Custom Plywood Deck with Lid for Jacob Hubs

Hey Guys,

for my Jacob Hubs I wanted to have a stealthy deck cut out of 15mm plywood. My plan was to have a raptor style lid on the top for easy access to the battery and dual VESCs.

The lid was supposed to be done in 4mm plywood and the enclosure also in 15mm - bringing the total thickness to 30mm for the deck. I pictured the enclosure to be glued to the deck. Deck dimensions are 80x24cm.

Since I have never done something like this and only recently found out about “unpressed” flat plywood decks (see http://imgur.com/a/Mjodj) my experience is very limited and I was hoping someone might be able to help me in finding weak spots in the design before I have this actually milled. For example I have no clue if the deck will be able to hold my weight (70kg) with so much wood removed.

Top and bottom view: Included is a 10S3P Liion battery made out of two 5S modules.

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Thats great that your trying it out - i want to do the same

So no one has an idea? What about @whitepony @longhairedboy or @lowGuido?

super difficult to tell. the only ones with real experience when it comes to that kind of construction is @chaka and @evoheyax

I would probably try to make the lower “enclosure” part of the board - with wood -> carbon/gfk in a solid epoxy connection to the board frame.

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the markups look beautiful. But if you want strength, you need to press veneers. The beauty of pressing is that you can press concave also. My first decks were flat tops. No concave feels very weird, and even going 20 mph on such a deck feels really strange.

My channel design is exactly identical. From what I found, the other way to do this is to have a few “base” layers, which provide the fundamental support of the board. These layers have no center cut out, and are the foundation of the board. The hollow layers do provide quite of bit of support, but maybe only 40% or less. The base provides at least 60% of the support, and with out them, I had issues with cracking.

You might be able to get away with this design if you epoxy the piece that sticks out on the bottom to the frame, as @whitepony said. You might break on that middle frame piece though.

It also depends on the wood you use too. You want canadian maple or birtch.

There’s only one way to find out, which is to make it and try. You’d be surprised by the strength you can get (at least I was with my deck).

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Walnut is even stronger than maple . Maybe use a few layers of it where you need extra strength.

planned on using 15mm birch plywood - That is the only thick plywood available in my local store.

Shop around ask a real carpenter and building grade plywood really isn’t that strong

Wish me luck guys. Still need to glue the bottom to the deck and test if it can actually hold my weight. :wink:

Oh and it is beech plywood now - not birch

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Looks great! Looking to see how it turns out!

Excellent, I’ve got a couple designs similar to this kicking around in CAD. Very curious to see how this turns out. It certainly “looks” strong enough, hope it passes your load testing! :muscle:

Care to show your designs :slight_smile:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5829395ead4897103665b37f/w/70b4264065dab714f3ed218c/e/53917047835d9353f997e8de

Nothing in there is CNC ready, but a few of my musings…

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Well looks like I did not account for all the cable thickness and plugs. Will be a really tight fit and I probably have to replace the VESC capacitor board wires. For anybody wanting to try this the files are here:

https://grabcad.com/library/electric-skateboard-deck-1

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hello Maxid, really like your deck and I do hope that it works out.

Regarding thickness, I’ve fallen into the same trap when doing an ABS enclosure for one of my builds. Made it too thin. :frowning:

How deep is your room for the electronics, inside measurements?

Would laminating a few layers of fiberglass on the top and or bottom of something like this help keep the thin board but add the strength it needs?

on top makes no sense. Bottom would make it stiffer for sure - but also heavier and a little bulkier

There are several boards that do top, so I feel like it makes some sense to someone to do it. It wouldn’t be much more weight then what a thicker board would be would it?

I would fiberglass the top and glue the bottom piece to the board and fiber glass the entire bottom of the board.

The reason why you don’t do top is because the forces that occur there cause compression - and added gfk will not help for compression. Underneath the deck you have tension and that is where carbon or gfk can help much better. Adding something on top increases the weight while not helping at all in regards of strength or stiffness.

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