@dth2m5 This is awesome! I actually live in ATX (right next to town lake park) and I was hoping to find some people to ride with! Let me know next time you’re doing a group ride - I’d love to test your wheels. Any plans for making it ABEC compatable?
yep! Upstate NY, Utica to be exact 
looks like I might be reviving my Evo… 
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Great! We are making our next generation proto but having molding issues. Looking like Mid to late December but hopefully not later than January. DM me!
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Hey Everyone,
I just made another progress development update. We wanted to test our wheels on grip and compared them to the wheels that we used in this comfort test.
Thank you so much!
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Looks good, can it also be made grippy on wet roads?
Denver is about to get their first big snow. Hint hint lol
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I know it’s late but it would be interesting to see the Chinese flywheel clone in these tests too
Hey guys,
We want to make the best 100mm wheel for speed, range, and acceleration.
This is a passion project for us. We want to apply our racing and wheel design knowledge from Tesla and the racing industry to the world of electric boards. We just wanted to share what we are doing and get as much of your collective feedback as possible.
The wheel is responsible for every imaginable performance aspect of your ride - top speed, acceleration, handling. We want to take a different approach and engineer the shit out of a new wheel.
Why can’t we have a wheel that increases top speed without killing range and acceleration? We are aiming to achieve a top speed of 26mph (this would be on a V1/V2 Boosted board… but depends on the torque of your own custom setup). We are creating our own wheel structure and urethane to reduce weight, but maintain structural strength to achieve these performance goals. There are a couple of wheels that speed hack your board for an increase in top speed, but they murder board range and acceleration.
We’re looking for your feedback on what the community wants. We want to take a different approach and ask the community for style feedback as we continue to iterate our design. We’re designing it for the urban commuter. We want as much feedback from everyone and will be asking for a short list of beta testers in southern California and near Austin, Texas.
Here are a couple of spoke designs with varying wheel stiffness, weight, diameter, and contact patch. Later, we’ll finalize the style and color, but this is the baseline.
***** Edit: Please cast your vote on what you’d like to be improved with your wheels here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeDcbvMBMlUFPJ3nHg_vQoTm84pFMTGXWQJNjDaZZsIdKD9ag/viewform?usp=sf_link
Computer Simulation
We use a simulation methods called FEA (Finite Element Analysis), which is a computer simulation to assess performance of the wheel. We’re using FEA to determine exactly how much weight we can reduce from the wheel, while not compromising the strength of the design, to get both the best ride comfort yield achieve the speed, range, and acceleration goals.
FEA is commonly used in aerospace and race cars to extract every bit of performance out of the design. In fact, the cost to purchase this software is normally $100,000+, but we believe this type of investment is necessary to develop the best 100mm e-skateboard wheel.
First prototypes and 3D printing
After a lot of mathematical assessment, it’s time to make the prototypes and see how it all works out. We’re 3D printing the wheels and making our own urethane casting molds to run the first few tests for preliminary validation.
Urethane Overmold Making
These are the molds that we are going to cast urethane into. We’re going to cast over the wheel as pictured above.
The next step is to mold and cast the urethane, but that is coming in a couple of days and I’m sure we’re going to have to get creative on how to properly implement it. When we get enough beta testers and can validate the design, we will get into full production by spending money on legit injection molding tooling. We’re planning to get into full beta testing in about 1 month and starting production in 2 months.
If you have any feedback, thoughts or comments, then please let us know.
The major question: Does a 100mm wheel that increases top speed, but doesn’t have impacts on range and acceleration sound appealing?
Thanks, Doug
*******************************************************************Post update 10-26-18
We asked a lot of riders on what they wanted to change about their Board if they could bolt on a wheel (no other mods). Here is what riders said:
We got a good amount of data entries, but always looking for more. If you want to cast your vote, then enter it https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eeYF0bdTHigB_eqOiBB-m8a0ELdu58JEhQpoDd8xYJU/edit
New Focus on: Comfort and high speed
Let’s give people what they want, but at what trade off?
However, we’re not sure what trade-off people are willing to take if they get a wheel that is more comfortable with capability of higher top speed. Adding comfort means more rolling resistance and a much softer durometer. So here is another poll designed to ask what would you be willing to trade? Enter your vote here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScPSmE1X22vdOZET2vP08JsfyX2ZTIqHZteGZYjjxfNgpra_w/viewform?usp=sf_link
Bench marking durometer
One thing that affects ride quality is softness of the wheels. So let’s measure the durometer and deflection of the popular wheels on the market. We measure the Caguama (Kegels data coming soon). These are the 83A durometer wheels and it consistently comes in at 90.5A on all four wheels that we have. These are sold as 83A shore, but polyurethane does have a tolerance variance. We’ll be comparing our design to the Boa Constrictors and Kegel in the following blog post.
Caguama Deflection Vs. Force Curve
Comfort is also attributed to compliance of the wheel. So we measured that too for a bench mark. For Electric Board riders, Orangatang are the key choice here. We’ll be performing this same test on the Kegel and other wheel choices, then overlay the data.
Simply put, the Caguama wheel is pretty stiff. When you’re on your board, you’re traveling at 22mph. You’re 200lbs. You and the board is 215lbs. Each wheel has a distributed load, each wheel is under a load of 54lbs. It takes nearly 75lbs for the wheel to deflect .1". These wheels pretty much have no give to them.
