Sitting in my sim-rig I often need to have access to a keyboard. At one point I found a slick, slim Bluetooth keyboard with a built in trackpad, and it’s been a great keyboard to keep in my lap for when I need to do non-driving stuff.
But admittedly keeping it on my lap is not the most comfortable, I often pull up my desk chair next to the simulator and place it there, but why do something simple like that when we can massively overcomplicate it with some 3d printing?
I designed this basic hinge, it looks like a dolphin! I didn’t mean for it to, but it does, which is a massive bonus in my opinion.
The mounting side attaches to the 4040 aluminum extrusion (that the simulator “chassis” is made out of) with a bolt, and holds a 608 skate bearing with a friction fit:
The dolphin-y looking bit just has an M8 bolt passing through it, and the “mouth” of the dolphin is intended to sandwich and hold a thin piece of poplar, which will act as the actual “tray” holding the keyboard.
The flat “back” of the dolphin’s “head” (man I am designing everything to look like an animal it makes describing the part so much easier) acts as a “stop” to hold the tray in place when dropped down.
Got the parts printed out, picked out the nuts and bolts, and pressed the bearings in.
Next step was to mount it to the simulator and then figure out some method of holding the tray in the upright position. I kicked around a lot of complicated ideas involving pins and locks in the hinge mechanism itself, and while that would be fun, it can be a v2 of this project.
For the time being I realized a simple 3d printed latch would probably work perfectly. A quick mock-up in Fusion 360 and we get (upside down):
The two holes will hold heat set inserts, the relief in the center should hopefully allow a bit of extra “flex” to the whole thing, and on the pointy side it’s going to allow the tray to slide into the latched position.
And it worked perfectly!
It fits perfectly on the rig, works exactly how I’d like, and driving with it is very nice! It does drop down a little bit further than I’d like. I may try to mess with inserting a small shim into the hinge, perhaps reprint the “dolphin” with a more sloped head.
Here’s a quick video of the latch/tray in action!