Perhaps a setup with a cam curve?
A gas spring/spring combo, the gas spring might act as a dampener?
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Interesting idea! Would need a spring damper with a faster return stroke…
The OpenHornet stick design might be of interest to you.
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Ah, yes! I remember one of the OH guys reached out to me about the braiding on my Ejection handle. That looks like a really cool stick! Is it FFB?
It will not be FFB as there is no (significant) feedback on the real thing.
It is supposed to produce realistic forces though, through the use of those rather hefty springs.
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Ok. Quite an advanced construction!
So, it’s been a while…
Rummaging through some stuff while cleaning out our guestroom, I noticed the hardware I got for this project. @SierraAlphaMike turned my attention towards the one man FFB developer, VP Force and their Rhino stick. One can order just the FFB motors and USB controller, to DIY a FFB stick. As I am having the most boring easter ever, I needed something to do and to occupy my mind, so I ordered the largest motors available, from VP Force and started CADding away.
The motors in question are the 86BLF04 with a 4,2Nm peak torque.
Here is some sketches of the design proposal.
The height from the pitch axis to the roll axis is 30cm. The height from the roll axis to the bottom of the Thrustmaster attachment nut is 15cm.
Thoughts? Questions?
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Put on the Viggen grip? 
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looks good. have stick with similar design minus the FFB in early stage of completion somewhere in my garage.
looking forward to some boring holidays 
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How much to the motors weigh? Although they probably act as counterweights and balance the whole assembly, that looks like a fair bit of mass (inertia) to move around the pitch axis… I’m guessing that is why you have used such a large pulley?
And yeah, you have to use the Viggen grip
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2,75Kg. And with the 8040 alu extrusion, yoke assembly and stick grip, there will be some mass that must be rotated, even if it will be balanced.
I’m thinking of elevating the lower frame about 10cm and shorten the alu extrusion. That will give me a shorter moment arm.
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First, Viggen stick. Want.
Now, I’ve been waiting to get some solid experience with it before I wrote any sort of review, but @Troll is forcing my hand. I received my Rhino FFB a few days ago and am still getting the hang of it. BLUF, it’s better than the Brunner CLS-E. Much stronger forces, great software, DirectX FFB capable right out of the box, integrates as a single device with any of the Thrustmaster adapter grips on the market (Virpil, WinWing) and compatible with VKB with an adapter (grip buttons as a second device).
But, seriously, Viggen stick.
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Nice! Looking forward to the review!
Review!
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Ha! As the French say, “Toosh.”
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Got some cool toys today…
Two stepper motors, a VP Force controlboard and some cables.
The motors are pretty beefy…!
Here’s where the magic happens.
Must wait for timing belts and pulleys to arrive, but I can start on the construction of the framework and other mechanical parts.
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Started tinkering in my metal shop (garage).
Cut a notch in a thick walled alu pipe.
Rigging up for some alu brazing.
Ran out of MAP gas and had to run to the HW store…
Not too shabby, if I may say so myself.
Will tidy up the seams a bit, but that’s for tomorrow.
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Great work! I’m trying to get HAV/knife telemetry out of DCS for the Viggen. If you have this figured out I would like to know.
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I may have an idea…
@Kite_Rider; I was thinking about having Walmis, the guy behind the VP FFB project, to look at an option with a smaller stepper motor.
VP Force uses a proprietary software called TelemFFB and he recently posted about a solution he found, where the DirectX FFB instructions are no longer needed. In other words he’s working on a solution where TelemFFB collects data from lua exports and produces FFB instructions for the stick and also transmits stick position back to DCS, without involving DirectX. Evidently this will expand the posibilities for FFB in DCS. Will be incredibly interesting to see where he goes with this…
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