Rebuild my build

[ninja]

I made this thread to show people some new information, maybe somebody will learn something and also give me some advice. You all know how helpfull and good community we are. So hope you will enjoy this thread

At first I made this board:

After a couple of rides I realized all the imperfections that I am unhappy with, and so I decieded to rebuild my build to get it how I want it to be.

I was unhappy with:

1. Motor mount was a bit moving after rides, I could move it with my hand even when it was tightened at maximum

2. Electronics was so tight in that enclosure, that it was a massive stress for wires for openig enclosure every time when I need to charge my lipos. Also lipos were dameged by pressing against the vesc, one cell got punctured, I didn’t notice that at the beginning. I kept my lipos in military box for munition, it is sealed. Only after week or so I opened my box and strong smell was coming out, I was lucky that it didn’t catch a fire or poison me, my parrot and my girlfriend. Thanks to seal of that military box. I took that cell off and in the middle of the night get to open field, where I shoot it with my air rifle I felt very angry about that, because it was impossible to get same cell to replace it. Only options were to buy new lipo pack. I decieded to sell those rest 7s 8000mah and invest that money to li- ion batteries wich I’m waiting from EU group buy now. One of the reasons why that pack was punctured, was not only tight place in enclosure, it was also flex of a deck, so next …

3. Flex of a deck- it was flex 2 I think, but I like stiff boards. Even my other non electric longbord is stiff and I like feeling of a solid deck under my feet

4. Charging batteries taking out of enclosure, since lipos are a bit danger I was charging them out of enclosure, just to be sure that if something goes wrong my board will not catch a fire Also charging time for those packs was just terrible- about 4h for each pack with imax B6. So all day charging and sitting next to them while they charging, no, no, no. That’s not for me.

5. Bulky enclosure , it looked nice, but bulky in height + small for everyday opening, wires were crowded by force in that enclosure.

   

6. Ugly LED lights that started to comming off the board, so ends of those LED strips were unattached to the board. Color of those LED strips while they are not turned on was white, I prefer black.

   

7. Wires from motor to enclosure, so nothing here to add, just don’t like that

   
   

8. Cell checker outside the board, it got F***ed after riding in wet conditions

   
   

Part one: motor mount

I decieded to weld it to the truck, that I will never need to worry about it anymore. So I scratched paint off the truck so that my friend could weld it. It was a bich to get paint off, no acetone ore white spirit or other paint remover helped, not even hot gun. With hot gun was a bit easier to get it off with sandpaper and small files to get in corners. But I done it and my friend welded mount to truck. Then I sanded imperfections and repaint it and end up with this:

Looks cool I think

Part two: making sexy carbon enclosure

I made a mold from wood that was laying at my basement and using my style Ghetto wacuming to add a fiberglass on top. Mold is orange because at first I thought use only paint to get nice surface for mold, it also could work, but I decide use fiberglass with resin.

You need a vacuum!!

Without that, process will make you mad as hell, because corners will not stick. I recommend my style- I call it “GHETTO VACUUMING”! So items you need is:

1. Vacuum bag for cloth storage- they cost about 3-5$ it is strong bag with zip and hole for sucking out air (it has membrane inside, so air coming only out) . just choose right size of the bag.

2. Vacuum cleaner.

So that’s it, I invented this for myself, didn’t find this style anywhere

And it works! First time when I heard word vacuum for carbon part making, the first thing that came in my mind was vacuum bags for cloth storage. My girlfriend is using them to save space in closet for winter clothes.

One thing- outside of part what touches bag will have pressed out resin bumps in bag form, but you can sand it or probably you can use peel ply in between part and bag. I heard that there is some kind of peel ply that sucks all not needed resin in, after you just peel that ply off and you end up with surface clean without deformation, but it will look like sanded, so not glossy. But I didn’t try that because didn’t know that peel ply exists! Will try it next time

This GHETTO VACUUMING works and it presses a hell out of that part in mold- So you end up with precise and stronger part due to compressing and less resin in your product!

