DIY Motion Simulator

 

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Part 1 – Project overview

What’s this about? 😉

As you may have seen from some of my other posts on this blog, motorsports and cars in general are one of my passions. I try to attend at least couple track days in a season, and enjoy circuit racing greatly. However, costs can add up quickly, and living in Seattle leaves us with a lot of rainy days through fall/winter/spring, somewhat limiting the time window for optimal conditions on the track. Although racing in rain as an art in itself… 😉

With the quality of current simulations – mostly on PC, but I’m by no means bashing on console offerings, as I’ve put my share of hours into both Gran Turismo and Forza, and had a great time while at it – building a rig dedicated to sim racing is a very tempting option. If available space, free time, and financial situation permits.

Getting a rig is one thing, adding motion on top of that is generally a really expensive option. Luckily, there have been great developments in open source designs for actuators great for such application. I researched the most popular one (SFX-100), and decided to build it.

Keep on reading below and join me on this journey!

I’m hoping this series of articles could serve as a comprehensive build log, answer many common questions, call out interesting alternatives and decisions to be made in the process, and make it all seem less daunting. It’s a great project to take on, and while at times may seem a bit challenging, there isn’t anything that complicated to hamper the progress for more than few minutes. And the end result is certainly worth it.

 

Showcase of the completed project

Before I ask you to invest some time into reviewing the contents of this article, what better way to convince you than show the final result?

 

Video

Here’s a video of the completed project!

 

For more, visit my YouTube channel – you’ll find various videos I took while working on this project, as well as videos from my other projects.

And here are couple quick captures I took as early tests:

• Test in rally cars – highlights the motion range and rapid response

• Test in a GT car, shows the details that can be felt even if the range of motion is not as large

Both those videos were taken before the build was complete, which is why there’s a single monitor on a desk in the middle of the room. I just couldn’t wait to give it a go! 😉

 

Gallery

Here’s a selection of few photos, showing various milestones from the build, and serving as a sneak peek of what’s to come from the following articles!

 

 

 

The “SFX-100” project

This cool name describes the open source design of the 4 linear actuators. It makes use of 4 strong yet reasonably priced servo motors, various fairly easily available components, some less-commonly produced ones (custom extrusions available from 2 companies worldwide) and custom designed 3D printed parts.

When put together and attached to your rig… it made me fall in love with sim racing even more 🙂 Now I really understand the importance of “laser scanned” tracks. Racing without motion now feels incomplete.

Here’s the official site of the project:
https://opensfx.com/

You’ll find lots of great resources there. Big thank you to Saxxon, RowanHick, HoiHman and many others who contributed to this project. Without their work, motion would still be out of reach for a lot of us sim racers!
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Parts – Bill of Materials & Cost Breakdown

Official parts list for the build of SFX-100 actuators is available here:
https://opensfx.com/shopping-list-and-sourcing-parts/#shopping

A great reference for sourcing parts in the US has been posted on the RaceDepartment forums:
https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/the-simfeedback-ac-diy-motion-simulator-thread.159524/page-98#post-2899157

For all that and everything else I used, please see below – I’m hoping to collect a comprehensive list of everything needed to create same rig from scratch. I’ll be leaving out only things like PC configuration and the sim racing hardware (steering wheel base, wheels, pedals, shifters, handbrakes, button boxes, etc.).

 

All links and prices are up-to-date as of January/February 2020.

If you’d like to double-check your orders for parts required specifically for the actuators, below please find screenshots of the orders I’ve placed.

Kinetik:

Bolt Depot:

AliExpress – please pay attention to the gray text “product options” as it specifies the exact dimensions/specifications for some of the products:

 

Note: you may have noticed that number of things called out in the official SFX-100 resources are not present on my shopping list above (few examples: WAGO connectors, breadboard, breadboard cables, etc.). This is because I’m using the PCB by Pyronious and didn’t need those. I highly recommend choosing this approach – easier, less error-prone, neater and more compact solution.

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Few words on shipping and delivery times

This project requires sourcing parts from many different companies, across few countries. Furthermore, some of those companies are Business-to-Business oriented and handle large volume orders. In those cases (e.g. Kinetic), it can feel like we’re being ignored (blame high standards set by Amazon Prime, but be patient and the package will arrive at your doorstep eventually. If you’re planning to build this project though, I highly recommend ordering all parts as early as possible to avoid further delays.

Product or Company Ordered date Delivered date Comments Kinetic (Germany) 11/19/2019 12/15/2019 No communication throughout, except for e-mail with invoice to which I responded with printout from PayPal as a proof of payment. They’re notoriously unresponsive for any questions regarding orders, but orders do eventually arrive… AliExpress 11/23/2019 12/3/2019, 12/30/2019 Ordered from multiple vendors, thus various delivery dates. Please note that a shipping option of “EMS Package” is by far the slowest. There’s no tracking provided (outside of shipped/delivered dates) and in my case it took 5 weeks to deliver. BoltDepot 11/21/2019 11/27/2019 Reasonable shipping time, shipped the day after I placed order. Monoprice 11/19/2019 11/21/2019 Very fast, I like Monoprice, especially their 3D printers (I’ve been using Monoprice Select Mini for couple of years). OSHPark (PCB fabrication) 11/19/2019 11/27/2019 I placed order on 11/19, it’s been assigned to panel and sent to fabrication 2 days later, then shipped on 11/25 and arrived 2 days after that. I always had good results with this company, which helps with prototyping/iterating on PCBs.

