I'm gonna try making this bad boy. Anyone can get the blueprints from a place called Pokornyi Engineering (it's paid). If you buy it, they give you the manual, STL files for 3DP, STEP files for carbon plate CNC, firmware setting files, etc. For this build, I decided to bet everything on the 'look-ddal' (visuals) rather than just functionality.
For the sake of accuracy, I used actual Red Bull steering wheel photos as references and tweaked the four paddles on the back to my taste. The green one is the original model, and the red one is my mod. The hardware implementation is split into carbon plate CNC and 3D printing; for the carbon CNC part, I had to process 3mm, 4mm, and 5mm plates. The 3mm ones are used for paddle shifters, so I decided to do those myself. I only sent the 4mm and 5mm ones to Ali for CNC outsourcing.
The panels I got back from the service.
If you look at the photos, the upper shift paddles are black and the lower paddles have a carbon pattern. Since the upper ones are black, I thought aluminum CNC would look sick. Now I just need to mill the paddles with the 3018 CNC that everyone has at least one of at home.
Check the simulation, generate the G-code, and start milling...
Poof! The chamfered paddles are done. I'm making this with a buddy, so I just need to mill a few more. Now for the 3DP printing!
This is Fuzz-look PETG-CF printed by a friend on a Bambu Lab P1S. Used hybrid supports so it came out super clean.
Printing the remaining parts.
Since this project prioritizes 'look-ddal,' I commissioned black resin from JLC. The print quality is good, but I shouldn't have outsourced this... I went through hell trying to cram things in because of resin warping, and since the brass inserts wouldn't go in, I had to drill holes and super-glue FDM parts back in. I was so close to yelling 'STAY' like the Interstellar meme. Now for the electronics.
The original manual says to do a standard PCB assembly because of the LED drying process. I was broke at the time, so I skipped the LEDs and went with the economy assembly. When you get these assembly files and send them to JLC, check the chip orientations three times. My diodes and chips were all flipped.
Now for endless soldering. My only iron is a cheap Daiso one, so I struggled a bit.
The black ones are the joysticks that act as a gamepad in-game.
These are the paddles mentioned earlier: aluminum on top, carbon on the bottom.
I had to cut the rods of the two encoders at the bottom to 6mm like shown above, and it would be tough without a CNC. Even if you outsource everything else, I can't recommend this project because of this part...
Attach the light-bleed shields and flash the firmware via ST-LINK. One thing to note when flashing: you have to plug in external power and wait a bit for the LEDs to light up like that before stm32cube recognizes the chip.
Assemble, assemble, assemble.
It connects instantly with SIMHUB, kinda like Klipper(?). I feel like I'm cutting out a lot of details as I write this. Anyway, I went through hell matching tolerances, clear coating, and post-processing, but since it's pretty, all is forgiven. Total cost: about 90k KRW for carbon outsourcing, 100k for PCBA, 100k for miscellaneous parts, 50k for main encoders and buttons... around 500k KRW total. Of course, that's excluding the cost of raw materials for the stuff I milled or printed myself.
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