Home Built Soft pad?

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

What do you do when you and your wife have ankle problems, so playing at the arcade or on a home built metal pad, as nice as it may be, is murder on your feet, and every pad you buy ranging from an Intec Ignition style to an authentic RedOctane Ignition 3.0 consistently go to hell in a week?
Really, 4 pads in less than a month have all been returned. Niether of us are doing Pandemonium-calibur songs, but we can consistently A and B 8 and 9 footers.
I built a metal pad following DDRHomePads instructions - It works great, just like it's supposed to, maybe that's the problem. Too hard.
I have a design in mind for a home built soft pad which seems to solve all of the problems plaguing store bought, ie. sliding, bunching, ripping on the inside/outside, etc.
Is something like this worth doing? Has anyone ever attempted anything like this before? Any advice before I sink more money into a potential disappointment?

...Aside from foot surgery that is.

Plautus · Trick Member Joined: 17 Oct 2002

I've been using a sort-of-soft homemade hybrid for a few years now (plywood bottom, vinyl top). I'm building some metal pads right now, and a big plus (I'm hoping) will be easier maintenance.

My design is basically aluminum screen contacts separated by a pattern of upholstery foam. Neither of these components provide pad life significantly longer than your standard soft pad. I'm not sure what you'd use instead of these, and while I go back and forth on the foam performance, aluminum screens worked really nicely as contacts (that is, for the few weeks before they'd tear up, but I find that more layers between the top and the screens help. My hypothesis is that that it helps by not transmitting all the sideways force to the screens so that they press against each other, not scrape).

I can make the pads feel very nice on the feet with camping foam, but this only lasts a little while, then you get an uneven surface with arrow buttons flattening out as thin as paper. I'm not sure what would be more durable.

I can offer advice on the top; I use a lot of vinyl for my design, and also a lot of duct tape. Do not use duct tape on areas where you plan to step (like the top of the pad

) the duct tape will curl up and stick to your socks as well as look really bad. I used floor tiles for the buttons in one iteration to provide better tactile response on my feet and to look nice. Terrible idea. They broke almost immediately, and the tacky stuff that glues those down puts duct tape to shame. What I'm doing currently is doing the top with different colors of vinyl and duct tape (so people know where the buttons are by looking), but covering the whole thing with clear vinyl and stapling it on the back. That way, I figure I won't have to redo the decorative top part when (and if) I redo these pads. The duct tape is already receding a bit, though (although not sticking to my feet anymore).

So my pad is, from bottom to top:
spikey floor covering, glued to
3/4" plywood, taped to
sheet of aluminum screen (ground),
pattern of upholstery fabric (which has been glued to the wood through the screen),
aluminum screen button contacts (taped to a sheet of vinyl)
decorative layer of vinyl (indicating where the buttons are)
top layer of clear vinyl

When I have put camping foam in, I'd tape the button contacts to it, using it instead of the vinyl sheet, or put it inbetween the vinyl sheet carrying the button contacts and the decorative layer of vinyl.

The layers of vinyl are taped around the edges using duct tape, except for the top layer (held with staples). To reiterate, my big durability problems lie with the upholstery fabric and the aluminum screens. With all the tape and the need to reattach new contacts, you can imagine what a pain it is to service these.

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

Here is the design I'm considering, from bottom to top as follows:

-A 35"x35"x2" plywood 'tray' holding the 33"x33" 'guts' which will give the pad weight and the benefits of a hard pad on the bottom/outside.

-Dense foam insert harvested from one of my dead ignitions...Or bought from RedOctane.

-35"x35" resiliant fabric, possibly elasticized.

-11"x11" aluminum screen squares for the common contacts. The common wiring will be weaved into the screen around the edges, which will then be duct taped to prevent fraying. The wire to the control board and the screen itself will be meticulously sewn to the fabric to allow slight stretching while keeping everything held firmly in place.

-.5" light foam layer, with several holes cut over the screen sensors, also carefully sewn to the previous layer.

-A second screen/fabric assembly, wired for the buttons, completing the circuit. This finished fabric assembly will be nailed to the top rails of the plywood tray, over the dense foam.

-A 39"x39" piece of leather is then screwed down taut into the sides of the tray, completing the surface. Graphics/textures will then be burnt into the top.

Of course, the exact measurements will be tweaked during building to accomodate circuitry, wether or not I decided to make it interanl and use a control box, etc., but you get the general idea. Thoughts?

Thank you!

bemani-man · Trick Member Joined: 14 Jun 2003 Location: Ridgeland, SC

Are you wearing shoes when you play? If this is your problem, wear shoes, its a much cheaper solution. And better excersize.

_________________

EBT wrote:

i havnt had a problem witht he combat in morrowind
i swing my daedric dai katana with poision on it and stuff dies

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

Plautus · Trick Member Joined: 17 Oct 2002

Comments to start: the problem with aluminum screens isn't that they fray on the edges, but that they scrape and come apart at the point of impact. They will either cause shorts with loose ends, or form neater holes that won't make contact when you step.

Try to make it so that it can be disassembled and reconstructed fairly easily, because you will need to do that. The light foam and aluminum screens are the weak links here, but with the layering you have, you might extend the length quite a bit.

Here's something else to consider: in making my pad, putting the padding (camping foam) between the button contacts and the top layer actually made it more responsive for me; I was expecting it to be less sensitive with padding over the buttons but that was not the case (certain kinds, of course; I wouldn't put upholstery foam over the button contacts).

