These days, sim racing is more realistic than ever. There are better screens, better headsets, and better steering wheels with better force-feedback, all of which help make you feel like you’re driving the real thing. If you’re looking for a stick shifter to complete such a setup, [DAZ Projects] might have just what you’re looking for.
To create a robust shifter with great feel, the build relies on 3D printed parts as well as lots of quality metal hardware. At the heart of the build is a linear rail for the front-to-back movement, with a printed slider on top with a carefully-profiled indexer to ensure the stick properly ca-chunks into the right gear. A ball joint locates the shift lever itself, while allowing for smooth movement left-to-right. Centering is via simple extension springs. The H-pattern shift is enforced with machined steel rods. Detecting the position of the stick is handled via microswitches, with an Arduino Leonardo reading the switches and reporting itself as a USB device that should work with any modern sim.
It’s funny to think that such a mechanism would once have been a very serious machining job. These days, you can just squirt all this stuff out on a printer in a few hours. For the parts that can’t be extruded, [DAZ Projects] has provided a parts list on Google Docs.
We’ve featured some great racing sim builds over the years, from button pads to pedal boxes.
I’m not watching it unless it’s sponsored by NordVPN.
It is difficult to take a design first approach for these kinds of builds with many mechanical parts. I’m the kind of person who likes to design something perfectly in theory first and then only ordering the parts to do the actual building process.
This process simply does not work for complex mechanical builds because there are just too many variables, tolerances for dozens of individual parts. Its worse when you’re 3D printing parts (which is often). The only way forward with complex mechanical builds is to have all the parts in front of you, and a decent set of calipers. Then you just measure as you go, and model stuff in CAD