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Anatomy of a joystick? Looking for exploded-view diagrams/photos and specs.

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WareWolF:

If someone would make replica wico leaf joystick's (both 4 & 8 way) that looked, worked & felt like the real thing I think they could make a killing with the collector croud.


bfauska:


--- Quote from: crashwg on May 01, 2007, 07:42:38 pm ---I must agree with the statement of "why build when you can buy one for like $7?" though, there comes a point when you have to ask yourself how much your time is worth...  By the time you're done constructing a working joystick you will have spent at a minimum maybe 3 hours.  One might look at that as saving $7.  I look at it as getting paid a little over $2/hour.  It's not even a question of practicality at that point, it's simple economics.

--- End quote ---

While I can't speak directly for the OP I bet I am in a similar frame of mind as him.  Many of us are here to BUILD our own arcade controls, playing with them (at least to me) is frequently secondary.  I enjoy building things, much more than using them most of the time.  I work in a field where we build brand new stuff from scratch so that people can look at it on a stage for about 1 month then we tear it all apart and build some new stuff, rinse and repeat.  As a kid when I used to play with G.I. Joe, Matchbox, Hotwheels, Micro Machines, or whatever I always enjoyed setting up places for the play to take place and then barely doing any sort of action.  Huge (well about 1"=1'-0" scale really) military bases and whole cities carved into the dirt in the backyard after hours of work, all so that when I had to go inside for the night and it rained I could do it all again the next day (rinse and repeat a little more literally this time.)  Legos too, build, destroy, build again.  I could never understand the kids who wanted to have battles with their G.I. Joes, or races with their cars.  Even with R/C cars, I built them from the kit, charged the battery for 20 minutes, and then drove for 15 which usually resulted in breaking something which was fine because it meant I could spend the next day fixing it.

Build your joystick, hell, mine the minerals to make the metal to make the machine to turn the shaft if that's what you want to do.  The process is MOST of the fun.  :cheers:

Of course after saying all that it dawns on me that half the time recently I can't convince myself that actually working on my cabinet would be a better use of my time than 20 more games of KLAX, WTF is wrong with me?


destructor:

http://www.kowal.itcom.pl/ArcadeParts_pliki/Joysticki.htm

DarkBubble:


--- Quote from: crashwg on May 01, 2007, 07:42:38 pm ---Galvanization is only a thin coating on the outside of the metal.  Once you cut through that you just have mild steel which is pretty average when it comes to machining...  Of course once you take off the galvanized layer, what you have left will be a rust magnet so keep it oiled until you paint it and make sure you paint it well.
--- End quote ---

If that's the only issue, a quick onceover on the machined areas with cold galv spray would probably be sufficient.


--- Quote from: crashwg on May 01, 2007, 07:42:38 pm ---I must agree with the statement of "why build when you can buy one for like $7?" though, there comes a point when you have to ask yourself how much your time is worth...  By the time you're done constructing a working joystick you will have spent at a minimum maybe 3 hours.  One might look at that as saving $7.  I look at it as getting paid a little over $2/hour.  It's not even a question of practicality at that point, it's simple economics.

--- End quote ---

I look at it as a chance to improve my limited skills with mostly free/scrap material while tuning out the world with some tunes or an audio book.  It's kind of like meditation for me.  If something of mine breaks, I tear it open in and try to fix it when or if I can, even if I can go out and get another of what it is for only a few bucks.  It's not because I'm cheap, but because I enjoy it.


--- Quote from: bfauska on May 02, 2007, 01:46:39 am ---As a kid when I used to play with G.I. Joe, Matchbox, Hotwheels, Micro Machines, or whatever I always enjoyed setting up places for the play to take place and then barely doing any sort of action.  Huge (well about 1"=1'-0" scale really) military bases and whole cities carved into the dirt in the backyard after hours of work, all so that when I had to go inside for the night and it rained I could do it all again the next day (rinse and repeat a little more literally this time.)  Legos too, build, destroy, build again.

--- End quote ---

That was me.  I always wanted to do more as well, and seeing as I still have my old toys and some newer ones, I've often considered building complex scenes for display.  I've never been much of a model builder or anything, but I've always wanted to.  Something about doing some of it from scratch always sounded fun, especially after looking at some of the scenes that they built up for the old action figure commercials.  Of course, I know what the first word out of my wife's mouth would be when she saw me building up displays for Resident Evil figures..."Dork!" :laugh2:

RobotronNut:

well, if you're going to build from scratch, why not try to improve the state of the art, instead of just copying something?

here's an old post of mine that muses about what might be possible:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=56090.msg551189#msg551189

you wouldn't need to build the "ideal" joystick, but perhaps figure out a mechanical way to make one of these parameters more adjustable and see how tweaking it affects your game play.

here's another old post that discusses why this kind of tweaking is helpful:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=60091.msg595625#msg595625



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