3D Printed Flight Simulator Controls

thingiverse

Here are my 3D printed flight simulator controls including a yoke, pedals, engine controls, and a second control panel. I started out with Michael Rechtin's controls and made some changes. The yoke & rudder pedals are similar to his versions while the control panels are new. All parts aren't 3D printed, as I used wood where I thought it fitting. I included links to three YouTube videos. The longer one explains a lot about the details while the Blender animation is more of a quick tour. I also included a quick video of the controls being used with the flight simulator FlightGear. The longer video includes some information about the circuits I wired up with an Arduino Micro, as well as a list of parts that were purchased or scrounged. The 3D models were developed, sliced, and printed using Blender, KISSlicer, & a PolyPrinter 229 at the Fort Worth Library. There are a lot of STL files, partially because I included every component that isn't hardware or electronics, even repeated components and wood parts. If you're interested, this should allow you to see the whole thing by downloading everything and importing it all into Blender. One important thing to keep in mind: I learned as I went along and as such it won't be a simple print-and-build job for someone else. I tried to fix my 3D models as I gained experience with the parts as I printed them, but I haven't checked to see how well the updates work. Fingers crossed that everything's good, but I doubt it. I'm hoping the models can be more of an inspiration for others than simply being something to print, just like I used Mr. Rechtin's models as my starting point. But please let me know if you find something I might want to consider fixing. Hope you like it, and good luck! <B>I'll add some lessons-learned type info here as I think of it:</B> If you don't know about them, totally check out Blender, DaVinci Resolve, and FlightGear ... all are awesome open-source free software. I bought 25mm long pots because I didn't know what I was doing. Shorter would have been better, but that's what fit these models.