Aluminum DIY

Hi there,

right now I have an old DIY aluminium sim chair who was a racing chair in the beginning. I added some desk mounts from Monstertech.

Now I want to build a new one from black aluminum with fixed controls and mounts that even allow to get rid of any desk at all. It should still be possible to play FPS, Strategy and so. Easy conversion to sim racing would be great but no must. However, using black aluminum with universal connectors and parts up to 80x80mm seem to be barely cheaper than even a Monstertech rig which is considered expensive. Any guys around with similar projects or tipps?

You don't build your own t slot pit to save money, you do it because what you want isn't offered. Unless you're buying hundreds of meters of the material paying bulk rates it will generally cost more than buying a prepackaged set.

You can order connector pieces from China for a fraction of the cost of 8020/Item/Modetis/etc but have to wait longer or pay really high shipping. Extrusions for that matter as well. I have bought t slot from Alibaba, Hunan Langle Aluminum (Fiona is the contact) and can recommend them if you go that route. Their shipping is expensive (air freight) but gets to you in like a week.

https://cslangle.en.alibaba.com/

Thank you Okana! You are right and the link looks really interesting. Do you know if they offer drilling and pre-cut lenghts too? I find the alibaba pages rather confusing. Maybe it can be done without drilling using fast connectors.

Actually Id even prefer Monstertech to get what want because it modular, can be expanded and adjusted. I don’t know a good way to get the needed plates to use as mounts and bases.

It’s funny because first I wanted sth like Obutto because I wanted a clean, ergonomic desk-less system intead of a race chair on aluminum paired with desk mounts which are also expensive enough. Then I found out Monstertech even has a rig. I only knechtendem for their mounts and it’s obviously better than obutto and friends but similar to my chair. I would just need to upgrade it. As I really long for black aluminum now, still need a lot and have a strange profile standard right now I want to start from the scratch.

This means eather MT plus MT modular addons plus custom addons or a complete DIY. However it‘s even difficult to get some parts. For example turntable connectors in black or adjustable connection plates. Very cheap suppliers often only have few black and usually don’t offer drilling. Premium dealers are even more expensive than MT. I ll dig deeper into your link now and let’s see what’s possible

They do offer cutting/drilling/tapping and quite reasonable prices. I bought extrusions from them for the SFX 100 variant I'm building and had them cut 4 pieces of 8080 and tap 32 holes. Cost inc shipping to US was ~$190. It took a bit to get it all sorted with Fiona via email mostly due to time zones and my wishy washy needs but she was patient and let me go through multiple iterations of my order before *settling on just the parts for my actuators.

If I bought a single uncut 1m long piece (same linear amount) from 8020 it would cost about the same or a little more even though they're semi local in the US and there was no machining.

*in the end I regretted not buying them all from Langle as it ended up costing me more by the time all was said and done locally sourcing pieces in the US even when buying drop/seconds on ebay

Other way is buy the extrusion in lengths and cut to length then use a 3D printer to make your own connectors.