Of course real vacuum bagging will suck out resin all the time till it cures, and end result will be more pressed and stronger part with less resin in it, so lighter as well!! But on buget GHETTO VACUUMING is Ace.

One tip: Use resin as little as possible, just to soak the cloth!!! More resin you use- Uglier and Weaker part will be. When you mixing resin use same weight as cloth you are going to use.

So about 5$ you can get GHETTO VACUUMING system at home, isn’t it great! And you can use that bag over and over again!!! Of course if there is no leaks, but even then some tape will sort this out, just cover the punctured hole and you done.

Wood it self sucks a lot resin inside, so I soaked it with just a resin day before I add a fiberglass. Goal was to get smooth and good surface for molding. So next day I applied resin then fiberglass, and with my paint brush I brushed it to mold till cloth was soaked with resin. At this point is no need to add more resin, main thing is soak cloth from under. It wouldn’t be possible to get that cloth stick to corners and sides of a mold without vacuum. Fiberglass cloth was lifting away from sides and corners. So I put whole thing in simple Vacuum bag for clothes. And used vacuum cleaner to suck out air. At first it is important to press out air by hands so that bag stays smooth as possible on the mold, then close zip of the bag and using vacuum cleaner suck out air about 10 sec., maybe more if neded, but check that resin is not going in to the hole, you don’t want mess up your vacuum cleaner.

Visually I watch if resin is coming close to sucking hole, for me it never gets close to it! It’s very easy to see where resin is moving! Since there is vacuum, resin still slowly moves away by bag grooves, sometimes I help with my fingers to push out more resin. As I press with fingers from detail towards grooves. I can see a lot of resin mowing away from my fiberglass part. If needed again you can connect to vacuum cleaner for 10 more seconds to get more pressure Less resin- better part is!

After I took my mold out of bag I trimmed edges and water sanded with 400 grid surface to get it smooth.

Then I wax it with molding wax, guy at compozite shop told me to wax it 7 times for new mold, after that I can wax once. so I did it. Waxing it with sponge - wait 15 min. - wipe with piece of T-shirt, again wax and so on till 7 times are done. But it was my wax, for you maybe it will be different, there are other options like relise agents and so.

Next step was wrapping my board in film (for food storrage), because I need to make exact shape of boards concave for my enclosures lips. So that enclosure will match with my board.

Then I drilled 2 holes through the deck, I think it was 3,5 mm or 4 mm. I needed them for my screws to hold mold in place. Later on I filled those holes with epoxy, so no much harm for board.

Next thing was to wax whole area of mold + a bit on film, but resin will not stick to film anyway, but I did it anyway.

!!! But I suggest to fill a gap between mold and board with some plasticine or wax crayons, because I didn’t do that and I had a very tough time to get part off the mold. My part was glued to mold all the way around the edge, in one place even carbon was curled under of mold

I weighted a carbon cloth what I’m gonna be using and made same weight resin. I used 4 layers of 200g/m2 Twill carbon cloth to make my enclosure. Why Twill, because Twill carbon better deals with corners and more complex shapes. Also it looks awesome.

Next step is to add resin with brush to mold, then lay carbon, try to get all air out by moving bubble with brush or creditcard ot special roller for that purpose, brush it with paint brush, again add resin, cloth…so on till last layer, in my case it was outside of the enclosure, so this part will be visible. That why pay attension to not disarrange weve, better keep it weaves compressed together, it is better that somebody will help to add this visible layer of carbon. I had no body to help me at this time, also did not pay too much attension for the weave, now I can see that weaves on my enclosure are bit deformed. So, PLEASE, pay atention for laying visible layer of carbon, so that you can make a nice looking part!!! Also I want mention that I used that roller that guy suggested at compozite shop. It is o.k. but you need to be cearfull, to not deform weaves when you pressing air out, I f***ed up few weaves because of too much pressure on my roller, So be carefull- ask for assistance and compress a bit cloth from all sides to middle that weaves are similar, before adding to mold.

Use about 3cm longer cloth to all sides, because it will be much easier to work with, I had not too much carbon, I bearly could made my parts with it , so it was hard to work with material when you cannot lay it to one side more, if you do so an other side isn’t enough material, so need to peel it off and redo it again. That way weave is deformed. So extra 3 cm is brilliant to each side if you have, 2 cm also works, but 3 cm make everything easier.

When you done place all your deck/mold in vacuum bag and do as I mentioned before, when I was making mold with fiberglass layer. So it should look like this:

Leave till it cures, moustly it is 24h. Then open it, gett your part out of mold.

Trimm sides then water sand it. Since I was not using that peel ply (but I don’t know much about it), surface was with imperfections, resin was getting in form of bag grooves and so, but nothing terrible. Sanding, applying resin, sanding…so on- can help! But keep in mind, that it will add weight. So better it would be to get as smooth surface as possible from the beginning, so that you just add two layers of coating resin with sanding in between. In my case I added resin 3 or 4 times till everything was smooth and then two layers of UV coating resin. But I think these grams are nothing special for e-skate, it will perform the same if it’s 100g havier or 100g lighter. In our body in day time our weight shifts even for 4 kg. So not a big deal to add those layers of resin on top. At the beginning my enclosure was 235g after all sanding and applying it’s 350g, so it is not rc plane, it is e-skate, it supposed to get my 90kg ass around the block My wooden box, that was at least two times smaller, was 410g, so anyway this enclosure is lighter like wooden enclosure was before.

Here is nice video, how to get sexy lookin parts, when they are a bit ugly, except I didn’t use that spray coat I think it is not durrable, I use super clear, self levaling, UV protected coating resin! :

Repair Carbon Fiber Parts To Mirror Finish (With Epoxy Coating Resin)

You can see my imperfections of the part from bagging without peel ply:

So I water sanded it at the start with 320 grid I think, just be careful not to sand till fiber, I did that, it looks nasty, so avoid that So picture after sanding:

So I end up with this after 4 times applying basic resin and two times coating resin, I know that I could use that self leveling coating resin all the time in this process, like in that video, but I hadn’t that resin at the time, it was hard to find it, only after month or so I found it in other compozite shop in my city:

I added two layers of unidirectional carbon fiber on the edges of my enclosure, so that they are much stronger. I have very narrow edges and holes are close to edge, extra carbon will only help. I should made a bit smaller mold, I thought 1cm for edges will be fine, but 2cm would be much better, but anyway, I did what I did. So that’s how looks those edges after adding extra carbon and sanding:

So part about making enclosure is done.

TO BE CONTINUED…

[sl33py]

Nice work @ninja! Great writeup and really cool progression from the first board to this new setup.

Have you got it finished and rolling now? Be great to see the completed setup vs the old one.

I’ve done a fair bit of GF and CF work now with epoxy - doing almost the same as you. I used packing (clear) tape instead of saran wrap (your food wrap).

I have a vacuum pump and am building a vacuum controller for longer vacuum times (while epoxy sets) - so many cool thinks you can do with epoxy and practice!!

Nicely done sir!

[ninja]

Part three: Nice LED’s

At first I wanted only black leds and put them on top of my enclosure. In my mind came only one option- to cover my LED strips with heat shrink, so I did it:

Heat shrinking with a pink lighter is necessary

Then I cutted holes for LED’s with scissors, something like this:

Now those LED strips look much better. I put them on my enclosure to see how they gonna look, if i’ll be attaching them on top of an enclosure. And know what? It looked like crap, they made enclosure look bulky and cables, NO, I don’t want cables to be visible! So I decieded to integrate them into enclosure. At the start I thought that I just drill a holes where leds will be, but even my LED strips have a slight shift of the LED placement. In other words both LED strips are not the same. That why I decieded to make a 6mm grooves in the enclosure:

I used multitool to cut them out, a small files and sandpaper on flat hard thin metal plate, so that I can sand evenly.

