Suitable Conductive / Contact Rubber Pad replacement on the hori fighting commander pro 3 dpad

Tech Talk
1

I do not know if that is the correct term, but the rubber membrane in a controller that sits between the dpab and the contacts on the PCB is what i am after. The hori commander pro 3 for PS3 has been discontinued and cost around £50 not including shipping after doing a quick google.

The problem i have discovered with this pad (my 2nd one) is that the dpad rubber membrane contacts will breaks off after heavy use and will no longer register your inputs as a result.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dg6yar64flx7fyt/what%20happens.jpg

The dpad membrane in this pad is circular and the individual contact points are elevated in the rubber and form a ‘hump’. when you push the dpad the hump is pressed in making a contact with the pcb and the signal is made. It’s this part that breaks and it separates as a perfect circle as if it was from a cutout where there were perforated edges.

I have glued it back in place but that has made that contact point slightly stiffer on inputs/press down and I suspect it will likely happen with the outer 3 contact points overtime .

I need help finding a suitable replacement membrane or if someone has ‘leftovers’ from padhacking this pad to an arcade stick etc.

I think nintendo ds/3ds conductive pad might be a suitable replacement but none seem to be the right shapes as i’ve been browsing ebay for sellers that sell ds,360 pad replacement parts.

I already asked hori support, stated they don’t sell the parts etc.

EDIT:

I think all the suggestions of possible repair are all acceptable

  1. replace original membrane with a dpad membrane from a 360 pad as the contacts in other dpads failed to register press inputs
  2. replace with tact switches (unsure on the correct tact switch sizing atm)

EDIT 2: Solutions with pictures.

replacing the og membrane with dpads from other controllers. first things first, you can probably reuse your existing dpad membrane. It the dome has been broken cleanly like the picture above using crazy glue you can simply reglue the dome in place. To do this i suggest using thin tweezers and very little super/crazy glue, if you use too much the rubber will harden lessening the give when pressed. The contact sits on a thinner rubber mound, you only want the glue to sit on the lip of this mound to reform the seal.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2dblxojl36m32tz/glue%20here.jpg

If only one of you contacts are broken at this point you may want to simply dap small amount of glue at cardinal points around the other contacts. This is optional however and you may not need to do this however on my dpad two other contacts were beginning to break so i opted to dap the glue where there were visible breaks.

This is what made me one to examine other options, an absolute resolution.

for other membranes i tried a 360 pad as suggested by @Tarek but i didn’t like this at all. as i mainly play tekken, doing clutch DF for iws stuff was a chore, inconsistent and pure headache.

here is what the 360 dpad mod attempt looked like. (Tarek might say this was not how he did his)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ldv0i4h683hb247/360_dpad.jpg

so i tried a ps3 dpad, both these dpads came from ebay as replacement parts. I messed up a bit on this on P1 fwd contact point, removing after the glue has set seems to be a write off on these dpads. so check thrice before setting.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lcnhhecxfqine2y/psx_dpad.jpg

I will add the tact switch stuff later…

2

Those rubber pads are not design to be cross compatible. The only rubber dome contacts that grantee to work with The Hori Fighting Commander Pro 3 is a The Hori Fighting Commander Pro 3
For all the efforts you make, there no grantee the pad is going to last long or is even worth the effort. No longer pads last 20- 30 years like the old NES/SNES game pads.

You need to buy another controller plain and simple.

3

Not that simple!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BGfIUpPCEAIGwyW.jpg

4

What am I even looking at? There some bad lighting there

5

It’s… a frankenpad!!! I’ve been searchin’ all my life fer…

What about a Hitbox, TC? The FCP3’s pad wore out on me, too (damn shame, I loved the controller). I figure buttons are going to be more durable and a lot easier to replace than rubber membranes.

Can’t see why anyone can’t just make a good dependable pad anymore though… Do microswitches cost too much?!

6

Okay, because in that pitture I can’t tell if the half of that controller is part of or behind the larger plastic box.

What about them? a Hit Box is not a replacement for a d-pad. It was designed as a arcade part alternative to joysticks, and it was designed with Keyboard/Piano style play in mind using existing arcade parts.

Keep in mind the last new pads that used actual microswitches turned out to be awful. The PDP fightpad used Omron switches for each input except start, select and home an it had PCB issues.
Last good pad that used Microswitches, well that hard to say, I don’t know if the shoulder button switches the Sega Saturn pad use were tac switches or microswitches.

