GC2 protection

[davray666]

Did not like any of the official ones, so I made my own.
Firmly attached to the garage concrete floor. Leveled and target aligned.
Base is made of solid Birch wood and the rest is 6mm acrylic.
Back is open to enable easy slide in and out.

[Bubba22]

Looks great dav. What's the clear material? How thick? What is the hole sizes? I take it your not lefty friendly!

[davray666]

Don't know any lefties so that was never a concern.
The holes are much bigger than they have to be. I just made them small enough to not let a ball thru.
Camera holes are 35mm and the Xenon FLASH hole is 30x40mm.
I could probably optimize it if I open the unit and check the lenses but this was a quick 3h job. Pretty sure the Xenon FLASH can be covered as well but again did not want to waste time to find out. Busy playing golf :-)

PS.
As for the other questions, you need to read the post again :-)

[Bubba22]

Re read it. Got it. Good work.

[mthunt]

Nice workmanship. I take it all you have to do is slide it in and it's aligned.

With all these GC2 and Skytrak home made protection, I have to ask, has anyone damaged one? Not being critical, just curious.

[davray666]

The protection is precision made and target aligned. Since the holes are bigger than they have to be there is no need to have a fixed position.
I just slide it in and align it by looking at the front. It's easy to see a 1 degree misalignment by just looking at it vs the enclosure and it does not have to be more precise than that. If required I will add stops inside that I can use for a more precise alignment.

The GC2 placement is further away from the ball than Skytrak and I was never even close to hitting the Skytrak after 1 year of use and I had my fare share of shanks. But the protection saved it twice when others used the sim.
Once from a Hybrid toe and another time from a driver toe hit.

But I would say that if you only have decent golfers in the sim room, then there is no need for a protection. At least not for protecting it from breaking.
Another thing that happens once in a while without a protection is a ball bounce back from the screen hitting the unit and moving it. Not a big deal since even a Skytrak can take that kind of hit but it's annoying because you have to realign the unit.

I actually did a high speed video today to see how my new screen design behaves and how it interacts with the second level back stop screen. A bounce back from the screen actually hit the protection and I have it all on video. Without the protection the GC2 would have been fine since there's not that much power in those balls. But it feels nice to not have to think about it.

[Ronsc1985]

Nice workmanship. I take it all you have to do is slide it in and it's aligned.

With all these GC2 and Skytrak home made protection, I have to ask, has anyone damaged one? Not being critical, just curious.

Although I have the heavy metal enclosure which was included when I bought my GC2 used, the only time I ever used it was when a non golfer was hitting into the cage. Aside from that it is virtually impossible to hit the unit unless you miss the face completely and hit the ball off the side of the toe. I have hit several hosel rockets when screwing around and they don't even come close to hitting the GC2.

BTW there is nothing wrong with the metal enclosure. It's made with such heavy metal you could probably shoot it with a small caliber handgun and not damage anything. It is really heavy. As to getting hit with a rebounding ball I would think if that is a problem you might want to fix the cage/screen suspension system before you take one in the crotch or head.

[JV17]

Wow davray666, that's pretty slick. I wish I was crafty enough to make something like that. There'd be glue all over mine, and it would be lopsided! Haha.