Thanks for all the interest in the Atari BZ/FF grommets. After playing around with the first prototype for a few days, I feel it needs some (relatively minor) changes to be solid enough to send out. Will update soon.
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How much for the Food Fight grommet? I have an old FF Joystick that needs a few updated parts.OK, maybe a bit more than minor changes...
After testing this design for a few days, it was clear it wasn't strong enough. The rings were too thin and cracked easily.
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So, I made several major changes this time around:
- Thicker rings for more strength.
- To prevent / improve dead zone slop, I made the inner bearing deeper to grab ahold of the stick better.
- The flex member bows upward rather than downward now. Given how the stick moves relative to this grommet, I thought this made more sense.
The new ring designs are shown below. Both have more depth now. The walls are thicker as well. The anchor points in the outer ring are now recessed to avoid interference with the inner ring during displacement.
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Complete assembly:
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The mold process is shown below. As before, the rings are molded 'in situ' so the silicone cures all the pieces together.
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Finished result:
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These seem to work well. They seem to have plenty of displacement available.
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Fitment in the Battlezone stick housing is fine. Play action is pretty good.
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I don't have a Food Fight joystick, so I sent a few of these to another member to test in theirs. Hopefully these changes will still work in that joystick too.
Hi,
Are your Defender joystick rebuild kits for sale?
Thanks,
—Rich
I hope you guys beat the shit out of them. I still have to drop in my robo ones, but i shake the shit out of that machine! Put em to the test!
I should be putting 2 of these in ICB shortly.I have not. The blue stuff actually has a lower durometer than the green. So, maybe too wimpy. There are some stiffer silicones that may be OK. I need to get one into a game and see how it plays, and my only opto stick game (Joust) is down at the moment.
I think you are correct. At least about the rotation rods. I think the leaf actuator rod is not subjected to much force and should be OK. I decided to fall back to the older design and use 1/4" bolts that screw in to nuts captured in the actuator body:
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I'm sure some appropriately sized rods pressed into the actuator would work too. But, they need to be the right length, and I'm trying to minimize fabricated pieces.
Since I don't want to require any permanent modification of the housing, I placed an additional bearing outside the joystick frame to allow the bolt head to rotate freely:
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Assembly was completed in a few minutes with a screwdriver and some pliers to tighten the nuts:
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This assembly feels solid with no slop. Better than the plastic rod version. Pretty strong.
My defender needs this mod. I'm going to try it and see how it holds up.
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