Shut up and take my money also!!!
Would like to see a gate as close to diamond shape as possible. I use an octo gate, but sometimes miss diagonals when doing fireball motions as it skips over the diagonals. Others that use octo gates also complain about this.
The octagonal pattern I’m using has extended diagonals so it shouldn’t be a problem.
What’s a diamond shape btw?
I assume it’s just a rotated square gate to make a it a 4-way?
Oh, the 3 smaller square gates can be rotated for diamond 4 way play.
Count me in, right now i am sitting day for day for some minutes to an hour and try to modify my Hayabusa for perfect Seimitsu Hardness… . Right now he is played like a new smoothed JLF ^^ and your gate would help me much in future for testing !!
Try JLW 
I’m in, great idea, and really like the sound of an extended diagonal octagon.
sorry i miss wrote it , its a LS-55 , not so hard i expected(harder than JLF). I also have a really big spring that doesnnt fit anywhere because she is to long, is this the JLW? what can i do about that? (pls PM me ,dont wanna spam this thread for it)
@Moonchilde
I see where you’re going with this rounded contact surface (concerning the inner surface of the gates) : to make it universal, it is impossible to opt for a straight angled surface that would match perfectly the actuator when contacting at throw and that for each different joystick model, whereas a rounded surface would fit every model but to the expense of minimal contact point which could be eventually minimized by choosing the right plastic for the task. A benefit would be to have reduced friction.
Are you actually concerned by excessive wear for the inserts? It leads us to the question what material will you use and what thickness will be the inserts? Any ideas yet?
Seems like your universal insert idea borrows a bit from the hayabusa pivot concept in that it proposes only point type of contact instead of line (in theory, in real life it is always a surface) between actuator and gate insert inner surface.
sanwa , seimitsu , hori etc only look for maximum profit at minimal cost of materials, so they were kind of obliged to have gates and actuators configured the way they are actually, but when concerned gamers design custom parts, if you choose the right material for a novel geometry, you CAN have long lasting parts that could even outlast stock ones. Just my 2 cents.
The reasons for the rounded edges are just as you guessed, to make it universal. I realized angled slopes were going to be different at different sizes and each actuator will not hit it exactly the same. I went with rounded because it won’t have a harsh edge that will cut into your actuator over long spans of use. It also gives me a marketing edge, less friction, less wear, faster inputs and directional changes.
I am considering pom for the inserts because of superior hardness to decrease wear, low friction, and ease of machining or molding. Thoughts on that? Sanwa and Hori gates are pc and I don’t really like how they feel, plus they’re a bit brittle. I prefer Semitsu’s material which is a little softer, yields better to stress, and very durable. Durable enough to with stand a hammer and come out unscathed.
You’re probably going in the right direction with delrin then.
As for the seimitsu restrictors, it’s true they do not crack under heavy playing or accidental dropping on the floor, at worst they deform/creep with time, like nylon does, but I find the LS32 plastic gates too thin, the LS56 type ones are much better and imho they are superior in use to jlf, jlw and other seimitsu thin type gates.
Now how your custom inserts will behave if the actuators are custom metal ones… you have access to plenty of these so give it a try on your protos and tell us about it !
imho the seimitsu stock actuators are a bit flimsy compared to the sanwa ones, especially when rubbing in the ls32 version with bottom metal plate: are there custom alternatives for them?
I never attempted to smash a sanwa JLF polycarbonate restrictor-gate, I wouldn’t say it’s brittle at all even if it’s not the best grade PC, the only flimsy part would be the tabs on the side of the insert , I never agreed with that type of design in the JLF, I always prefered something to be one piece and/or assembled with screws.
I never cracked my acrylic JLWs’ gates anyways (if they really are acrylic, everyone tells me so but even if they’re old I won’t destroy them to check the claims!) , only the housings wore a bit with the pivot, as well as the actuators which rub on the metal hinged levers.
Did you consider waterjet prototyping instead of laser cutting ? there is no finishing of the parts, they’re already polished by the process . How come you can’t have the parts laser cut anymore?
Yeah the Seimitsu LS-40 and LS-56 restriction plates are the ones I’m talking about. I actually kind of think the LS-32 is a PoS lol, but it’s a popular stick so I want to support it. I’ve never had a problem with the Seimitsu actuators, all mine have taken a pretty good beating and my LS-40 still has yet to show any wear from the levers on the switches. I think the LS-56 one has shown a little wear but it’s nothing crazy or even permanent. I like the nylon Seimitsu is using, it’s pretty sturdy. The LS-32 actually does have some custom actuators, @armi0024 has released his anodized aluminum actuators for it.