But when I cutted first line, I said Fk!! Why? Because of this cut- bottom of an enclosure now is very flexy, imagine 2kg battery rocking in this flexy bottom. But I said Fk it! I will sort it out afterwards anyway, so I finished to cut whole grooves! My first plan before cuting grooves- that I cut grooves and just glue LED strips to the enclosure from the under with silicone. But now I couldn’t do so, because, now whole stress from weight of the batteries will be on leds.

Then day after I was thinking all day how to reinforce bottom of a enclosure, I had many ideas, but nothing close to heart. So at the evening I was scratching ass or samething and watching some crappy movie on my laptop…and BANG!!! Like from nowhere solution came to me. Like chaneling some guru beings from out of space who told me what to do…

So I came up with my invention, I call it “LED sliders”. Made from carbon using “GHETTO VACUMMING”.

I took a piece of wood, macgyver tape and LED strips. So I just taped my LED strips to the wood, wery carefully and as tight as I can, with no Air under the tape. I layed leds with their back to tape and actual leds to wood. I layed two more layers of tape, because I wanted mold be a little bigger so that I can tigtly but slide LEDs inside sliders and there wont be wobble inside. So if I just use one layer of tape, there would be possibility that sliders would be too tight:

Then next step was adding carbon. I had few left overs of carbon cloth. I wanted 4 layers, but only had material for 3 layers, so on 4 layer I used small strips of carbon cloth, one strip even was made from carbon threds. I added those strips for extra reinforcement. So again, without vacuum it would be impossible to get nice shape that is needed, carbon was just lifting up:

But with vacuum everything was nice:

Next day I took them out:

Trimmed them and bit watersanded them:

As you can see one side have very tiny lip/ contact point, it is because my grooves in enclosure are close to the sides, also I couldn’t make those grooves closer to middle, because my enslosure is low profile. Only to battery pack fit in, so that distance between sliders is exact like battery 14cm. Here you can see how it looks, when I glued sliders in enclosure, also you can see that one lip is ok, but other very tiny, because of being so close to side of an enclosure where enclosure starts to curve. But it’s nothing special, I’ll put carbon fiber on top of sliders, when I’ll get carbon on next week. I used BISON epoxy glue to attach sliders to enclosure, I just love that glue, it is Super-strong (up to 170 kg/cm²):

Now, because of sliders profile- bottom of a enclosure are stiff as rock and easy will hold battery pack:

The nice thing is that you can slide in LED, it’s not wobbling in there, you can change leds just by sliding them out, Leds are integrated, look super cool. They also sealed, only hole is where you slide them in, but I plan that end of slider just glue with silicone. Silicone will be easy get off, if needed to change LED strip:

LED part is over, so wait for updates in deck transformations and electronics… peace

TO BE CONTINUED…

[landonkun]

@ninja

I took that cell off and in the middle of the night get to open field, where I shoot it with my air rifle

Please tell me you took a video of this

[ninja]

No, I didn’t!

[Namasaki]

Nice thread! Really enjoyed sharing your journey thus far. You must have a lot of patience and determination to clean all the paint off the truck like that. But when welding aluminum it is crucial. The weld job looks strong enough and your enclosure looks totally awesome! Can’t wait to see the finished product.

[ninja]

Thanks! Yeah I’ll post soon next part that called: making awesome deck

[Okami]

woah so how many hours have you spent so far on doing this enclosure alone? I mean including the ‘‘channel cutting’’ and ‘‘slider sleeve’’ making for the leds…

The end result indeed looks nice but I assume u spent quite a lot of time doing this

[IsTalo]

OMG, put this faster you can

[ninja]

Part four: making awesome deck

I wanted integrated cabels in the deck like @longhairedboy style. That is brilliant idea I think!

