VKB Gunfighter Mk. 1 Y Axis Issue

[Fridge]

Sure thing.

[Fridge]

One other thing that I noticed. Upon booting my computer and checking my messages before I left the house for the day, and in responding to this, I noticed that the Axes1 test page displayed this:

Note that the Y Axis center has drifted. I did not calibrate since last night and I only used the joystick for testing yesterday. If I push it full forward, the smallest the number gets is about 3500. The largest is the regular 65535 (binary max for the resolution that you are capturing). Not sure if this helps or not.

[Ron61]

Read this post and, after updating the firmware and configurator, reset to default and calibrate.

[Fridge]

Ok. I think I get what you are saying. Here is what I have now:

I hit the default button and re-configured. And it looks like the issue persists.

The difference in the above graphs was that after I established the pattern, I tried stopping in the 'frozen' section and moving the stick back and forth in small movements, gradually getting bigger until it became 'unfrozen'.

So, at the suggestion of one of my friends on the Mudspike forums, I disassembled the base again to look for looseness in the Y Axis magnets. I marked one side of the bearing and noticed some slack in the Y Axis movement that would not turn the bearing.

Here is the Axis straight (note the two little black marks on the bearing):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cB3zqB ... sp=sharing

And then I moved the Y Axis a little without the bearing moving:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GMiuTK ... sp=sharing

I disassembled the base a little further to get to the sensor section, marked the metal and plastic clutch (which is not tight enough to generate this).

Here is the Axis straight (note the two little black marks):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QGXIzU ... sp=sharing

And then I moved the Y Axis a little without the two marks separating:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NPgljA ... sp=sharing

Different angle (because it is hard to do this with one hand ):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AYfAgP ... sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TVg_Ok ... sp=sharing

Playing around with this with two hands, in this disassembled state without the springs or cam (?) in place, there is considerable play in the Y Axis and a small amount of play in the X Axis.

I was able to replicate what I think I am seeing in the Tester graphs with the Y Axis disassembled. If I move the X Axis a little to the left, and there move the Y Axis back and forth, there is a little 'slop' in the movement of the bearing/magnet that seems to correspond, by feel, to what the graph is showing.

In my case, this seems like a more costly fix than I had hoped (with a sensor board replacement).

Also of note, the '10' cam that I had in place has a two grooves in it. One, travels along the axis. This is where I observed the bearing riding along the axis. This groove does not affect functionality but shoes some wear on the cam. The second one is harder to see but if you come down along the axis from the right (in the picture), you can see it get shiny and then abruptly get dark just after the yellow line in the background. There is a small groove that runs top to bottom where the 'center' of the axis would be. It is hard to see but you can feel it when moving the stick. I think that the looseness is causing the cam to grind back and forth along this position.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GE0w44 ... sp=sharing

PS: I would have added these pictures to the site directly but it seems that you are limited to 3.

[Fridge]

Maybe I have something. I was about to head out of the house and it started to rain so I thought I would take 10 minutes and poke around at the disassembled base. I noticed a little hex key bit on the Y Axis gimbal (?) mechanism:

It is right down there next to the little rubber band that holds the 3 pin wires for the grip connector. I tightened that up and the 'looseness' went away in both the Y and X Axis. I reassembled the base, reattached it to my PC, recalibrated and it looks like the issue may be gone. I will test more tonight to be sure - and make sure that I am not putting in some bias.

[Fridge]

Argh. The problem still persists.

Same as before. This time I re-calibrated, went into X-Plane and flew a short hop, having to hold the stick off left-of-center because there is no aileron trim .. and the Y Axis hit it's 'freeze' zone.

[Fridge]

Is there anything else I can do?

[Fridge]

Ahh... Am I doing something wrong? Is this not a problem or is there no 'easy' solution?

[Sojourn88]

Thank you. We try to send the replacement today.

Hey UIV,

Sent you some PMs regarding this. Still waiting on the board.

[Fridge]

Ok. Do I have the wrong place for support?

