My name is jack and I am part of a team of 6 students in my level 3 high school metal shop class. And if you couldn’t guess it already our project that we have chosen for this year is to mass produce (one for each of us and one for the shop) electric longboards. The project for us is to make the trucks, deck, and motor mounts. The rest of the materials will be provided individually because a few of us have chosen not to attach the expensive motors. Although we have decided on using motors from Enertion, the rest of the electronics remain to be decided on. My hope is that my group and especially myself could ask for the aid of your knowledge so I can make more informed decisions when putting together my electric longboard.
So a little bit about the project…
Deck -the current dimensions for our deck design are 36" long with a 28" wheelbase 10" wide that tapers to 9" I’ll post pictures later of the design. To make it we will press together 8 plies of hard rock maple and putting in a bowl (flat in the middle) concave for comfort and ease of mounting batteries.
Trucks - to make the trucks we are CNC milling the baseplates and hangers out of blocks of 60-61 T6 aluminum. We are hand lathing the axles and kingpins out of stainless steel. We are modeling the trucks off of Calibers reverse kingpin trucks. The hanger will most likely be 180mm or possibly 165mm.
My personal board
Wheels- Abec 11 77mm pink centrax Bushings- Thinking Venom Riot pivot cups if I have enough money left I’d like to do two motors if I can Current budget: $720 (but I’ll get more)
Goals: I am a second semester senior living in California so ideally I could be able to use this as a reliable method of transportation (and fun) in college. California DMV (department of motor vehicles for those of you in different countries) has recently recognized motorized skateboards as a vehicle. So legally I will be able to ride this on streets with speed limits of 35 mph or less which will be sufficient enough to get around most campuses in California. Because of this I want to be able to get to at least a 30 mph mark, climb decent hills at good speed, have a good range of at least 10-15 miles, good looking, and hopefully be close to around 15 pounds.
What I want from YOU I want to get advice on what motors you think I should use as well as belts, batteries, electronics, controllers ( I have access to a 3D printer and I saw somebody made one like that) and whatever advice you can give me so I can build the best board possible for my needs. I should also include that I have been riding skateboards for about 6 years and consider myself fairly experienced and able to handle the power of a board of the caliber at which I would be building but would also like to be able to tone down the power for the sake of letting friends/family ride it.