So here is my deck at the beginning:

I sanded whole bottom of the deck to remove that printed thing off. Then I needed to make a grooves for cabels, at that moment multitool would be just perfect, but I only had drill and old crappy chisel. I draw a lines where that groove will be and made a multiple holes with the drill. Enough depth that wires will fit and a bit more, so that resin can cover them about 3mm on the top. I used chisel to get out all not needed wood :

Glued in wires with bullet connectors. Since it will be carbon on bottom of a deck, I thought it would be nice to insulate those bullet connectors. I didn’t like idea to use shrink tube to insulate them, because resin not bond to shrink tube! So I thought that, maybe, when laying carbon, just leave a gap between connectors and carbon cloth. No, it’s o.k. idea, but i want something else. So I invent: “Submarine” :

I used fiberglass thread to wrap around connectors making some kind of container, wich I filled with resin. It looks like submarine, really!! Idea is to seperate carbon from conectors, also with this submarine efect, connectors are reinforced even more to the deck!:

Sanded everything to be nice. Then I removed old grip tape, it was crap, it was made from some kind of paper actually Not like normal griptapes are made of some kind of plastic. Anyway, took it off, it was tearing by the small peaces. Then I sanded top of a deck to get it clean and nice:

My idea about top of a deck was, that I want it to be water proof. So, that I can add any design of grip tape I want. So, that dirt will not ruin stylish gaps between grip tape peaces. I know that I could just use epoxy to soak it, but I wanted to use 2 layers of fiberglass on top, not sure, but I think it was 200g/m2 one. So I use “GHETTO VACUUMING” to add a two layers of fiberglass.:

Of course trimmed edges, then water sanded deck with 320 grid paper, it was bumpy so I used that grid of sandpaper:

And add coating resin, two layers with water sanding in between with 400 grid sandpaper. In picture is how it look just few minutes after I had added coating resin, it is not cured there:

And I want to mention, that I stuffed truck holes with plastic bag, so that resin is not going into holes!

Next step was adding carbon on the bottom of the deck, so that it becomes sexy and stiff. I serched for info in this forum about how many layers do I need to get deck stiff. Found that 2 layers of carbon would be enough. I had left carbon Twill weave just for one layer. I needed to buy one. That Twill carbon was expensive, so there in the composite shop in my city also were unidirectional carbon fiber, it was twice as cheap. Also it has much more strenght, because there has only one direction of the fibers, so that only in this direction it is strongest. The fibers are the same amount like in my twill weave carbon, but all of them faced one direction. So you can imagine that Twill has strenght to two directions, just a half in each direction of a strenght of unidirectional carbon fiber. But that’s my opinion. I think so, because both of those carbon types I had was 200g/m2.

When I tested cured left overs of Carbon Fiber, unidirectional carbon fiber had a lot more need for more force to bend it! Felt like, at least as twice as much! So bought that unidirectional carbon fiber.

Next step was to add an electric tape on sides of a deck, to protect them from resin, also truck mounting holes were stuffed with plastic bag. Wrapped my submarine, also wires into the tape.

Next was laying CF on bottom of the deck, I decided to do it without vacuuming. So I added first layer of unidirectional carbon fiber. It was a bich. On the bottom side of a carbon cloth fibers where not tight together. So at first, I layed it a bit not in desired place, and when I fifted it to get it in the right place, many fibers were sticked to resin, making a big mess. That mess was bumps under CF, so imperfections in surface, but I took care of them as good as I could:

Then I added next layer withTwill CF:

I layed CF without vacuum, after 24h I trimmed edges and water sanded with 400 grid, and next applied coating resin:

Then again water sanding with 400 grid:

Then after next layer of coating resin I sanded it a bit with 400 than 800…1000…1500…2000…and last with 2500 grid sandpaper.

It is important to protect sides of the deck with, in my case with electrical tape, because a lot off resin will drop by sides of the deck!!

It is also handy to put board on some shoe box or something, that the edges are free, so edges are not touching table. I rised board on the two little carbord boxes from bike pedals.

