Use a brushless drill motor/gearbox?

Is there any reason you couldn’t use a brushless drill motor/gearbox (and the control circuitry and batteries) instead of using hobby brushless motors? I would assume since drill motor/gearbox combos put out more torque, you dont need as big of a ratio for the drive/wheel gears so you should still be able to get good speed.

I have just been doing the math and I can get a brand new brushless dewalt or makita drill on craigslist for ~$75-90 (without the batteries) and then I can just use my milwaukee drill batteries (with a 3d printed adapter), or get lipos to power them. And just use the control circuitry already in the drill to run it. The only downside I can see is that it would not have braking, which is not a really big deal as I could just make a manual brake like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyqJuUkimhs

Is there anything wrong with this? Has anyone else tried this?

I remembered i had searched this before, but forgot i had found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi5InG3hMQU

search endless sphere . theres a posts in there about battery powered drill skateboard somewhere in there

Im looking more at tearing it apart, and mounting the motor similarly to how people are mounting the hobby rc motors.

ill try searching on there, thanks for the tip! :slight_smile:

I’m curious to see what comes of this. Could you please post some pics of the drill teardown, if you do it? I would like to know what the dimensions and wiring of the drill motors are. Thanks!

Yep, i am definitely planning on doing this so I will be sure to take a ton of pictures and make a detailed build log.

Awesomesauce! Can’t wait to see this!!

I reckon you’ll find the gearing is all wrong for this application, and then if you replace the gearing with your own, you’ll be using a pretty underwhelming motor battery combo.

If you take the mnotor out of the drill housing you’ll probably find it is hard to mount as it was designed to be held in an injection moulded chassis.

That 1st video calls the board “fast” - it isn’t.

I did the math and with 8" wheels, 14t drive sprocket, 22t wheel sprocket, at just under max rpm (2100 max), i would get a theoretical max speed of 30mph. Which is way faster than i want to go anyways.

My guess is that it will have enough torque that, if I wanted to, I could get the gear ratio closer to 1:1, and potentially even have a smaller sprocket on the wheel (if it has a big enough ID to get around the axel).

Also I am planning on hacking up the case, cutting the hand portion off, and clamping the whole motor section to a mount with a third/half circle pipe piece on it. Might even epoxy it onto the mount (if it needs it).

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It’s all very well working out the gearing, but what wattage is the motor? It might calculate a speed of 30mph based on gearing and rpm, but it won’t get there if it doesn’t have the power.

not sure, it will depend on which drill i get. As of right now, i have to push this project back (yay bills). But when I am able to go ahead with it I am planning on getting a makita XPH07Z (http://makitatools.com/en-us/Modules/Tools/ToolDetails.aspx?Name=XPH07Z). It has an insane amount of max torque, so I am hoping that will help.

Also just to clarify, I am planning on using the gearbox that comes with the drill.