Motors and Rumble

ERM, LRA, voice-coil and motor-driven bolt mechanisms for light-gun feedback.

Firearms

Motors and Rumble · Deep Dive

Motors and Rumble

The buzz, the thump and the moving bolt.

ERM, LRA, voice-coil and motor-driven bolt mechanisms for light-gun feedback.

Photo: Vibration motors separated from a PlayStation controller by Tiia Monto (User:Kulmalukko) · CC BY-SA 3.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 What a Motor Adds — Rumble, Its Jobs in a Light Gun, the Four Actuator Families and the Hand That Feels Them Why a gun that already kicks still wants a motor, what eccentric masses, resonant actuators, voice coils and cranks each do, and the two facts about the gripping hand that decide which of them is worth fitting
    2. Vol 2 Eccentric Rotating Mass Motors — Force, Frequency, Start-Up and the Parts on Sale How an off-centre weight on a brushed motor shakes a gun, why its strength and frequency move together, what the makers' sled figures mean for a 1.3 kg shell, how long it takes to start and stop, how long the brushes last, and which motors are worth putting on the bench
    3. Vol 3 Linear Resonant Actuators and Voice-Coil Exciters — Crisp, Quiet, and Sized for Something Smaller Than a Gun How a spring-mounted magnet makes vibration, why a resonant actuator is strong only at one frequency and an exciter only above one, what the published parts deliver on a 1.3 kg shell, and the case for using one on a floating grip panel rather than on the whole gun
    4. Vol 4 Driving a Haptic Motor — the MOSFET Stage, the PWM Frequency, Haptic Driver ICs and an H-Bridge on the 24 V Rail What the reference board's one-transistor stage does and does not do, why OpenFIRE's 1 kHz PWM whines, how overdrive and active braking fix an ERM's slow start and stop, what TI's and Renesas' haptic drivers offer and where their limits fall, and a third DRV8251A that runs a 12 V motor from the recoil rail with braking and a current cap
    5. Vol 5 Motor-Driven Recoil — Crank and Weight, Cam and Spring, and the Airsoft Recoil Engine What a motor can do that a vibration cannot: a one-way hit. Why a crank gives a rhythmic shove rather than a kick, why a cam and spring gives the same hit as a solenoid for a twentieth of the electrical energy, what that costs in latency, noise and parts, and why it is not the first build's mechanism
    6. Vol 6 Rumble in the Printed MP7 — Where It Goes, How It Is Held, What It Draws, and Living Beside the Kick Three places a rumble actuator fits in the first build's shell, the guard and the mount, the IMU and the camera as victims of the shaking, noise, the USB and 24 V budgets checked against the brick's trip band and the one-stage rule, the firmware changes, and what rumble adds alongside a solenoid kick
    7. Vol 7 Measuring It and Keeping It Working — an Accelerometer on the Shell, a Sled Test, and the Wear and Failure of Vibration Motors The bench procedure with the Analog Discovery Pro ADP3450 that turns Volumes 2 to 6's estimates into measurements: acceleration and frequency at the grip, lag, rise and stop, start and running current, the rail during a kick, the IMU and the aim during rumble, and a blind ranking by hand; then how a motor wears, how it fails, how to diagnose it and how to replace it