N64 controller replacement gear comparison

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

I recently became aware of a second manufacturer of replacement gears for the N64 controller. For those unaware the gears are the mechanism in the stick that wear out and cause the dreaded "limb stick" found among heavily used N64 controllers. Up until recently I was only aware of two sellers of a type of fix. Steel sticks (Super Expensive), which provides literal steel replacement sticks and bowl, but only provides refurbished gears. The other being Kitsch Bent which manufactures new gears, bowls, and sticks all sold separately. 

Kitsch Bent Gears:

I made a thread some time ago about my thoughts on the Kitsch Bent Gears my comments copied here:

https://store.kitsch-bent.com/product/n64-joystick-gears 

The store appears to be temporarily closed until June

"So after reading someone suggest the repair parts from Kitsch Bent on here (I can't remember which thread or who mentioned it) I decided to try them out. Specifically the gears since is the only place I've ever seen them for sale. They also offer the bowl but that is/was out of stock when I ordered. I bought 5 sets of them and have installed 4 of them. The positive is that they do make limb sticks stiffer...giggidy....but they definitely are not back to like new. They feel like something is not sized right and is catching something. At first I attempted a fix where i sanded/smoothed spot in the mold where there are dimples in the apex of the curved parts, you can see the basic shape in the picture but not the dimples. These dimples are most certainly from the plastic mold and are just something that happens from manufacturing. I also lubed up the gears and bowl area. These attempted solutions did help some but I think the true culprit might be that the teeth of the gears are just slightly off angle or size and cause some minor binding. The end result is that the stick is stiffer but has less of a snap back to position as if the mismatched gears resists the spring just enough to make it a disappointment. "

Now after working with it some more I believe my conclusions that it was mismatched gears to be incorrect. I did something on another attempt which I didn't do before which was to take a tiny file and gently smooth out (as much as possible) when the gear actually rides in the bowl. Shown in the picture below. That solved most of the hanging up that had occurred before. There is still some rough feeling in certain directions but I now believe that to be due to a rough spot in the bowl which I have not replaced. The only criticism I have left after making the adjustment is that the stick is tight right to left, but still has just a hair of looseness up and down. Not so much to be a problem but just something i noticed.

 

Stangboy Custom Gears:

https://store.stangboycustoms.com/collections/custom-controllers/products/replacement-n64-gears-v1b3

Now for the new gears I have just found out about, manufactured by Stangboy Customs. They are identical to the Kitsch Bent gears but differ in their construction method. Where Kitsch gears are clearly some form of molded plastic, Stangboy's are what they say is "Carbon Printing" which I assume is some form of 3d printing, I didn't bother to look into the actual methodology behind it. But the end result is that these gears have a lot of fine lines, or micro grooves, familiar to anyone that has handled a 3d print. Which is kind of a problem for parts that require rubbing against other parts. Think of it like rubbing your fingers together, because of the ridges of your fingerprints there is much more friction than if they were not there. So these gears required a lot more tweaking for me to be comfortable with them. I ended up using a dremel with a sanding attachment to smooth out any area that may come in contact with something else. Which was a lot more time consuming. Once installed they had about the same amount of play in the up/down direction as the Kitsch gears did but also had about the same amount of play left to right. 

Conclusion.

Kitsch Bent gears are definitely less time consuming and are closer to getting a slackless stick. But they still require a minimal amount of sanding and still have a slight bit of looseness in the up/down direction. Unfortunately there is still no perfect drop in fix for this issue.

Edit: I forgot about this until a minute ago. A promising solution I found was someone on reddit that designed something to be in line with any controller to help make the deadzone more accurate on any third party controller. 

 

Edited May 28, 2020 by LeatherRebel5150

[Tanooki | 4,932]

Any shot that criticism maybe a little off the mark since you only got the gears and not the entire matching mechanism? (Lacking the bowl)

 

I'd agree with you, I'd avoid the second set you got, anything 3D printed that hasn't had a final treatment to make them smooth would be a disaster for wanting smooth operation of a joystick mechanism.  That truly is what standard consumer level 3D printing is with that lines/wafer like grainy linear texturing to it.  Who knows had you not filed some off to get it right and smooth had that added bit of layer made the difference had that one been the molded setup.

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

6 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Any shot that criticism maybe a little off the mark since you only got the gears and not the entire matching mechanism? (Lacking the bowl)

 

I'd agree with you, I'd avoid the second set you got, anything 3D printed that hasn't had a final treatment to make them smooth would be a disaster for wanting smooth operation of a joystick mechanism.  That truly is what standard consumer level 3D printing is with that lines/wafer like grainy linear texturing to it.  Who knows had you not filed some off to get it right and smooth had that added bit of layer made the difference had that one been the molded setup.

Some of the issues may very well be due to the bowl. But I used the same bowl to test each change/configuration this time around so any improvements were due to the action taken if you get my drift. Could a new bowl make it even better? Possibly, but Kitsch didn't have bowls in stock when I ordered and Stangboy doesn't make them. So I just went with what I could.

[Tanooki | 4,932]

Oh no I follow and thought of that, it just hit me you were using a 25 year old bowl and maybe a 25 day old set of gears that weren't made exactly for it or with it in mind down to the millimeter.  My figuring was there could be an ever so slight variance.

 

I get it I'm dealing with ordering issues right now ticking me off, want to make a pair of GBA SP 101s pretty again and walls keep getting thrown up.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

This might have been asked before, and I apologize if this isn't 100% the best place to ask, but...hasn't anyone at this point just gone ahead and cracked a clamshell on a NOS N64 controller and made new injection molds (or at least precisely measured 3D scans) of all of the troublesome, tempermental bits inside the joystick on these?  If not, it seems like a fairly simple solution to an ongoing problem where none of the homebrewed ideas are coming out correctly.  IIRC, the N64 is just at or past the point of its patents expiring, so I'm left scratching my head why nobody has done a 1:1 clone of the original plastic parts.

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

5 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

This might have been asked before, and I apologize if this isn't 100% the best place to ask, but...hasn't anyone at this point just gone ahead and cracked a clamshell on a NOS N64 controller and made new injection molds (or at least precisely measured 3D scans) of all of the troublesome, tempermental bits inside the joystick on these?  If not, it seems like a fairly simple solution to an ongoing problem where none of the homebrewed ideas are coming out correctly.  IIRC, the N64 is just at or past the point of its patents expiring, so I'm left scratching my head why nobody has done a 1:1 clone of the original plastic parts.

I think that's what was attempted with these new ones. But the molds in the Kitsch ones may be slightly off, and molds are expensive AF to get made, which is why I'm sure Stnagboy uses a form of 3D printing because its cheaper. Unfortunately there is no possible way to get smooth performance out of those without a lot of extra work because of the friction of the ridges created during printing. I think one day we'll end up with drop in replacements.

[foldor | 4]

On 5/29/2020 at 6:23 PM, LeatherRebel5150 said:

I think that's what was attempted with these new ones. But the molds in the Kitsch ones may be slightly off, and molds are expensive AF to get made, which is why I'm sure Stnagboy uses a form of 3D printing because its cheaper. Unfortunately there is no possible way to get smooth performance out of those without a lot of extra work because of the friction of the ridges created during printing. I think one day we'll end up with drop in replacements.

I"m curious if there's any STL files available for what Stangboy prints? I woudl think something this small would benefit from resin based printing as opposed to FDM. It should solve the layer lines problem.