Non-Metal DDR Pad (Plywood/Hardwood)

[fidofido]

If I posted this in the wrong place, my apologies. It is not metal, it is made out of wood.

I made this non-metal hardpad a few years ago.

Here it is.

The design is simple and easy to replicate, as well as durable and customizable. (You could make doubles!)



Basically, it's a hardwood door cut to the size of a ddr pad. Using a router, some channels are cut to run the contact wires through. The wires in this particular pad were cat 3 telephone wire. Then a thick sturdy board of plywood is cut to size, and the parts that you step on are cut out. then you cut out small strips of sheet metal and attach the contact wire to them with small nails or screws that also hold the sheet metal on the pads, making sure the ones on the arrow part are aligned with the parts on the bottom of the pad. Here is a pic of that that makes more sense than what I am typing:


So then I used some little pieces of wood or washers to raise the pad above the door before screwing them together with screws.

For bounce in the arrows (to separate the contacts from eachother and to prevent mis-fires) I put some kind of rubber in there (the kind of material they make orthotic shoe inserts out of.) More can be added/removed to increase/decrease sensitivity.

Then the contact wires are soldered into a controller. I would not do it this way again, and would opt to use a control box with IIDX- style buttons to control selecting the song buttons.

The broken controller I used:


Another picture:


Thanks for checking this out!

[ddrenthusiast]

Could you have used duct tape instead of nails for the metal?

[8ftmetalhead]

a nice basic design. How much did it cost you?
Is it very responsive considering what it's made of?

Admittedly it doesn't look very flash, but if it works, awesome.
You could always give it a spraypaint and a sand

I myself made a hard pad using 18mm mdf boards with 16mm mdf for the panels, it works better than the arcade machine that I've played on. Although admittedly it's not a very responsive machine.

[fidofido]

After tweaking it a bit it became more responsive than the ddr arcade machine. It's also easier to reach the arrows because they are not sunk as far as the arcade.

It is admittedly cheap, like the third world version

[MyChemicalRomance]

Wow, that actually looks pretty cool! I believe the word would be 'ghettofabulous'. But hey, as long as it gets the job done
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[ChilliumBromide]