I love my old Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, and team it up with a new CH Pro Throttle for Elite Dangerous, but I have often thought the three useless fingers on my right hand could do some work for me, and having the throttle which uses all my fingers, I thought it was about time to add three new buttons to my faithful old stick. The following mod is so simple, anyone with basic tools can do the job easily in a couple of hours.
Here are the parts you need:
a) a 3D Pro - or any old joystick really, provided you are happy to carve it up.
b) 3x small Push-To-Make switches
c) Any old optical mouse logic board and its USB cable
d) 2 metres of 6-core cable of the smallest available diameter (about 5mm)
While you have the stick apart, take out the hat, and roughen it up with 40 grit sand paper. I use the 8-way HAT for thrusters, and have done so for 20 years. Better grip is better.
Taking the stick apart is dead simple, and if you need instructions for that, then you are not capable of doing this mod, so stop now! Once you have the handle apart, and in two pieces, remove the thumb switch toggle, and the trigger. Put the two pieces of handle back together again, by themselves, and work out where you want the buttons. They are easiest to use if they are right at the very end of your finger tips. Mark the positions where you want the switches, and drill a 1mm guide hole in each spot.
Then get a 6.5mm drill and VERY carefully start to dril out your main hole. Once you have pierced the handle, stop drilling and start filing until you can pressure fit the switches into the holes and they stay there nicely by themselves. Now you can put the two handle halves back together again to see if you screwed up the switch positions!
If your hand is the same size as mine, you will sacrifice the post which retains the middle screw in the handle. It's OK to chuck it out, as the stick works perfectly without it.
Here you can see the post which drilling will remove, and the new holes I cut in the handle to put the wires through. Be very careful not to screw up the slot shown in the image, as the little split-toggle on the stick-twist potentiometer, fits into this slot, and it must fit snugly. If you break one side of the toggle, use a dot of hot-glue to get it back to the right size. That's what I did.
Make sure that your switch terminals soldering work and wires do not obscure or obstruct the semi-circular canal where the stick centre shaft fits. You can see I hacked one small part from one of the fins which contacts the shaft, but stability is not reduced as a result.
Here's another pic of the holes for the switches , from the inside of the handle. At this stage of the mod, I still hoped to retain the post and screw from the middle of the handle. Fat chance soldering around that though - so out it goes.
Here's the switches pressure fitted into the handle.
Now I carefully fed the cable into the handle, after stripping about 100mm of insulation. I then cut the wires and soldered them to the correct terminals of the switches. Then I used a solder sucker to remove the solder from the three tiny switches on the mouse logic board - but you probably can remove them easily without a solder sucker. and in fact you wouldn't even need to remove them, just solder new connections onto the back of the PCB.
Once the soldering was done, I connected the original mouse USB cable to the logic board, and plug the handle into the PC, to make sure all three switches are working correctly. I cut the LED from the mouse board, as it will never operate as a mouse again - and it was bright as a supernova!
I then mixed up some 5-minute epoxy, and glued the switches into place from the inside of the handle. To ensure no future fixes are possibleP) I also glued the soldered terminals to prevent breaking.
Here's the mouse board in its final form , with the switches removed and new wires soldered in place. Gotta love Hot Glue for jobs like this!
So now the stick has two cables, and three new buttons: Mobius's Frankentech 3D Pwn!
I hope you enjoy this mod, and I encourage others to customise their controller. This small addition has already improved my game, after just half an hour of play - so maybe it can work for you too!
Finally, here's the battle station. Yes, those are old CPUs of mine on the wall, and the 8 inch Floppy is from back in the Digital PDP-11 days, playing text-based Star Trek. I wish I could show 1978 me, my PC today. I had 8K of memory then.
Here are the parts you need:
a) a 3D Pro - or any old joystick really, provided you are happy to carve it up.
b) 3x small Push-To-Make switches
c) Any old optical mouse logic board and its USB cable
d) 2 metres of 6-core cable of the smallest available diameter (about 5mm)
While you have the stick apart, take out the hat, and roughen it up with 40 grit sand paper. I use the 8-way HAT for thrusters, and have done so for 20 years. Better grip is better.
Taking the stick apart is dead simple, and if you need instructions for that, then you are not capable of doing this mod, so stop now! Once you have the handle apart, and in two pieces, remove the thumb switch toggle, and the trigger. Put the two pieces of handle back together again, by themselves, and work out where you want the buttons. They are easiest to use if they are right at the very end of your finger tips. Mark the positions where you want the switches, and drill a 1mm guide hole in each spot.
Then get a 6.5mm drill and VERY carefully start to dril out your main hole. Once you have pierced the handle, stop drilling and start filing until you can pressure fit the switches into the holes and they stay there nicely by themselves. Now you can put the two handle halves back together again to see if you screwed up the switch positions!
If your hand is the same size as mine, you will sacrifice the post which retains the middle screw in the handle. It's OK to chuck it out, as the stick works perfectly without it.
Here you can see the post which drilling will remove, and the new holes I cut in the handle to put the wires through. Be very careful not to screw up the slot shown in the image, as the little split-toggle on the stick-twist potentiometer, fits into this slot, and it must fit snugly. If you break one side of the toggle, use a dot of hot-glue to get it back to the right size. That's what I did.
Make sure that your switch terminals soldering work and wires do not obscure or obstruct the semi-circular canal where the stick centre shaft fits. You can see I hacked one small part from one of the fins which contacts the shaft, but stability is not reduced as a result.
Here's another pic of the holes for the switches , from the inside of the handle. At this stage of the mod, I still hoped to retain the post and screw from the middle of the handle. Fat chance soldering around that though - so out it goes.
Here's the switches pressure fitted into the handle.
Now I carefully fed the cable into the handle, after stripping about 100mm of insulation. I then cut the wires and soldered them to the correct terminals of the switches. Then I used a solder sucker to remove the solder from the three tiny switches on the mouse logic board - but you probably can remove them easily without a solder sucker. and in fact you wouldn't even need to remove them, just solder new connections onto the back of the PCB.
Once the soldering was done, I connected the original mouse USB cable to the logic board, and plug the handle into the PC, to make sure all three switches are working correctly. I cut the LED from the mouse board, as it will never operate as a mouse again - and it was bright as a supernova!
I then mixed up some 5-minute epoxy, and glued the switches into place from the inside of the handle. To ensure no future fixes are possible
P) I also glued the soldered terminals to prevent breaking.Here's the mouse board in its final form , with the switches removed and new wires soldered in place. Gotta love Hot Glue for jobs like this!
So now the stick has two cables, and three new buttons: Mobius's Frankentech 3D Pwn!
I hope you enjoy this mod, and I encourage others to customise their controller. This small addition has already improved my game, after just half an hour of play - so maybe it can work for you too!
Finally, here's the battle station. Yes, those are old CPUs of mine on the wall, and the 8 inch Floppy is from back in the Digital PDP-11 days, playing text-based Star Trek. I wish I could show 1978 me, my PC today. I had 8K of memory then.
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