Also keep in mind nothing, and I MEAN NOTHING is built as well as it used too. Old 1980’s IBM made motherboards can be used to drive nails, newer PC motherboards are fragile, delicate structures. The same goes with cars, TVs, appliances and even game pads. I still have working in perfect order needing no maintenance other than some cleaning; my Original NES pads I got when I was 7. I am now 33 years old so that is 26 year old game pads with the original rubber pieces. Now you are lucky if any new 3rd party controller last more than a week after the warranty expires. Its just the nature of the manufacturing industry.

And yes Microswitches are too expressive to be used in the eyes of the companies producing video game controllers.

7

I am wondering if the hori gem dpad is the same

8

People who don’t play fighting games don’t wear out dpads or buttons. They mostly care about triggers and analog sticks.

So when most of the people who want your product don’t care about how bad your dpad is (many people worship the 360 pad as the hands-down best controller of all time) then why spend more money on something you don’t need to?

Yeah because the speeds and quantity of data transfers in modern computers were thought to be impossible sci-fi wishes back in the '80s

You’re talking about an era where a compsci class would use a computer lab and there would be four to ten second input delay on the terminals.

9

I am just illustrating how build quality gone down the tubes. Still, military grade electronics are really durable, so its mostly consumer grade electronics that really suffered.
And Military grade hardware is more powerful than consumer stuff.

10

Military Grade is literally better than nasa grade, and the prices reflect that. I’m not going to argue that modern tech is durable, but it’s not exactly a tragedy when someone’s iphone breaks because they dropped it while walking.

I’m saying consumer grade electronics are fragile when compared to older consumer grade electronics is because the speeds and heat demand have increased significantly but the PCBs and protection have not, in order to keep the cost down.

11

The HFC3P is my favourite controller and after using it for so long i can’t go back to using any other pad. The only problem with it is that they have a cheap rubber membrane which breaks after roughly 8 months. However I’ve managed to fix this problem by making my own rubber membrane using xbox 360 parts i bought off ebay. I’ve tried using nintendo and ps3 rubber parts but the metal conductor on those are too small and don’t register the inputs properly so the xbox 360 works best.
You will need the following items: Scissors, super glue and an xbox 360 rubber d pad.
The rubber membrane on the xbox 360 is larger then the HFC3P. So all you have to do is use the rubber membrane on the HFC3P as a guide and cut the xbox 360 rubber membrane into 4 parts and start trimming away until you position the buttons evenly and make it match the HFC3P.
Once the size is the same then what you need to do is glue it all together and wait for it to dry.
After its dried make sure the buttons match the rubber membrane on the HFC3P and then trim the edge so it fits in the controller and it should work fine. I’ve been using mine for the past month and its been working perfectly and it only cost me $5 to fix.

Hope I’ve helped

Peace

12

Or, you could get some tact switches form Radio Shack and solder them on to the contact points and modify the dpad to press down on them. You could fill the holds with epoxy putty and that would do the trick.

Plus, you’d get a tactile feed back as you press directions, and it would last longer unless you did a bad soldering job.

13

Hmmm i didn’t consider that have you actually tried this yourself? and if so does the controller register diagonal inputs just as well as using a rubber membrane?

14

It’s a mod I’m going to do to one of my controllers because I want clicky buttons. I’ve done it to the rubber cap buttons in a SE though, that’s for sure, and it worked out fine.

15

As have I. I’ve switched (har har, pun totally intended) all the rubber-dome buttons to micro-tact switches on all my sticks in the past (2x TvC, Hori FSVX, Exaprize); as long as you get it done properly it should work just fine with a D-pad. I believe the GBA SP had micro-tact buttons under the D-pad.

16

It did. I can confirm this as I rebuilt a few GBA SP units.

17

on the other thread ‘has anyone tried the new HFCP’ i mentioned doing the tact switch after finding a old ben heck post. the only think i am not sure on is the size(height) tact switch to use.

18

You want one about the same size and height as the rubber plunger. That way, all you have to do then is fill the hole the plunger fits into the button with epoxy putty and flatten it.

19

Slightly off-topic, I have a bunch of FC3P, but some of them have defective d-pads, are they easy to repair?

20

Only if you have the right parts