Feedback On Thumbstick Design

[abigsmurf]

Maybe just gluing a rubber O-ring to the top of the current joystick would be the easiest solution?

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you could never make it bond in a strong enough fashion and you'd still have the issue of the shaft hitting the casing

 

[DaveC]

Maybe something like this would be good.  It has rounded edges, is concaved,  plus has raised ribs in the center for grip.

yeah thats what I had in mind for the rings. I'm currently wrestling with autocad to make it do what I want....

Who designed this program anyway? it's the only modeler I know where there's no universal resize command for 3d objects. Just a scale command which is crap if you only need to adjust 1 dimension ¬¬

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AutoCad is pants for 3D. I wouldn't use it to design a cube.

Use CadKey or Solidworks or something like that.

 

[nubie]

Do you think the rings will help any?

The stick seems very small, so maybe your thumb couldn't even reach the ridges?

Any thoughts on the convex solid rubber one that someone made?

I think that a small solid rubber convex one would be the shortest possible for best deadzone reduction and control.

 

[abigsmurf]

pretty much every thumbstick that uses a hard plastic uses rings to improve grip. I simply can't afford to produce a coated stick (I do have a jar of that plasti-dip but there's no way I could dip a few hundred sticks, it'd take too long and I'm not a fan of spending so long being exposed to toxic fumes), as it is I'd be relying on extensive pre-orders to afford the production of the mold.

 

[nubie]

I wasn't suggesting rubber coated, I simply was gauging people's thought on the stick made solely of rubber.

The grip looks really good, and physically the only way to get the stick shorter is to make it convex.

Go here for the 100% rubber convex stick

 

[Kayday]

Would bumps work better than ribs? Like how it is on the Dreamcast.

 

[abigsmurf]

fiddling with the DC stick, it seems the bumps are effective because of the surface area of the pad, that said it would be possible to produce a clone of it but the shaft would have to be a few mm higher to compensate for the increased head size.

The main problem is that these are all things which could do with experimenting with and the only way to do that is to produce prototypes and I don't have the tools to do it myself and it's not fair on manufacturers to keep asking them to do time consuming and low cost samples.

 

[judge0]

ok, I've been messing around a bit in AutoCAD and have got something of a base design. I haven't figured out how to show a view with the measurements yet (first time using the program) but the thumb pad has a diameter of 12mm and is 3mm deep. Ignore the colours and the ring, they're just things to help me when editing at the moment.

I've been considering using rings to increase the grip on the thumbstick, something of a standard practice on controllers when a non-rubberised surface is used. However the GP2x thumbstick is fairly unique in the fact it needs to be as short as possible to limit the amount of travel, needs a very strong grip and also the shaft and thumb pad must be prevented from hitting the casing. What does everyone else think?

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Nice.
To get dimensions in view, draw part. Click on layout tab. Add a viewport.
Dimension and plot while the layout tab is selected.

Alternate: Dimension directly on drawing. use dimedit to make sure color for dimensions is not the same as background ( in your case white)

Look for tutorials in help index, they are very indepth.

 

[Julius]

If you are actually planning to do this on a large scale, I would first wait and see what GPH comes up with.
According to ED they are also working on a stick redesign that is going to be concave... so maybe everyone will be happy with that one and your work was in vain.

p.s.: I still like my idea with the bump in the middel, even if it is about 2mm wide.

 

[abigsmurf]

got an alternate design (which is a WIP) here. I'm not to keen in the flat bit, I'll probably change that to a slight gradient but it's getting late now.

I know about GPH doing an alternate stick but it can't help to have something prepared incase it isn't much of an improvement

 

[iignotus]

Looks like a Pipe in Super Mario...

 

[Julius]

hmm, to be honest that looks like the opposite of what would be practical to lower the deadzone while improving the grip.

 

[abigsmurf]

tweaked it a bit, made a slight gradient on the flat bit and made a couple of the rings less uncomfortable. I believe this will offer lots of grip and not kill your thumb now (although I can't test without doing a prototype). I'll probably wait and see what my finanances turn out to be like now and what GPH come up with.

 

[g4m3r]

Maybe something like this would be good. It has rounded edges, is concaved, plus has raised ribs in the center for grip.

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That might work out well.

 

[Jacxz]

got an alternate design (which is a WIP) here. I'm not to keen in the flat bit, I'll probably change that to a slight gradient but it's getting late now.

I know about GPH doing an alternate stick but it can't help to have something prepared incase it isn't much of an improvement

Are the doing a mod...
where have you heard that??

Haven't tried the original one yet but for me it seems ok. If it's not like realy hard plastic I realy think I can stand with it...

 

[nubie]

Haven't tried the original one yet but for me it seems ok. If it's not like realy hard plastic I realy think I can stand with it...

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It is REALLY hard plastic, I should know, I have one.