Last Sunday I 3D printed a thumbstick for my Xbox 360 controller, a thumbstick is, as Wikipedia puts it: “An analog stick (or analog stick in British English), sometimes called a control stick, joystick, or thumbstick, is an input device for a controller (often a game controller) that is used for two-dimensional input.” A thumbstick is a piece that is on most video game controllers that you move around to control the objects in the video game. My thumbstick on my controller had a bit broken off of it, and it sometimes hurt when I pushed it up every time that I played a game. Then I decided to print a new one on the ender-3, I found one on Thingiverse (Here), so then I downloaded the STL file, uploaded it to Cura, then saved the data to the sd card and started printing. When the print was finished, I noticed that the supports were a little stronger then I had expected. But I was able to take off the supports using pliers, after that, I took apart my controller and was switching them when I realized that I needed to make the hole on the bottom of the thumbstick bigger so I can attach it on. I spent another ten minutes trying to drill the right size hole, once I had gotten it to fit I put the controller back together, and another problem came I needed to sand the side part down more so that it made it easier for me to move it around. Once I had done that, I tried it out, and it worked pretty well! I am excited to use the 3D printer for other parts I may need in the future.
(Above Xbox one controller thumbstick)
