G-Seat so if I find ASME servos lacking, I'll try to find another way.

 

[HoiHman]

You really seem to know your stuff mate

I to would prefer a really strong G-seat.

The mods i made on my GS-4 already give lots more feedback than the standard one, but i prefer my hardware at a level that i need to turn it down to fully enjoy it

In my personal opnion SimXperience failed with GS-5 design because they kept the panels flat again and not made them angled like you did. This adds load to the servos but also inceases immers.

I'm looking forward to your findings and will keep a close eye to this topic.

 

[Michal Burisin]

You really seem to know your stuff mate

I to would prefer a really strong G-seat.

The mods i made on my GS-4 already give lots more feedback than the standard one, but i prefer my hardware at a level that i need to turn it down to fully enjoy it

In my personal opnion SimXperience failed with GS-5 design because they kept the panels flat again and not made them angled like you did. This adds load to the servos but also inceases immers.

I'm looking forward to your findings and will keep a close eye to this topic.

Well not really I just read little bit on x-simulator forums before SFX100 and was wondering how to do motion. So I have just pretty basic knowledge of different motors and their general differences and what X-Simulator users use most. I'm lacking in department how to do position control etc. It might not be that hard, steppers might probably take 2 motomonsters and 2 arduino, but I need to read more on topic. You are probably familiar with the topic as you have wind with MM.

With ASME and other servos it's almost plug & play

I understand they need to make it as simle as possible to be mass produced, even like this the price is high and they are using lower end Kirkey seat which must fit all sizes. If they had to do design like I did, it would be probably necessary for them to make 2 or more sizes to fit different driver bodies closely.

 

[Michal Burisin]

Well not really I just read little bit on x-simulator forums before SFX100 and was wondering how to do motion. So I have just pretty basic knowledge of different motors and their general differences and what X-Simulator users use most. I'm lacking in department how to do position control etc. It might not be that hard, steppers might probably take 2 motomonsters and 2 arduino, but I need to read more on topic. You are probably familiar with the topic as you have wind with MM.

With ASME and other servos it's almost plug & play

Regarding SimXperience I understand they need to make it as simple as possible to be mass produced, even like this the price is high and they are using lower end Kirkey seat which must fit all sizes. If they had to do design like I did, it would be probably necessary for them to make 2 or more sizes to fit different driver bodies closely.

 

[Michal Burisin]

So finally little bit of progress Mostly measuring and drilling today.

Support profiles for linear railing.

Now I need to print design and print "bumpers" to attach as caps for linear railing.

Lot of drilling on G-Seat plates, all bolts will be flush mounted so it doesn't irritate back. I felt some small bolts through the padding I used to attach Buttkickers before, so now I took extra effort to have the plates absolutely smooth

Most tricky part will be cutting holes into G-Seat, then it will be mostly about designing and printing attachment pieces to attach the plates to the seat.

 

[HoiHman]

Slowly but steady is the best

Patiently watching your progress, untill then the GS-4 is still working great. Sometime i even wonder if i really do need a servo upgrade

This could potentially have the same growth as the SFX100 project, since a lot of SFX100 users will start to look at a DIY G-seat.

So you are a pioneer mate, take your time but..... keep posting.

 

[Michal Burisin]

Slowly but steady is the best

Patiently watching your progress, untill then the GS-4 is still working great. Sometime i even wonder if i really do need a servo upgrade

This could potentially have the same growth as the SFX100 project, since a lot of SFX100 users will start to look at a DIY G-seat.

So you are a pioneer mate, take your time but..... keep posting.

I bet you don't feel like you need something more with SFX + G-Seat combo

I was looking into these motors, cheap and should be pretty strong, much stronger than these servos, but it's brushless motor, so hard to control (probably some dedicated control circuit for each motor like SFX100 will be required...), I will try to look into it some more, it's pretty compact and I would say ideal for G-Seat use, if anyone could share some insight on position control of these motors, it would be great. I will also try to ask on xsimulator forums, lot of hardcore DYI guys over there

I will have now like almost 2 full days of time and next weekend too, so hopefully I will do some test of strength of the servos.

I got stuck on printing and I'm learning with Fusion 360, goes little bit slower than expected. Now I still need to calibrate printer properly for new PETG filament.

 

[HoiHman]

Hang on in there mate, Fusion 360 is awesome and once you get the hang of it you will be amazed by all the possibilities it has. The learningcurve is steep, but worth it. I remember once i figuered it all out, i could not believe i stuck so long with sketchup.

If you're stuck somewhere, let me know. I'm happy to help you out.

About the servos, i will wait for your decision, since i can build , 3d print anything but when it comes to programming a servo to work with simtools, that's a whole different story.

Right now for me priority nr1 is a good strong seatbelt tensioner, than step 2 is upgrading the G-seat. I would like do something simular like your G-seat, with the force comming more from the side than from the back.

But.... like you already mentioned, there's no real need to upgrade, but my simrig is always a WIP

 

[Michal Burisin]

Thanks @HoiHman For now I got around it by using Illustrator which I'm familiar with to do all the measuring / aligning and then Fusion for putting it together by extruding and combining .

Just started printing my first model

Pretty complex one, I hope everything fits, print time is 10 hours 50 minutes I wasn't sure if overhangs would print ok, so I rather used supports.

@HugoB Thanks for recommending Extrudr and sharing settings! Much more predicatble than stock Prusa filament delivered with printer. Hopefully it will finish allright

I messed up measuring and drilling the other day

I'm off by one centimeter, I remembered wrongly to offset it by 2 cm instead of 3 cm

I should have printed paper template with all bolt positions, I'm smarter now

But it's not possible to fix it, as the new holes would be too close together. I will have to account for it in 3D print, it shouldn't matter in the end, but it will be more work and I will always know that it's not precise that drives my perfectionist mind crazy .

Also the holes for arms attachment are offset so I will have to account for this as well. I measured the holes by ruler, but I should have printed perfect template with holes organized into to cross pattern with holes 3 cm apart. I think I won't have it as precise. I will have to make bigger holes on those arms attachments and fine tune it by moving it around as necessary.

 

[Mr Latte]

Keen to just follow this in the background to see how it goes.
The Alu plates look great indeed but I see a possible problem with the angled shoulder sections and them extending forward.

I get that you are seeking more body contact for the sides/shoulders and this is why these are shaped the way they are. As the plates are extended to their max. Does this then not reduce the width of the gap between the shoulder sections. Meaning that it not only will push the body forward but squeeze & compress the shoulders inwards.

When fully extended with this shape of plate will it also force the arms more in towards the wheel, my query is trying to understand how this impresses on the body and determine what is ideal to achieve the result desired but still maintaining comfort.

The average man varies from a typical 40-44 inch chest. Of course some people are below and well above this. Its hard to tell from the images posted so far but the breadth of your shoulders still need to fit within the gap between the far left-far right shoulder plates. If this reduces the gap by 3-4" when fully extended, will that work?

If also using more powerful motors, I'm wondering if It might be better to build the plate sections on a flatbed surface for testing their operation and then to discover what the measurements are when the plates are static to being fully extended.