Inertial Calculations
Based on our engineering software (we solid modelled each wheel), our inertial calculations relative to each wheel is as follows:
Kegel 80mm is 2.0, our wheel at 100mm is 3.0, and BOA 100mm is 5.8
This would mean that we’d be able to achieve a higher top speed but with similar acceleration of the Kegel wheels (bolt on comparison). Exactly how much less acceleration? We will have to determine that when we start testing in a couple of weeks. Basically, the current design can accelerate nearly twice as fast as the BOA and a little slow acceleration than Kegel.
First prototypes and 3D printing
We’re using a 80mm polyurethane of our own resin and the results look good. We don’t have any testing on acceleration, top speed, or comfort yet, but that will be coming in the next blog posts. Mostly, we just have one wheel so far and we have to spend the next couple of days creating the wheels. They typically take a day for us to hand make each wheel.
The specs of these wheels are 100mm diameter with a 40mm contact patch. Stock Kegel Wheels are 233g and our wheels are currently 197g. We think the weight of our design will increase closer to the Kegel weight, but not sure exactly how much right now.
We will be testing soft durometer and different levels of grip. It’s still early to say and these our first prototype wheels. Based on our motorsport experience, softer compound means higher grip, so we can get away with less contact patch. If the wheels are more compliant with softer durometer, then that means a more comfortable ride. Wheel wear is of course going to be higher too. However, we’re still figuring out all the sensitivities in the design.
Dynamic and Static Testing Metrics
What dynamic and static testing metrics would you like us to measure when comparing our design to the other wheels? What other wheels should we test against?
Dynamic Testing
Bumpiness, acceleration, top speed, range, grip, surface transition. Anything else?
Static Testing
Weight, durometer, inertia, Deflection vs. force. Anything else?
We’re planning for a big testing session on the 7th of November. Who in Austin, Texas wants to join us and have some beers and go riding (when we’re not drunk…)?
Want to keep track and get a big discount when we get this to market? https://free-range.landinglion.com/rangewheels/
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It does, but don’t forget ride quality. The reaosn most of us prefer dutometers in the 74a to 80a range is ride quality. That’s also the primary reason why pnumatics are becoming more and more popular.
I would go as far as saying this… Most of us will sactifice watt hours for ride quality.
I like what your doing, looks very interesting.
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A solid pneumatic that can handle 30mph plus would be swell
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We lack sophisticated suspension, so ride comfort is a significant consideration in wheel design. It would be very cool if you could achieve a soft ride without relying on thick urethane by modifying spoke geometry, that could save a lot of weight.
Consider increasing the diameter of the center hub, as we generally need to mount a pulley to the wheel with a 27mm bore to allow for clearance over the trucks.
I am skeptical about the claims of not impacting acceleration, regardless of the reduction in rotating mass, but eager to be proven wrong. Got some back-of-envelope math that proves the concept?
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100mm is too small. 110mm is perfect and can take so many more natural obstacles … like street plates and lifted sidewalks and pavement edges
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Am I missing something? Trampa Gummies anyone?
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I thinki he meant wherle that were thick enough to absorb vibration and maybe slide.
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@mmaner Thanks for the feedback. We are planning to be in the durometer range of 70 to 85A. We’ll have more updates
@trancejunkiexxl feedback noted!
@Jmding Have you seen https://www.michelintweel.com/? Very interesting design, right?
As far as not impacting acceleration. It’s simply moment of inertia calculation. Surely, as you put more mass away from the center, you’ll have to increase torque. However, if you also reduce rolling resistance and lower weight of the wheel, which is directly correlated with moment of inertial and kinetic energy, then you have have little to no impact to acceleration. There is a lot you can do with spoke design, weight, and materials.
@b264 we will certainly test that diameter and look at the sensitivities of grip, ride quality, weight, range, and acceleration.
@malJohann We’ll take a look!
Here is a google survey to quantity what the community wants. It’s a google survey and doesn’t collect anyone’s email, so please don’t fill it in twice ahha!
Thanks, Doug
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There might be more interest in developing a 125mm airless rubber/urethane hybrid wheel.
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Howdy y’all, thanks for the feedback so far! I’d like to introduce myself as the other half of this project. My background is in aerospace and motorsports engineering, and more recently with Tesla Motors. I’m a firm believer in electric vehicles, whether it’s a car or a board. Doug and I are working to produce a faster, more efficient wheel for our boards and would appreciate any input you might have. Currently we’re iterating using automotive and aerospace best practices towards design and engineering, but ultimately it matters what you want to get out of your ride and how we can improve that. Thanks! Andrew
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Comfort and safety is Number 1 after that would range for sure anyone buying a larger wheel is looking for comfort and safety.
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I just don’t see how it wouldn’t impact range, sure, keeping the same rotational inertia doesn’t the trick IF the top speed is kept the same
The moment you lower your gearing, if everything else is the same, you will lower your acceleration, second, for the same speed you need more current to produce the same wheels torque that lead to more I2R loses across all electrical system
That being said I really liked the wheel, if the ridding comfort is good, no chipping on the edges and it manages to be lighter than the others if the same size it has everything to be successful
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