Has anyone else tried using a Kowal 1mm actuator on the Hayabusa? When I put it on mine it was grinding down on something and actually tore up one side of the top of the actuator. the only other mod I have done with the Hayabusa is adding a 2lb spring. Anyone have a similar issue?
Hello to everyone!
I would like to mention something extremely important concerning HORI’s commercial claims.
From an engineering point of view, it doesn’t stand up when they explain their new pivot/housing method. Other than that, everything else seems user friendly and more or less on par with sanwa/seimitsu, sometimes even slightly better (microswitch compatibility, precision of the parts).
On to the housing & pivot claim:
-HORI calls their pivot a “cam” and say that it has “point contact” with the housing.
Housing is made of DELRIN (aka POM , a formaldehyde resin with low abrasion and low coeff of friction), but “cam” is made of undisclosed material.
-Hori states the housing is of a new type which they call “V type” . Vtype is clearly a conical shape vs the spherical housing of sanwa/seimitsu
Truth is, the pivot is a truncated spherical shape which means the contact surface between this type of spherical surface and the conical housing ( cone’s summit is pointed downward of course) will be a LINE, not a point! . In terms of “line” , the contact surface is truly a CIRCLE (when we have a sphere inside a cone) to explain things clearly, or only a part of a circle when dealing with a truncated sphere moving inside a cone.
Point contact would be possible only between a sphere and a flat surface ( a plane)!
on the other hand, with a spherical pivot against a spherical housing of equal radius, Hori is right that the contact surface would be a… surface.
The claims concerning friction, load and wear are not realistic and are a gimmick , the claims are only partially true and mostly on paper, not in real life:
-line contact (not point as Hori says) offers much less friction than surface contact for sure (which is what Hori explains and is perfectly true in theory with unusable unwearabel materials) , but when you have point or line contact with polymer bearings in which both the pivot and housing are made of polymer in a dry solid pivot bearing type (no lubricant, no rolling elements, all bearing material is polymer), the wear will be extraordinaly high after a certain time!!
With time, the pivot will start to wear and get faceted ( the pivot gets some of it’s outer surface worn off and “flattened” , which means sticking will occur, start and stop motions will be hindered severly if it happens , not to mention the “wiggling” when the bearing surface of the housing gets worn as well.
In theory and also probably when these Hayabusa joysticks will be played with, the speed will be higher and sliding will offer a smaller amount of friction compared to the spherical/spherical bearing/housing of other japanese joystick companies, but ultimately IMHO they will wear off much faster… because for the HAYABUSA “cam”, the load is distributed along a line running around it while in other similar designs that have similar pivot but spherical housings, the load will be distributed along the outer surface of the bearing, : large surface , load is more evenly distributed , not “concentrated” along a line, leading to less load but more friction. There’s a tradeoff one cannot escape when designing a polymer pivot bearing!
Either you opt for lowest friction possible, then you often end up with high wear and low load capacity, whereas with high load bearing systems (spherical housings), the pivot sits more securely but you get more friction due to the contact surface.
this being said if one decides to use alternate materials to optimize the friction coefficient (by reducing it), using for the pivot reinforced teflon with fillers to reduce the CREEP will make the spherical housings unbeatable. ALL MAJOR companies producing polymer pivot bearings always used GROOVED housings, never conical. Hori is just crashtesting with the gaming community to see how much their design wil last wihtout resorting to replace bearing elements.
Creep is a major concern other than simple “wear”: that’s why in gaming joysticks we see nylon or various grades of delrin and polyethylene, because although they’re much more frictioj prone than teflon, teflon has unacceptable creep properties (the polymer deforms under load , permanently). Reinforced teflon would be a solution, but it would be inevitably too cost effective for companies who want to use the cheapest stuff available to maximize profit.
Also, HORI doesn’t mention that when the housings are spherical in other joysticks, they’re often grooved to permit the dirt and other wearing particles to be put out of the way (until next maintenance/cleaining) , as well as to reduce surface contact between pivot and housing (and it permits to distribute lubricant if used when smeared along the housing channels) !!