[Ron61]

The hard connection between the disc (fig. 1) and the rod (fig. 2) may have broken. This is confirmed by these pictures.
The disc is stationary relative to the marks when the stock moves. But this should not be. Let's try to fix it.
Release (unscrew) the stopper (3) and use a suitable tool to tighten the disk clockwise (green arrows). Only then lock with the stop (3) in the rod.
It is better to remove adjacent parts so as not to damage them.

[Fridge]

Thanks Ron61! I will try that this evening.

[Fridge]

Interesting results.

So I disassembled the base and loosened stopper 3, used two hex keys to rotate the metal disk clockwise as you requested and then re-tightened the stopper.

Here is what it looked like after:

Sorry it is sideways

I reassembled the base, reattached it to my PC, set it to default and re-calibrated. After some messing around, the issue began to show up again. So I stopped my testing when it started repeating the previous pattern (hold left a little and forward a little for a while and then move forward and backward with the bumps showing up in the axis plot) and carefully disassembled the base again.

Note the two marks have gotten closer:

I tested the stopper and although it was not loose, it was not as tight as I had set if minutes before.

So I re-tightened the stopper, attached my KG12 grip that came with the base and without reassembling the base, moved the mechanism around both axis a fair bit (a minute of tinkering) and took another look at the marks.

The marks are almost back to where they were and the stopper is not as tight as I had set it a minute before. Granted, I am somewhat cautious about over-tightening the stopper.

I repeated the test again (with the KG12 and the base not reassembled) but this time I tightened the stopper and then manually loosened it to ensure that I was tightening it 'enough' and it was requiring some torque to loosen it by hand. I then tightened it again, added the KG12 stick and moved the mechanism again for about a minute. When I checked the stopper it was, again, just barely tightened and it required much less force to loosen it than when I did tightened/loosened it just a minute ago.

It seems like the stopper is not holding very well and with a few minutes of motion, it becomes virtually loose, requiring minimal force to loosen.

One other thing I noticed when calibrating the stick was that the Y Axis (front to back) , it was difficult to get it to show 0 - 65535. It would do it in the calibration but by the time I ended the calibration and testing the axis setting while observing the values in the VKBDevCfg-C.exe app it would show only 1xxx - 65535 or 0 - 64xxx ... like it was unable to register the full motion. After a few attempts to claibrate, I finally had it showing 0-65535 before I began my axis plot test with the VKB_JoyTester. At the time, I do not think that the disk was loosened again and back to it's position where the two marks line up but I now figure that the stopper was probably back to it's pretty-darn-close-to-loose state. Then, when I was doing the testing with the axis plot, the disk started to slowly move. Not sure if that helps.

[Ron61]

So now the disk goes for the rod synchronously? I did not understand from your explanations.
So far, it’s not worth talking about calibration at all - you need to fix the main reason.
Remove the spring from the cam and tighten the damper. By moving the rod, the marks should diverge without delay.

[Fridge]

Let me try to clarify.

I performed the steps that you mentioned and the disk did indeed tighten (picture #1 in the previous post). I tightened the stopper hex bolt, reassembled the base and began using it. I noticed the problem still happening but it was less severe than before but it seemed to get getting 'worse'. I wondered what if the position of the disk was changing, so I disassembled the base again and noticed that the disk had moved a little back towards its position (picture #2) (where the two black marks where in a line) and that the stopper was loose again (it was not loose enough to spin but it was not as tight as I had set it). I tightened the stopper again, then, instead of reassembling the base again I attached my KG12 grip to the grip post and spent some time moving it around both the X and Y axis. After a minute or so I noticed that the disk has slipped back to its original position (blank marks in a line) and the stopper was loose again. I did apply some significant force to the stopper to tightened it I did not over do it.

So:
1. I tightened the disk and stopper;
2. After some motion in the X and Y axis, the disk slips back to it's previous position;
3. The stopper keeps coming loose shortly after motion is applied to the X and Y Axis;