The JLW has a pc gate, not acrylic, and it’s fairly sturdy but I still get the same sensation from it as I do the JLF gate. Still feels kind of brittle. I’m afraid it would shatter if I tried to hit it with a hammer, lol. I am not willing to test it out at the moment, but maybe in the future I’ll do it for science!
The only laser I have access to is Paradise’s laser. It can’t cut at an angle so making prototypes would be a little difficult. It’s good for pads, but not for these particular gates. The older LS-56 gates I did however, are cut with laser. The drawback to those is that they have a hard edge against the actuator, rather than someone smooth or angled for the actuator to move against. It still works though, but isn’t an optimal solution anymore. I’ll look into waterjet prototyping, never heard of it before.
“Abrasive” waterjet (there are other waterjet types) cannot cut materials like ultrahard ceramics (since it uses garnet or alumina powder as abrasive usually and you need a ceramic nozzle to contain and direct that slurry ) but it can cut almost anything else that is less hard , keeping the temper for steel and not burning plastics (the water keeps everything cool) , and parts are quasi final shaped except in some cases. A lot of companies don’t resort to waterjet because you can’t go further than a certain thickness with most abrasive waterjet machines, but it’s perfect for cutting plates with a super smooth finish (no funny iridescent line patterns as with traditional CNC carbide cutters) . Another downside is a loss of precision ( a few 1000ths compared to laser, but it’s not a problem for a joystick project !) and the fact that with basic waterjet cutting machines, edges are naturally sloped( kind of crappy) but on multi axis cutters this is not a problem anymore and cutting at angles is done smoothly ina breeze.
As for the JLW gate, @Darksakul told me on Your favorite lever and mods that it was made of acrylic and even mentioned cracked gates. No clue if he really had a cracked gate or if it just was an impression he had due to the extremely similar aspect of small parts made of PC with those made of PMMA. Perhaps he made a mistake and they really are of PC as you say.
When I said cracked, I mean cracked, as there very visible cracks in the gate material.
Well either it’s a shit quality polycarbonate grade (or one too rigid not impact resistant) or just PMMA! Pc is not supposed to crack under such conditions as riding a gate in a joystick. Sanwa probably envisioned to have the arcade cab techs order new gates for their JLW after a short while and the price not being anything extraordinary compared to buttons and other low tech plastic parts, it would seem normal to replace them .
Another possibility is the fact that you have extruded vs cast PC (no clue what sanwa used) , extruded has internal stress and if it’s low quality, it can crack or shatter when machined or even in use with final product. Cast has its problems too but cell-cast is generally stress free .
Same stands for pmma and may be one of the reasons why diyers encounter problems working with this crap.
JLW gate is definitely pc, it’s stamped somewhere on it. Unless they’re lying to us, lol.
keep in mind this was a JWL modified into a flight stick with a longer shaft assembly.
The only markings I remember seeing on my JLW gates were “Sanwa” , numbers “4” and “8” for the positions and some ejection pin markings. Using extruded or poorly cast ( or the wrong grade) PC is as dumb anyways as using a non impact grade acrylic part. They could simply have it made of a stiff nylon or delrin and no one would have ever complained about it.
What Sanwa omitted in their design is the fact that if the material is prone to stress cracking ( due to tightening the screws) there will be a fair amount of crack propagation when hitting hard the gate. If you overtighten, it’s even worse probably.
The funny part is that even with crap grade PC or even acrylic, a simple set of plastic bushings with thinner screws ( or same diam screws with bushings and larger holes in gate) and some plastic washers could reduce the cracking to almost nothing, it’s surprising sanwa didn’t propose that neither: the bushings would prevent metal -from the screws- to gate contact and some pa, pp, pe or abs washers would distribute the pressure . A few cents that could prevent angry clients from complaining!
@Darksakul , the flight sticks you’re talking about , are they customized JLW with handles and shafts similar to what is found on the JLJ or JLK series?
As a JLF owner who’s constantly swapping gates, and probably about to order a Hayabusa, I am enthusiastically interested in this. Standing by with money to be taken.
Not really, it was a flight stick mod I just did as one of my early projects
Those a NES Quickshot handles epoxied to the JLW shafts, the stock springs were sufficient in keeping the flight stick handles up.