With polymer bearings, you cannot transpose any old way the techniques used with ceramics and metal alloys, since polymers tend to wear much faster and have very little abrasion/wear resistance compared to these much harder materials. You have to redesign entirely the bearing.
to sum up and compare here is how I analyze all this:
Sanwa JLW:
-steel pivot + polymer spherical housing (grooved)
We obtain high pivot life (the highest) while the housing gets worn at a relatively high rate compared to other designs especially if dirt gets trapped between the pivot and housing
The housing enlarges and still retains a more or less spherical curvature: wear leads to have wobbling of the pivot, nothing else
Sanwa JLF & Seimitsu (with no steel plate under the gate) :
-polymer pivot (seems made of bearing grade of nylon) & polymer spherical housing
Pivot gets worn at higher rate than a steel one but doesnt wear off the housing as fast, the housing material being usually harder with perfect surface treatment (extremely high polish) , other than that same as above, the housing retains even after abuse a spherical shape which means relatively smooth uninturrupted slinding , but with seitmitsu type of pivot (sometimes coarsely finished), we can get some sticking issues, perhaps also due to the actuator which wears off poorly when in contact with the steel plate screwed under the gate). Oddly I did have many sticking issues with sanwa clones, as the pivot material started to degrade over time and chemically react with dirt, getting literally sticky loosing a great amount of lubricity.
Hori Hayabusa:
- spherical pivot in conical housing
Housing surface has only line contact, which means very low friction (lowest of all designs mentioned here) but wear tends to be localized along certain zones (resembling lines which grow “wider” becoming surfaces!! ) which will result in little wobble (as opposed to previous designs mentioned, since the pivot will sink further DOWN in the housing ) and get stiffer with time. When the pivot gets worn by rubbing against the insude of the conical housing, the tilting motion employed during gameplay will change the shape of the pivot resulting in possible facets and/or loosing the truncated sphere sphae to end u with a section fo a barrel getting stuck deeper in the housing, the sliding will not be possible, only around the joystick’s axis, tilting the handle in any direction being almost impossible and when titlting is still possible, jumping issues will be severe.
Of course this is only a prediction and only if Hori discloses the type of material used for the pivot could we guess better how fast this “bad ending” would occur.
Everyone seems to enjoy the high speed of special moves with hayabusa but I’m very interested to see how much abuse it can take before the pivot gets shaped to the inner sides of the conical housing.
personally I think spherical housings are unbeatable, it’s the choice of materials, the design and finish of the parts that could permit some new models to surpass easily a sanwa or a seimitsu.
Iw ould NEVER go with a conical housing when using a spherical pivot, especially when dealing with an all polymer design!!
Does anyone have precise and verified info on the material used by HORI for their pivots?
Hope my analysis helps any diy-er hoping to design his own stuff.
ps: at least Hori didn’t go with idiotic flashy actuators made of aluminum (high friction!)
The Kowal 1mm actuator has a different shape than the Hori, JLF or Paradise Arcade actuator
@Darksakul do any of those actuators fit in the Hayabusa?
Interesting read. I’m a little confused. You say that contact shape between a sphere and a flat surface will be a point. That seems to be what HORI is showing in their schematic isn’t it?
http://www.hori.jp/us/Products/PS3/ps3_hayabusa_us/image/vcut.jpg
Even if the pivot is truncated, as long as the contact point is still a sliced section of a sphere, you’d still have a point of contact. No?
I know the JLF and Paradiase Arcade actuators do, I tried it out.
I can’t speak about The Kowal.
If you want to play semantics, yes a contact point is still a contact surface, abet a very small one. It isn’t explained well, but the idea is less surface area, less friction.
The metal\plastic kowal actuator i tried was slightly 2 long and rubbed down the on the top of the gate. I removed it immediately.