If you consider that, you may be able to put the ground plane right against the plywood, and I was going to suggest making the ground a metal sheet rather than aluminum screening for extra durability, but come to think of it, it's only been the button contacts (the moving screens) that have worn out. The screen attached to the wood has never gotten worn on either pad. Although if you're using a plain metal sheet, it might have less of an abraisive effect on the button screens.

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

What about aluminum tape rather than screen? Smooth as can be, and sewn to the fabric, should stay in place fine....

Plautus · Trick Member Joined: 17 Oct 2002

Don't know about the aluminum tape, even though I have a roll in my toolbox from when I was going to build a piso-pad

Play with it a bit, I'd expect it to be easily tearable like foil, and wouldn't expect sewing to help in that regard. But if you find that it works, I'd like to hear about it. If you do it right, even small breaks might not be the end of the world; since you wouldn't have stray wires like worn-out screening, you probably wouldn't get "stuck" arrows.

One thing that's kind of easy to forget: the sticky side isn't conductive, so if you're building a square panel out of tape, you'll have to get creative with folding or something.

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

Alright, this is starting to give me migraines. Tomorrow I'll be returning my second RedOctane Ignition 3.0 pad in two weeks. Is it me? Am I doing something wrong? I know pads just crap out after a bit of use, but this really is ridiculous. My wife and I had 2 Intec Ignition styles which worked fine since we started playing up until a month ago. That's 10 months of excellent performance, until they finally died because the tops wore so thin they just split. Now every pad that enters this house is unresponsive and ghost-stepping in under a week, guaranteed. At $50-$100 each, this is really pissing me off and I'd understand if they were cheap $8 things, but they're not. Any ideas? Still pursuing the homemade soft pad, but that's my last option, having owned 2 of the "best" softs out there. If that doesn't work, I really don't want to have to trade in 4 games I want to play daily but can't because of the controller.

Ravenwing · Trick Member Joined: 22 Jun 2003 Location: Leavenworth, KS

I'd strongly recommend you buy plastic covers for your dancepads...RedOctane used to sell them, but I couldn't find it on their site. For one, they prevent bunching on flat pads. Also, they allow for shoes on soft/ignition pads, giving you even more cushion for the feet and less shock on the ankles. My mom's been playing DDR on heavy on her ignition 2.0 since before christmas with shoes and one of those covers, and it has only just now begun to malfunction. The only drawback to them is that they slide around a little bit on top of the pad, but this can be fixed with some elastic and creativity. It's a very good investment, I'd say.
_________________

We all LIVE, therefore we are all EVIL, because the two words are one and the same...
...Oni mode is LIVE.

Frosty555 · Trick Member Joined: 14 Jun 2003

One interesting thing I did to my soft mats (Before I graduated to hard pads) was I bought industrial-strength 1/4" weatherstripping and layed it down inside the pad. The pad's design is basically two plastic carbon-sprayed films (the carbon spray conducts electricity enough to close the connection), and it was separated by a thin piece of foam with holes in it.

So I put weatherstripping down on diagonals (so that it covered a minimal amount of holes and the circuit could still be closed).

The pad felt much spongier, and twice as thick as before, and I never ever had problems with the arrows again.

... until it ripped.

But that's a whole other story.

_________________

Team D5R - DDR team of Newmarket/Aurora

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

Well I've completed the frame thus far and I've decided to use button snaps to secure the top skin and the guts assembly to make opening it up and repairing...Well...A snap. I'm leaning towards foregoing the bottom screen layer entirely in favor of an aluminum tape ground (square spiral pattern with folds to maintain conductivity) or just simply thin sheet metal - under all these layers it should be difficult to notice. Screen for the top half of the sensor still though to keep it fairly flexible, and most likely half the tearing/replacing if there's not 2 meshes rubbing against each other. We'll see...

Ravenwing, looking more into the pad covers, thanks. My wife has less trouble with the pads, maybe these would be good for her. I'm kinda wondering if at 6' 210lbs maybe I'm just ruining pads by using them at all. Bleh.

Frosty555, I know, I dissected one of the many Intecs I've had, I was very dissapointed to see the material they used was thinner and more delicate than a garbage bag. I think the idea in theory is great, but executed poorly to keep costs down. I'd gladly pay hard pad prices for a soft pad that was guaranteed a few years. These rumors of a rubber pad definitely interest me.

mikieson · Trick Member Joined: 14 Nov 2003

Well I feel for your pain.....
I have Goute in both feet. If I play for long periods of time it can start to flare up. I just bare with it because I love to play.
I still use my homebuilt metal pads. I also have very weak ankles. I can stand still and fall and twist my ankles...LOL...nothing better for someone to see than someone fall for nothing...LOL.......Good luck and take care.

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

Almost done...

Plautus · Trick Member Joined: 17 Oct 2002

Zhayton · Basic Member Joined: 12 Jul 2005

Leather fell through due to cost, I knew a guy who works at an upholstery place who was checkin' it out but they don't keep much backstock, so cheap, thick, easily replaceable vinyl it is. Also, crimped eyelets screwed to the base rather than snaps, again to keep it cheaper. Aluminum flashing for the bottom contact (Bottom frame/guts are done

).

What's got me stuck now is I can't work a sewing machine to save my life. I know it's taking awhile for something rather simple, but it's an experimental-played-by-ear-when-I-have-time project right now.

Pics and maybe tutorial if it holds up/anyone's interested...