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3D printed parts

In addition to the somewhat lengthy list, there’s also need to print (or purchase, more about that option in a second) custom parts. If you’re printing them by yourself, make sure to:

• follow the recommended print settings, found on the SFX-100 site,
• calibrate your printer to ensure high dimensional accuracy,
• when printing the sliders, make a test print (cancel it after reaching height of maybe an inch) and check the fitting inside of the aluminum profile. They should slide freely, but not have too much “wiggle” – it’s important to get the size of those parts just right.

Just to re-iterate the importance of print settings – those parts are critical for the durability of the build. Make sure to follow the official recommendations, and ensure that if you’r outsourcing the printing – they’re being followed. Check out here how much difference the settings make, and see here for some extra tips to optimize the printing.

Now, considering the total time to print a full set of parts on a single printer (around 220h, depending on the printer and settings), I decided to find someone who has has already went through the process of perfecting the printing for this project 😉 I found a fellow passionate sim racer who offered his help – diablo2112. To keep it fair in spirit of open source project, he was accepting donations to cover the material cost, very respectable approach. And he turned out to be a great person to work with throughout (the UPS truck that was delivering the parts got into an accident, I was informed that all merchandise was destroyed, but that didn’t set us back much – another set was printed and en route in 2 days!).

If you’d like to contact him, you can find his posting offering the 3D printed parts here:
https://www.racedepartment.com/threads/the-simfeedback-ac-diy-motion-simulator-thread.159524/post-3048621
Feel free to mention that Bogdan sent you 😉

 

Here’s few photos of my 3D printed parts:

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And a quick video showing 3D printing in progress:

Having few printers, calibrated and proven in printing the set of parts we need, speeds up the turnaround time tremendously.

 

In addition to the parts critical in building the actuators, we can also 3D print the enclosure for electronics (Arduino Leonardo with the DB25 connectors shield by Pyronious):

Those files are available on Pyronious’ site:
https://github.com/Pyronious/SFX-100-Breakout-Board/tree/master/Group%20Buy%20Edition/Enclosure
Read more about the electronics below to find out why is the board by Pyronious such a great improvement.

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Competitive landscape and pricing

I mentioned that purchasing a commercial offered motion solutions is very expensive. How expensive? Let’s take a look at a quick comparison. This doesn’t represent the market exhaustively, but includes some of the popular options.

Product Price range Description DOFReality From $899 for 2DOF seat mover, to $5,299 for 6DOF. Option comparable to SFX-100 (H3 or P3) retails for $1,949 – $2,699. Most affordable ready-ro-run solution. Reviews indicate somewhat common issues with motors in the consumer line of products (Hx) and flex in the construction. DBox
(example re-seller)  $7,500 for 2 actuator system with 1.5″, $15,000 for 4 actuators with 1.5″. More for systems with 3″ of travel. Most well known offering in the world of motion. Offered by many different companies combined with their rigs (including Sim-Lab). Various options for number of actuators and motion range. Expensive. PT Actuators $5,199 for 4 actuator set Solution similar to SFX-100, but provided as a commercial project. It’s using Thanos’ controller, which can also be used with SFX-100 actuators. Vesaro Starting at around $20,000, up to $60,000+ This is an offering you can often find at various events. Uses DBox actuators. Note that this is a complete system, including PC and Monitors, not just the actuators. CXC Simulations Starting at $57,000, quickly gets into 6 digits Similarly to Vesaro, this is a complete offering (with all the necessary hardware). In my opinion, absolutely overpriced – just browsing the option list (casters for $1,200, VR headset [not called out which one] option for $3,700) gives some ideas. Note that this is still their product range for “home use”. And from the looks of it, only the seat moves (wheel column and pedals do not).

As we can see, building your own motion rig can yield great savings, without sacrificing the performance. It also caries number of other benefits, like: extensibility (you can always add more dimensions later, maybe traction loss, or belt tensioner?), easy servicing (if you build it once, you’re able to diagnose and repair it later on), scalability (you can start smaller, and then expand, e.g. by updating the rig to a sturdier option a bit later to spread the costs over time), and more. Oh and there’s always satisfaction from saying: “I built it” 😉

Now consider that SFX-100 actuators can be built for around $2,500, depending on the equipment you already have (3D printer) and few choices made along the way. And it offers very comparable performance (sometimes even outperforming the above solutions, e.g. considering the travel of 4″ [100mm]).

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Manuals for motors and controllers

If you’re looking for technical specification, in-detail description of available functions, or even technical drawings for the servo controllers as well as motors, manuals are a great source of knowledge. This is where I found information about clearing the alarms and much more.

Here are the manuals I’ve been using:

 

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Let’s build this thing! Next is:

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