Hey guys,
My first real post exciting stuff! I thought this would be a great part to start my build thread as I have kinda ran into quite some problems, but we will solve them, bear with me .
TL;DR: I build a board and right now it isn’t finished yet but I got a few pictures you might want to watch?
Alright a little about myself so you get that familiar feeling with the main character like they try to give you in TV series. My real name is Victor and I’m 19 years old, I feel pretty old but that might be because of the amount of solder I have inhaled in my life so far. I am an engineering student specializing in Electronics-ICT and I love those subjects! I have been building robots and soldering for what appears to be as long as I can remember. My uncle gave me my first soldering iron and Velleman soldering kit when I was 9 years old actually .
Now most of my experience with electronics comes from my main hobby Drone Racing. But that is a story on it’s own and you came here to see what the frick I build.
But not just yet, as now I need to tell you what got me to this particular moment in time where I am writing my first esk8(using the abbriviation like a cool kid ) blog. Well I think I might have to say Casey… Seeing this dude rip his boosted trough New York looked so rad to my ±15 year old self. Untill I saw the price of a board . Be gone dreams! So a few year went by and I saw loads of boards but they either were to crappy spec wise or I couldn’t even dream of affording them anywhere in the foreseeable future. Untill at one point about like July this year I saw a nice looking DIY board and I thought to myself I am going into my second year of engineering I’ve been soldering for ages, I could do this as well!
And so my research into diy boards and search for parts had begone, starting of as a cheap build with the standard hub ebay hub motors and esc replacement to what now might already start to be called a premium build(or at least the parts). The build really started to form itself after I took the decision to make a build that would be able to handle the commute to and from my campus on a single charge. So that meant at the very minimum a range of 25km as my campus is about 11km from where I live. A decent top speed, to make it faster then going by bike, the ability to handle some cracks in the road, paved bike lanes and climb some steep bridges.
These demands actually made it way easier to pick some parts, it would have to be a belt drive to provide the torque I needed for the bridges and to allow me to put nice big wheels for the lovely Belgian roads . I would also need a big battery to get the range I want.
So here are the choices I made:
Deck - Amazon Moose Drop Through - I wanted a smaller deck <36" to make it a little easier to take with me. I do think looks are also really important and I love the looks of this deck! I was a little worried having this deck ship from the states to me about import costs but as promised by amazon there were none.
Motor mounts - DickHO Mounts - @rey8801 Linked me to these on the forum, they looked like the best priced mounts I could find so I ordered a set and they arrived in great condition. @dickyho even did the work of painting them for me. I also got my motor puleys from him.
Trucks - Caliber Aliexpress - Most of my research went into looking for the cheapest quality parts I could find that would still do their job correctly. First one of these parts are my trucks at 28Euro I didn’t break the bank with these. They seem solid but they will need new bushings pretty soon.
Motors - 6354 “FlipSky” - I got these motors from @BoostedBuilder on the forum, he gave me the cheapest deal you would be able to get so that was awesome, they are identical to the FlipSky ones so I know they should work great. Sadly I overlooked the fact that he was shipping them from Switzerland which is a non EU country so I did have to pay some hefty import taxes . But they arrived in great condition and the sensor pin is already the correct one! These were one of the first parts to actually come in the mail and they seemed huge to me!
ESC - FlipSky 4.12 Aliexpress - As I was only planning to go single drive in the beginning to save some cost I only ordered one of these ESC’s while they were on sale. The going to dual plan changed with the motor deal btw. A second one has already been bought and is on it’s way right now! (I also found this ESC huge hence the bannana for scale)
The Battery - 10s4p Sony VTC6 - I knew that whatever upgrades or changes I would do this would be a constant and unless someone invented some new ground breaking battery tech this one wouldn’t be upgrading soon. This is actually the only part where I didn’t save on cost. I even bought a spot welder ( I did want this already for some time to make a Field charger for my drones.) I was told VTC6 were the bees knees so those were what I got. Luckily still at the 5Euro price not the 7,50 lmao.
Also got a cheap 10s BMS.Wheels - 97mm Aliexpress Flywheel - These are 100% temporary but they were cheap and came with bearings etc. When I get some more budget I will probably switch to the Storm ones or MBT.
Switch - E-Sk8 Mosfet Switch - This switch looked great and was build by a forum member @Martinsp. So I bought it from his site. Sadly this switch has never worked reliably for me. Why that is is to be determined.
Enclosure -DIY Fiberglass - So this is probably 70% of the upcomming story as I wanted to make this Enclosure myself to be as good looking and fitting as possible.
Let’s get building:
So everything I needed for the battery was here pretty fast and I thought that would be a great point for me to start from. So here goes my first attempt at making this battery. Yes your read it correctly I do this once more .
I started off hotglueing al the 4P’s.
Followed by some neat fish paper(Safety is number one priority )
Printed a handy nickel strip holder:
Started welding those 4P’s :
So these welds are actually not strong enough, I would discover later(not in a bad way but in time to change it ).
Next up I put two nikkel strips over every series connection.
Followed by some 12AWG wire for those big amps, this was hell. I used a giant soldering iron as to not damage the sells but soldering 12AWG sucks!
For the big connection I used two 12AWG wires.
Next up was the BMS connections and some heat shrink.
By this time some more parts like the deck etc had come in so tada:
Alright next up was the enclosure, as I had no experience with making molds or using fiberglass I called upon a good friend of mine. He was actually super excited to help out so that was awesome! We got to it, making the mold was ofcourse first order of business.
Starting block of wood(staring my buddy as main character):
To be continued.