Summary

Beechcraft Bonanza -inspired throttle console for flight simulation. Work in progress. I enjoyed the result a lot, and I'm sharing the design in hopes of improving the flight simulation experience for others too.

See below for tinkercad project link.

Print Settings

Printer Brand:

Creality

                                            <p class="detail-setting printer"><strong>Printer: </strong>                     <div><p>Ender 3 Pro</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting rafts"><strong>Rafts: </strong>                     <div><p>No</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting supports"><strong>Supports: </strong>                     <div><p>Yes</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting resolution"><strong>Resolution: </strong>                     <div><p>0.24</p></div></p>                                                                                <p class="detail-setting infill"><strong>Infill: </strong>                     <div><p>10</p></div></p>                                                    <strong>Filament:</strong> 3dJake EcoPLA (the matt finish gray works for the casing!) PLA                black and gray                    <br>                        <p class="detail-setting notes"><strong>Notes: </strong>                    </p><div><p>Many parts print without supports, some need support for print plate. The nasty one is the main table clamp / back plate that I would likely re-think if I was to make a new one right now, the threads were nasty to clean up. I'd probably split it into two parts that are screwed together, so I can print the threaded hole vertically without supports.</p></div>

Post-Printing

Assembly / extra hardware needed

            <div><p>The design is sandwiched together as you can see in the "explosion" picture.</p><h2>Parts needed</h2><ul><li>3 6mm shaft potentiometers for the axis</li><li>1 encoder for the trim wheel, this needs to be a low profile part, as the throttle axis potentiometer is right against it.</li><li>a pile of approximately 6mm M3 machine screws, I had some leftover from my<br>drone projects.</li><li>One M8 80mm "lock bolt" (one with smooth flat head and a square part below it)</li><li>Thin felt or other friction material, cut int discs, and sandwiched between the big gears and the "sandwich" plates, to give a smoother feel for the handle movement, so you don't feel the plastic rattling.</li><li>One Arduino Pro Micro with the Atmega32u4 chip, which lets us create a USB HID joystick</li><li>Wires, soldering iron.</li></ul><p>The arduino sketch can be found here: <a rel="nofollow" href="https://gist.github.com/tigert/8c5f74a0ed6e03eb1f3311ccfb9f9b77">https://gist.github.com/tigert/8c5f74a0ed6e03eb1f3311ccfb9f9b77</a></p><p>It was derived from a similar project by Mark Bennett on the Arduino hub, that also contains more information about how to assemble the electronics: <a rel="nofollow" href="https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/markbennettuk/throttle-quadrant-and-trim-wheel-d746e8">https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/markbennettuk/throttle-quadrant-and-trim-wheel-d746e8</a></p><p>TODO: The USB cable routing and the table clamp is a bit of a hack, I'd rather redesign this a bit smarter, but this first proto works for now.</p><p><strong>This is probably the strangest remix ever</strong> but I used the bolt and threads from <a rel="nofollow" href="/thing:2076034">this excellent headphone holder</a> by @mistertech - I tried to mark this as a remix, but thingiverse was not able to find that project in the upload tool, so I am just linking it here instead.</p><p>Original design, created with Tinkercad: <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.tinkercad.com/things/1jQvkpbmrnv-flight-simulator-bonanza-throttle-console/">https://www.tinkercad.com/things/1jQvkpbmrnv-flight-simulator-bonanza-throttle-console/</a></p></div>

Flight Simulator throttle console