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Mini Project: Under-dash Optical wheel.

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Howard_Casto:
My personal life is kind of imploding atm, but this sort of thing is a good distraction and I have a spare hour or two so I thought I would post on one of my rare hardware projects. 

I thought that playing optical wheel games on the upcoming racing cab would be kind of nice and I know that the gear boxes that normally attach to an optical wheel are a bit bulky to squeeze in with an analog wheel setup so I've decided to design something that can be made cheaply and easily and fit under the dash of a standard analog wheel cab without much fuss. 

You guys had mentioned Tractor Supply and one just opened up in the area last fall so I thought I would check it out.  12 bucks later (minus the wheel of course) I had the pic below.  What you are looking at is a foot long 3/4-10 threaded rod, a pounds worth of nuts (yeah they sell em by the pound there) and two 3/4-10 bearings.  So I need to mount the bearings between some 2x4's which is easy enough, decide on an encoder wheel/opto combo and figure out how to make the wheel removable. 

Removing the wheel itself is easy, but you'd have a shaft sticking out, which I figure would shred your hands to bits when using the analog wheel. 

Now they sell a 3/4-10 coupler, so I could cut the part of the shaft that sticks out and do it that way, but you'd have to screw it on, which seems like a pain in the butt.  Maybe I could grind away the threads on part of the shaft, fill them in on one side of the coupler and use a quick release pin or something... I dunno.  Anyway, assuming I ever get the time, it's going along smoothly and I think It'll make a nice template for others in a similar situation.

If you have an suggestions in terms of hardware for that quick release let me know.

(Boy that nasty old orange carpet where I take all my pics is going to be famous by the time I'm done.)

Howard_Casto:
I'm not sure how interested people are in this, it didn't get a response, but I worked on it a little today. 

Besides the obvious, what was holding me up was the fact that I couldn't locate a flange to fit the wheel that I could modify for a quick connect.  I just used my drill press and a combination of a hole saw and spade bit to make one out of wood.  It works pretty well!  I currently have a small set screw in the flange, when I tighten it slightly it goes into the hole I drilled in the shaft and holds the wheel on tight.  I'll eventually replace this with a thumb screw for convenience sake. 

The plan is to make the entire assembly the width of a 2x4 and the height of the wheel hub itself, so when the wheel is off it isn't in the way, it just hangs under your analog wheel.  If I get a chance I'll finish it up tomorrow  and take pics. (except for the encoder wheel... I've still got to find/make that) 

Brian74:
Im interested  :cheers:

Slippyblade:

--- Quote from: Brian74 on June 28, 2014, 08:41:15 pm ---Im interested  :cheers:

--- End quote ---

Me too!

Malenko:
me three

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