Vectrex Joystick Housing Corner Braces

thingiverse

These are corner braces for the sheet metal joystick housing in a vectrex controller. You may not need them if your joystick housing is a perfect square shape. If it has transformed into a more "parallellogramish" shape, then these braces are for you. The short story behind these parts told in a very long and complicated way: These corner braces came to be out of necessity. I had made joystick arcs in aluminium in a CNC mill. That came to an unsuspected sudden stop as I discovered that I could not mount them. Joystick arcs made from aluminium can't flex nor bend like the originals can, so there was no way to insert them into the joystick housing the normal way. So I resorted to drastic measures and bended the walls of the joystick housing with two pairs of flat nosed pliers. That way I could slide the alu arcs into place very sneaky through the widened opening that the bent walls created. The joystick housing is just 0,5mm sheet metal bent into a box shape. Bending it open was never an issue, but bending it back to closed position was more of a challenge. Fast forward a little and these corner braces came to be. Revision 1 is just a small corner brace that is supposed to be glued on to the corner of the joystick housing. Before I did that, I realized it was a stupid idea. What if I needed to disassemble the joystick module for whatever reason? With glued corner braces that wouldn't be possible. So I made revision 2 that uses the mounting holes and screws for the joystick bracket to stay in place. Fast forward a little more and I had learned that there needed to be an A and B variation in LEFT and RIGHT version for them all to mount the right way. The A and B version is just added clearance for the potentiometer sticking out between them, and because I with that made them asymmetrical in shape, there needed to be a LEFT and RIGHT variation to the A and B type. So it became a very complicated solution to a very small almost non existing problem of my own invention...