Other Planet Trucks - Anyone tried them?

For a long time i have followed “Longboard Technology” on YouTube. They have been developing an interesting new type of truck for longboards.

A standard skate truck has its Centre of Gravity lowest whilst turning, this means that without the rubber it tends to “fall” into a turn. At high speed this causes instability as can be seen in this video : What Causes Speed Wobble? (@ about 1min)

Their design allows for a a truck which has its CG lowest when in the centre position, This means that even without rubber it always tries to return to centre. They achieve this by using a profiled cam which the axle is moving on. Its easier to understand this by seeing it :Breakdown of Other Planet Trucks . It seems like a simple idea but it also makes a lot of sense.

In the early days they were making all of their prototypes by hand. These look mechanicaly simple and may be easy to DIY. There is a good explanation of an older prototype here : Other Planet P1 .

Now their selling a finalised version of these trucks : https://www.otherplanetskate.com/products/other-planet-revolution-rolling-cam-skateboard-truck

A few benefits i could see of this type of design are:

  • stable at speed.
  • change cam profiles for different truck feelings.
  • easy to swap hanger if you wanted a few different motor setups (hangars are avalable separately)

So . . . . my questions to all of you are:

  1. Has anyone ever seen or used them before?
  2. Do you think any standard motor mounts could be used with them?
  3. Has anyone ever tried to diy something similar?
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I never used before, i thought about it tho until i find out about avenue trucks. For high speed, i think u can use with hub motor. but down side of other planet is , sliding a lot and large turning radius which they mentioned.

I think the large turning radius is due to the 17° attack angle of the base-plate. I guess some sloped risers would easily sort this out. also if you were going to diy some you could set this to whatever you wanted.

What do you mean by sliding?

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I found another truck that uses a similar concept but a different mechanism : curfboard

It looks similar to the steering i saw on a 2 wheeled board i saw on here.

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well they said it tends to slide in high speed compare to something like ronin. i guess under steer

I’ve got 2 sets of OP Trucks … how I ended up owning them was a small adventure in itself, but suffice to say I friggin’ love them! They’re a different feel than rkp trucks in a number of way:

  • there’s no bushing to push against so there’s no resistance to to turn. Initiating a turn is very easy and fluid …
  • but this makes the trucks very tippy. Any slight deviation of you centre-of-balance and you’ll be turning.
  • turns are super linear, and in proportion to your lean. They’re not divey, which I like.

Because of the cam design, OP trucks are smoooth. The whole feel is fluid and very liquid. I’ll take some photos and upload them later.

edit: I can haz grammah!

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Can motors be mounted to them?

Hubs, like hummies where you glue to motors to the axle would be possible. But I think it would difficult to fit an off-the-shelf motor mount. OP trucks are much lower, and the cam takes up a significant length of the axle.

So then the only way we can use this is to put them in the front on a riser pad? If I can’t mount a motor to it, I’m not sure what good it does LoLz

Alright so… Other Planet trucks COULD be suitable, but with several caveats.

First off lets look at your list of benefits.

Stable at speed: Yes, Very stable at speed. This is a valid reason to consider them. If you are only interested in this and not their steering characteristics you could get that by putting an Other Planet Truck only in the rear.

Change Cam Profiles for different truck feelings: Um, Technically this is true, but added practicality is pretty minimal. Its a nice thing to be able to do, but its talked about way more than its actually done.

Easy to swap hanger: This is an interesting idea. Hangers are pretty easy to swap for sure. I never really swap hangers, I’ve never found it that practical. But using it to swap out motors… I could see that.

Could Standard Motor Mounts be used?: I do not think so. The hanger would be great to mount a motor onto, its got this nice flat side that would index really well. But… The baseplate is so wide, there’s not a ton of space between the baseplate and the wheel. There’s also an issue of interference with the baseplate as the trucks lean so far. Definitely not impossible to mount a motor on there, but it would involve a clever solution, and you probably couldn’t find an off the shelf option that would work. The trucks are pretty modifiable, and anybody willing to delve into that would have a lot of mounting options open up for them.

Has anyone ever tried to diy something similar?: Yes, there have been a small handful of people who have made their own OPs before referencing only pictures and video. And I’m really open and willing to help anybody wanting to do that with any answers they need.

Some considerations:

Because the trucks can lean so far It could complicate the drive train.It would make belts running from the deck to the hanger troublesome I think. Hub motors would be by far the simplest way to circumvent the problem. Or, another way to circumvent the problem… If you’re only looking for stability benefits put the OP on the rear, don’t motorize it, and motorize the front truck instead.

As far as DIYing some OPs… Here’s something really cool, for the base plate all that matters are that the two walls are parallel, and for the hanger all that matters is that the two sides are parallel. How Thick the hanger is… doesn’t matter. You want a 4" thick hanger? you just need the baseplate walls to be 4" apart. Cant imagine anybody wanting 4" thick hangers for anything, but if you were building your own you could fit anything you need to mount motors to in the hanger, easily.

Short of DIY, you also have some modification options. The baseplate is big, and that is where a lot of the the problems start. You can actually cut the baseplate down to 3" wide, and use a different flatter cam to achieve a pretty similar feel to a 4" cam, and buy yourself a ton of extra space. The axles are 1/2 steel in the hanger, so you can actually tap into them if you’re very careful ( they’re hardened ).

Final thoughts… How suitable they are I think really comes down to what you’re wanting to get of your board. When people ask me if they should get OPs I really drill them on what they’re going to be trying to do with them and what they expect, and that same thing applies here. E-skate isn’t a riding discipline.

That’s what I’d do. And leave the rear lower than the front, too. Skip the riser pads

-OR-

I was thinking, don’t mount a motor on the truck hanger. Mount a really wide truck hanger with a motor mounted to it on the OP truck hanger. So you’d have two hangers on the truck. Don’t even use the axles from the OP hanger; saw them off.

You can’t easily saw them off, they’re too hard. But you can wack them out with a hammer, replace them with grade 8 1/2" threaded rod even if you’d like.

Yeah, not gonna happen easily. Solid steel at 12mm thick. Honestly, the simplest solution is hub motors. They’ll avoid a whole bunch of problems, and make it a practical reality.

I’d rather not even use the trucks than put hub motors on them. We can figure this out

any pictures or links? i would be very interested to see this?

I can, you could put the entire motor INSIDE the hanger

The only place I knew where to find the pictures was on Silverfish, which of course isn’t around anymore. :frowning:

That might work.

I rode them and I like them but I don’t think it would work with any motors because the power of the motor makes two opposite forces and one of those forces is a twisting of the truck hanger and especially with these I think the turning mechanism would bind up from this torsion. maybe it wouldn’t. even on regular hangers I notice the rubber bushings take more of a beating than an unpowered board. when the wheel is powered forward the hanger must take the opposite torsion force. I think while excellerating or braking it would tighten and u couldn’t turn

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That’s a very good observation. I don’t think it would be a problem, there’s a lot of surface area for the force to distribute against to keep friction low, but still a consideration.

One step that could be taken that I’m really confident would prevent this from ever arising as an issue is the use of HDPE shims. HDPE is a really durable low friction material, and it would make it really very difficult for the hanger to bind up even with high torsional loads.

I really recommend HDPE shims anyway, they really should have been part of the truck design. They’ll keep the trucks in good condition really indefinitely assuming you swap them out as they wear down.

My bets on this truck binding up regardless and I dissuaded someone from fixing hubs to it in the past.
. I really like this truck though and really liked how it can do super sharp turns easily. Maybe I’m wrong. Wish I was as if be riding w it.

I’ll just have to do a test to see how much force it takes to bind them up I guess.

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