Also when working with coating resin you need to think about this too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg-h0oK6wOw

I used heat gun, but still get a millions of tiny bubbles after it cured, I followed this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZckiG0CQz0

Next thing was to paint sides of the deck with black paint. So sanded them and added painters tape on the bottom and onthe top of the deck, close to the edge. I painted those sides 5 times, wood was sucking a lot paint inside, so only after 5th time I thought it was o.k. Not perfect, but ok.I also a bit sanded first 3 layers to get smoother surface.

Next step was to make threads in deck for enclosure, so I used these guys (I’m gonna be using 4M bolts for an enclosure):

So I drilled holes in the bottom of the deck, but only so deep that those threads fit, about 5mm deeper already will be through the deck:

At first I drilled right size for those stainless threads to be screwed in, but when I started to screw them in, those outside threads started to mess up my carbon by pulling it up. So I drilled holes at same size, that I can just put them in without screwing Also drilling those holes I needed to get them same angle as concave of a deck, so that head of the screw matches with enclosures angle of the concaved lips. And I glued them in with a bison epoxy:

I had a cured resin inside those threads, but I easy could get it out using Screw tap:

Then I screwed enclosure to the deck, to see how does it look, still both parts not buffed:

Then I buffed deck with no.2 x3 times and then with no.1 buffing paste x3 times. I was using special sponges, one rougher sponge for no.2 paste other softer sponge for no.1 finishing paste. I was using a drill for buffing, so no special tools needed. My drill has speed controller, so I tuned it down to slowest speed and carefully buffed the deck. If using fast speed for buffing you can ruin your work, paste will burn epoxy. It is important to not keep together both sponges, also it is necessary to make sure that if even smallest particle of the paste no.2 are on the surface when working with finishing paste. It will scratch your work.

So buffed deck:

I putted on trucks and made a grip tape design. I made two like sport car strips, so board should be now even faster :

I step up on the board to feel how flexy it is now. And …BANG… it still flexes! It is a lot stiffer, but it bends. When just stepping on it bends a very little, but when I jump it bends Now I need to take it again apart, sand down coating layers right down to the fiber, and add extra CF. I’ll be adding two more Twill weave carbon layers. I know I could put unidirectional and then Twill, but that unidirectional one was a bitch to work with.

So, Yeah, next week I’ll get some Twill carbon and I’ll add it to my deck, same as I’ll add it to reinforce my “LED SLIDERS”.

So learn from my mistakes, check flex before you doing finishing jobs, just feel how it flexes in real life. Just don’t trust idea that two layers of carbon will make your board stiff as a dick in the morning

O.K. no more updates at the moment, need to wait for carbon and need to wait for stuff from GB groupbuy to finish my board.

TO BE CONTINUED…

[wmj259]

Sick.

[mccloed]

Soooo…Nice…

[Fiori]

Awesome job man this was a pleasure to read. I’ll be checking back for updates!

[ninja]

@Fiori

Thanx

I’m glad that people can share, learn, teach and just have a good time!

This forum is awesome!

I just can’t wait to ride it…

@sl33py

Thanx!

No, I need to do a few things to it, also outside is snow right now + still waiting stuff from GB groupbuy!

@Okami

I really didn’t count, but a lot! I started to rebuild my build in November, I’m doing it in night times.

[Baz_L]

So inspiring!

[SageTX]

Wow. I just think I might be able to redo my enclosure! That looks great!

[Namasaki]

your truck paint job looks great! I think you should paint the front truck and the base plates to match.

[ninja]

I was thinking about that also, but very quickly decide to leave them as they are! I think it’s more interesting if there is both green colours on those trucks. I do not want to converge all trucks into a single tone with wheels.

One option is paint other truck too, but leave both base plates as they are. But time will show, I was thinking about painting, so if I redecide, I’ll do it! Need to look at them for a while to be sure leave or not.

[ninja]

O.K. you got me, I’ll paint. I looked at them and, yes, they should be painted

[Lambjr088]

I have read the build of your component enclosure and may b this might help us with the fiber. Hope you dont mind the post. https://youtu.be/ioj1YBm6bJY