Anyone who uses the Ultimarc J-stick 4/8 way switchable sticks might be interested in this.
The site says that friction holds the restrictors in place and they can be rotated by hand. This hasn't worked for me. If I don't tighten them significantly, the restrictors "walk" and end up out of alignment. I have resorted to tightening the screws and just leaving a phillips screwdriving in my control panel.
I went to my local Lowes with one of the restrictor screws. I bought small bolts, luck nuts, and wing nuts. I think the size is metric M7. I assembled them like this:
_ ____ _
\ \ [____] / / <- bolt head
\ \[____]/ / <- lock nut, upside down
\______/ <- wing nut
|///| <- bolt threads
|///|
|///|
I was going to put the lock nut under the wing nut, but it turns out the head of the bolt was too big to tighten down all the way onto the wing nut. So I ended up having to put the lock nut on upside-down in order to tighen the wing nut to the bolt.
Now I essentially have a wing nut with a threaded shaft. I put these in place of the screws on the bottom of the J-sticks. Now I can loosen and tighten without a screwdriver! A cleaner way would be to eliminate the lock nut, cut the head of the bolt off, and put a small tack weld to hold the wing nut on to the threaded shaft.
It doesn't really save any time when switching modes (it only took about 30 seconds even with a screwdriver) but people look at me funny when I have to whip out a screwdriver to play certain games.
I reused the plastic washers.
I took some pics to post here, but brought the wrong card with me to work. If anyone else uses J-sticks and is interested, I'll try to bring the pics tomorrow.
Wade
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Topic: Ultimarc J-stick screwdriverless switch (Read 2005 times)
