I've inquired a scratch built half-finished project from someone I'm becoming good friends with. He hasn't had the time to work on it in over 10 years or more, so I offered to buy it and hopefully get it finished with a lot of work ahead of me. This machine was scratched built and it's absolutely gorgeous! The craftsmanship is unreal! This shovel is built to scale with all the proper measurements, gearing, ect.. off the real 2800 he had the chance to work out and build the model off.
My plan with this machine is to build a control board similar to what I want to do with my 8750 Dragline project where I bring in 110v household power into the board and convert it to 12v's for all the electronics. On this board will have the joysticks to run the machine, switches ect.. Im on the hunt again for parts for both projects like joysticks that I can use to run 4 positions and speed controllers.
I do have this set of real P&H joysticks, but I'm not huge on electrical and don't know if I'm able to use them.
So far my plan is to keep it simple is run a simple speed controller with a dial to control the speed of the motors and keep it set on the one speed as once you add the value of having 0-100 power on the joysticks your electronics get very complex and pricey too!
Hopefully, this will be a pretty active thread and any ideas or input are welcome!