I understand you’re confused, and that is because you’re looking at Hori’s diagram which shows a view that passes through the axis of the shaft: the housing is not flat, it is a cone pointing downward and the side which seems like “flat” to you is in fact curved, the drawing is only a cut section, the cutting plane coincides with the cone’s axis!
when you project 3D on a 2D diagram (on paper), people tend to make all kinds of mistakes, especially when dealing with intersections and tangents.
the housing surface of the hayabusa, which you think is “flat” on the diagram is actually not.
now place a sphere inside a cone : the sphere will contact the cone along a line (a circle to be exact) , not a point!
You’ll get a point of contact when placing a sphere on a flat surface.
Is it more clear with these diagrams?
Yes. I forgot that that diagram is a section of along the shaft axis and that the housing is a cone (doh).
Thanks!
I am pretty sure the actuator and pivot is made from delrin (Polyoxymethylene) plastic.
The Gate is ABS, I am not sure what the body is.
No, Hori clearly says that the contact type is “point” for their design and “surface” for sanwa/seimitsu and the less surface equals more lubricity is not very practical because with excessively reduced area of contact the pivot is rubbing against the housing on extremely small surfaces considered as “line contact”.
In real life , in bearings , point and line contacts are in fact VERY small surfaces
that’s why in bearing design books they classify the contact type as being point, line or surface, they keep things theoretical , then they go on explaining how wear and elastic properties of materials give us different types of surfaces in real life.
Still,on paper the Hayabusa contact type between the pivot and housing is “line contact” and not “point” in any manner, ask any engineer! As for the sanwa/seimitsu type Hori is correct.
Are you sure? Because some people say “jlf has nylon bearing” while others say “white delrin” …so did you read this info somewhere or are you just guessing this time for the Hayabusa pivot? It’s quite difficult to guess nowadays, there are so many grades and similar looking products that it leads to mistaking one type for another
This guy, :rolleyes:
Dude it is all semantics, very few people here can work on a car engines. Fewer still are mechanical engineers.
At this point, I don’t really care about using barrier terminology, was explaining things in laymen terms. No insult to chaoslimits as he at least is one of the smarter people who come in here.
Look we got individuals who come in Tech Talk and ask questions who can’t comprehend basic electrical theory, I tend to keep explanations simple.
I put one in mine, no problems (kowal in the Hayabusa, that is).
hey I didn’t insult Chaoslimits !! I politely explained to him what I had to and that was it!!
As for layman terms, you’re right, but don’t say my terms are anyhow complicated: point, line and surface types of contact between solids are really uber easy to understand if the right diagrams are shown, unlike what Hori did, claiming “point contact” when it clearly isn’t.
I meant no insult to Chaoslimits from me.
You be surprised how simple questions we get from people here.
This seems like an odd ending point to a well written and presented point.
I didn’t take any responses as insults lol (although I deserve one for that mistake ;=; ).
Interested to see where this discussion goes. :tup:
@Agieze, are you @kowal alt. acct.? I still love you kowal, but if you, not cool using alt. acct. 
-ud
It’s Polycarbonate.
As for Agieze, Hori’s claims aren’t incorrect and their x-section isn’t wrong, it shows how their design works. You’re arguing over semantics and on top of that, haven’t really invalidated their claim and haven’t backed up your claim very well as to why their design is a gimmick. Lower points of contact = lower friction and just like DarkSakul said, that’s all that matters to the laymen for their explanation.
Also, they’re using higher quality parts, the pivot is also most likely polyoxymethylene considering they deliberately made the body out of pom, why would they use a self lubing material for the housing to keep friction low and then use something else which would increase the friction? Makes no sense, and after having enough time analyzing the design of the stick, I’m at the conclusion someone at Hori put a lot of thought and effort into designing the stick. I don’t think they’d overlook something like that.
The are grooves on the pivot rather than the housing, which isn’t any more different than the housing having the grooves while the pivot doesn’t. I don’t know why this is a point of rant for you, since both designs would do the same thing when it comes to debris.