Vectrex Joystick Housing Corner Braces

thingiverse

These are corner braces for the sheet metal joystick housing in a Vectrex controller. You may not need them if your joystick housing is a perfect square shape. If it has morphed into a more "parallellogramish" shape, then these braces are exactly what you need. The short story behind these parts is a long and complicated one: These corner braces came to be out of necessity. I had made joystick arcs in aluminum in a CNC mill, but that project came to an unexpected halt when I discovered that I couldn't mount them. Joystick arcs made from aluminum can't flex or bend like the originals, so there was no way to insert them into the joystick housing the normal way. So I resorted to drastic measures and bent the walls of the joystick housing with two pairs of flat-nosed pliers. That way I could slide the alu arcs into place very sneakily through the widened opening that the bent walls created. The joystick housing is just 0.5mm sheet metal bent into a box shape, but bending it back to its closed position was more of a challenge. Fast forward a little and these corner braces came to be. Revision 1 is just a small corner brace that is supposed to be glued onto the corner of the joystick housing. Before I did that, I realized it was a stupid idea - what if I needed to disassemble the joystick module for whatever reason? With glued corner braces, that wouldn't be possible. So I made revision 2, which uses the mounting holes and screws for the joystick bracket to stay in place. Fast forward a little more, and I had learned that there needed to be an A and B variation in LEFT and RIGHT versions for them all to mount properly. The A and B version is just added clearance for the potentiometer sticking out between them, and because I did that, I made them asymmetrical in shape - so there needed to be a LEFT and RIGHT variation to the A and B type. So it became a very complicated solution to a very small almost non-existent problem of my own invention.