The Shop Queen | Custom Deck | Custom Trucks | Enertion | Custom mount | N/A | N/A

ESK8 Builds
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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.

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Sounds awesome!

Are you going to machine the pulleys and for the wheel and motor too?

enertion has some free CAD plans for their old mount if you want to get the wheel pulley dimensions for a 36t. They fit spoked abec 11 flywheels, or the flywheel clones.

Also, most people are using larger wheels to ensure the wheel pulley doesn’t get too close to the ground. A very common choice is the knockoff abec flywheels (83 or 90mm) because they have spokes, and will fit wheel pulleys from multiple companies. For $20-30 shipped you really can’t go wrong with getting a set off of ebay.

As far as the other electronics, there is one, and only one esc to choose for a project like this: the VESC. It has unlimited customization options, and I won’t even go into it because it would take me 10 days to write everything you could possibly do with it. Not to mention it was designed to control ebaords unlike the rc car esc’s everyone used to use!

you can read @longhairedboy’s passionate posts about it here just for kicks: http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/what-esc-to-use/908

if you are interested, both @chaka and enertion sell them.

Because of your experience, I’d recommend a higher voltage setup to give you the speed, range, and acceleration you are looking for.

a really common combo is the VESC, Space cell, and 190kv motor.

The space cell is made by enertion, and will provide you with the range you are looking for, and being a 10s (roughly 40v), it has plenty of power. It also has an LCD percent display, a power button, and a laptop style charging port just to make it that much more convenient.

You will see tons of people using them in their builds.

for the motor, you can spend a little more and get one from enertion, or turnigy makes a 190 and 192kv motor for less money, and the motor is longer allowing for more torque. You would have to make a flatspot on the motor shaft if you got the turnigy one though- it’s pretty easy to do, but still something to consider.

for remote I’d go with the good old reliable GT2B- it’s very popular, and there is an STL file for a case that makes it more compact. they are around $25

I believe the combination of an enertion space cell, VESC, 190kv turnigy motor, gt2b remote, skateboard, and mounting hardware will be right around your $700 budget and will give you a great board!

I spent about $900 on mine, but I also got legit abec 11 flywheels (around $90), a pricey deck ($150 for just the deck), and an enertion 190kv motor. you can see my build thread though with roughly the same electronics I suggested you use: http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/arbor-james-kelly-pro-model-build-space-cell-vesc-190kv-wood/760

here is another thread using the same electronics, just this time it is dual enertion motors instead of a single: http://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/scarlet-cruiser-long-haired-boy-scarlet-deck-dual-r-spec-space-cell-vesc/714/34

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no plan to machine the pulleys as of right now but that could be a fairly simple project on the lathes we have. If I can I would like to have legitimate abec 11 wheels as a set has eluded me for quite some time, although I have always had a thing for square lipped wheels :sweat_smile: Could I make some 83mm Centrax work? (I was planning on 77mm for the sake of possibly adding wheel shields and avoiding wheelbite) Also will there be any significant difference in how the gearing acts depending on the height of the wheels? or is it more of just an issue of clearance that can be solved with alternative methods? (i.e. mounting angle) I’m about 6’ 2" and I weigh about 160 lbs what kind of results (range, top speed, acceleration, hill-climbing ability, board weight) can I expect from this setup? Thank you so much for the quick and extremely helpful reply I really look forward to diving into this build. :smiley: