Yesterday I finally went out and bought the components needed to make my own hotas stands that can be attached to a desk. My goals for the build were simple - it had to be cheap, detachable, relatively sturdy and have enough space for each half of my Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X. I also needed about 10cm (4 inches) of height difference between the desk and the stands to achieve a more comfortable holding position while my arms rest on the chair arms.
My initial goal was this - http://ift.tt/1BRL0rq . However, I couldn't find the U shaped piece anywhere so instead I used two identical L shaped wall mounts with a third one as a holder for the wooden plate where the stick and throttle sit. All 3 metal plates came with pre-drilled holes that aligned perfectly so all I had to do was use 2x m5 screw + nut on each to assemble them and then finally attach the wood plate to the bottom metal plate.
As you can see from the picture I'm using 4 screws on each mount to hold the thing in place, with anti-slide caps on each screw and the top metal plate, mostly to prevent the damage to the desk. The flimsiest part of this setup are the metal nuts which are on the inner side of the bottom metal plate - I used superglue to attach these, another option would've been to weld them in place or if you're lucky enough, get metal plates that have threads in them, mine only had the simple holes. However, after a few hours of testing it seems like the thing is holding together well.
One major thing that I would've done different if I was making this again would be to use metal plates with larger holes. This would allow me to use refrigerator legs like this one. These usually come with grip caps on them so it's easy to twist them into place, making it much easier to attach/detach the stands from the desk. I'd also limit the number of pressure points to one or two max, with a larger plastic cap at the top of the screw to increase the pressure area. Right now I'm using part of my Gedore set to quickly twist the screws so it's less than ideal.
Rough material cost:
- long metal L plate (2x) - about 1€ each
- short metal L plate (4) - ~80 cents each
- m5 screws + nuts (12x+12x) - ~4 cents each
- screws for the wood (6x) - ~3 cents each
- two wooden plates, 25cm X 25 cm (10 in X 10 in) - I have no idea, I had these at home, but I'd be surprised if they're more than a couple dollars each
- anti-slide caps - ~1.5 euros for a pack of 50
As I already mentioned, I'm using a T-flight hotas which doesn't have any mount points which is why I left the wood plates as they are and will probably end up using double sided Tesa tape (suggestion for alternatives welcome!), but if you're using one of the higher end models which come with mount points then you can easily add some screws to the wooden plate to hold them in place.
Submitted March 05, 2015 at 10:46PM by Bawtzki http://ift.tt/18Uyc9m hotas
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