Yo.
My extended spring break has driven me to push forward with this project in a big way, and I’ve been working on it more consistently since then. Chances are this will be a long, albeit high quality read, so settle in friends.
If you’re interested more in the electronics of this build, check out my FrankenWheel thread for how I put it all together.
This DIY build is kind of a re-construction / upgrade of the legend of a time-sink that was the FrankenWheel project.
My wheels got turning in my head when I received a deck from @eb1925 for my Secret Santa present this year. The deck is a Bustin Cigar, and I’d honestly never seen one before.
This deck came straight by itself without grip tape, and it got me thinking. My FrankenWheel board has a deck that I’ve been running for 4.5 years now and it is absolutely beat to garbage. The back is falling apart and twisting, the front is almost the same now, and it’s got a plethora of holes in it from my enclosures, not to mention the wear and tear that it had from riding it off curbs as a push board. All in all, I’m happy and impressed that the little Atom deck that I have hasn’t splintered into pieces. However, it is time for a new one.
This Bustin Cigar has an interesting shape to it, hinting that the enclosure needed to be redesigned and upgraded to be worthy of being put on this brand new deck.
After I got on the black grip tape and threw on a pair of trucks that I had laying around along with the X-things that I got, I knew that it was time to get into CAD. Interestingly, I meant originally for these X-things to go on my main board, but they had a classic hole pattern, so I had to put them on this deck since my main board doesn’t have classic pattern holes.
Expand this section to read about my bumpers / cable routing risers.
Bumper - Risers
Because of the damage that decks sustain on their end from setting them on concrete, etc, I knew that I wanted this deck to have bumpers on the front and back, so one of the first things I did was design some riser - cable - route - bumpers. These are 0.30 inches thick to accommodate the thickness of the Landwheel hub motors, both front and back, as well as providing a short amount of PLA+ bumper that prevents the wood of the board from hitting the ground.
I did two revisions of these, the first one with the wires going straight out the side, and then one that provides a bit more of a natural angle to their path.
These risers should function successfully as protection for the cables of the Landwheel Hubs (their wire routing through the center of the truck is a bit tight in my opinion), bumpers, and nifty wire routes to make the wires travel straight into their enclosures.
Moving along, the next clear step is to design the enclosure. All of my Engineering friends know me quite well as the overachiever, the project manager, and the “why do it the easy way when I can do it the cool way” type of person. The reason why I mention this is because the next step of this process that I took is very extra and probably not necessary, however, I had fun and learned some stuff!
Expand this section to read about my photogrammetry adventure
Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry. Take that word and try to say it three times fast. Photogrammetry is an intriguing process that uses a series of pictures to create a 3D model of an object using math, triangulation, focal length data, and 3D positioning. This process creates a high poly count mesh of the object scanned that allows the user to make a 3D OBJ (or other) file that creates a virtual representation of something in the real world. I originally saw this idea done by @JamieT back in July 2019, and I dug up his post to see how he did it as well.
There are many ways to go about this process, with the best option being a full setup made specifically for the process. Objects to be scanned should not have reflective surfaces, they should be a consistent and distinct texture, and they should be well and evenly lit in all directions.
Here’s some links that I found useful when researching this process:
3D Scanning Reflective Objects With Photogrammetry
Redirecting to EDC
AliceVision | Photogrammetric Computer Vision Framework
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D0EhSi-vvc&ab_channel=Gamefromscratch
The first link in this list was one of the first ones I found and was a good read on the whole process from a specific setup kind of way. I did not use my DSLR like recommended to take the pictures and instead used my phone. I may have had better results had I used my DSLR.
So what have I been rambling on about? I decided to 3D scan my new deck and use its profile to make my enclosures perfectly form fitting. Once I started pushing this deck around, I realized that it is quite flexible, probably even moreso than my old one. Usually the way I go about creating a deck in CAD is just by taking some measurements of the arcs on the board and doing some math to figure out what the curves should be. I thought, this way, I would be able to circumvent that and learn something new. Anyways, here we are.
The process begins by taking a lot of photos of your object, from many angles. You should take the photos of your object around its center point, rotating around in all directions, keeping it at the center and ensuring that it is captured from every angle. After you do it the first time, you can throw all the pictures into Meshroom and realize that you probably didn’t get enough and do it three more times. Oh wait just me?
After taking all of the photos, the next step is to import into your software package. There are several pieces of software that I used in this process. The first one I tried was Regard3D, a free program that allows you to manually create photogrammetry projects. The only real reason that I tried this was because when I first installed Meshroom, it didn’t work properly.
With Regard3D, you have to follow the process outlined on their git page otherwise it makes no sense. Following that with my first set of images that I took, I got a decent - ish scan of the deck.
Now the photos I took of this were honestly kind of not great, so I already knew I needed to redo it. I tried 3 more times with different settings and I just couldn’t get the result that I wanted, so I looked around some more and came full circle to Meshroom, which all of a sudden decided to work. I was pretty happy about this because from what I read, it was one of the most user-friendly ones.
After transitioning to Meshroom, I started having a better experience. I read up a little bit more on how to properly take pictures for photogrammetry and my first try in Meshroom worked pretty well.
I propped the board on top of a Home Depot bucket because I thought that it would help, but in the end I think it just made it a lot harder for the software to place the anchors of the mesh. I decided to do another set of photos but make sure that every single angle was covered.
Just by looking at this screenshot, it’s pretty obvious that there are more photos. I believe that there was over 150 shots in the scan, and it ended up producing a pretty decent result.
You’d think that maybe the process ends here but you’d be wrong. There are a few more steps. The next step is to clean up the mesh from Meshroom and make it usable. Before exporting from Meshroom I played with some of the refinement settings until I was happy with the surface finish, and then moved on to Blender.
In Blender, I imported the OBJ file from the folder structure and deleted all of the extraneous data that was scanned outside of the deck.
It looks a bit weird but in this scan it captured a lot of the yard around where I scanned the deck, so all of that had to be removed and I ended up with the deck more or less on its own.
The mesh that you get out of the scan is extremely dense, so the next step is to reduce the poly count. I tried using a program called MeshLab but it was really confusing, and from the recommendations @JamieT 's thread, I found Instant Meshes. Using this I was able to reduce the mesh poly count to a much more reasonable level.
So after all of this, I’ve got a reasonable stl that I can use, this goes straight into Fusion360. The process here is similar to how I would have created the model in the first place, but either way I still learned how to do photogrammetry.
From this point on, I knew I would just end up using a profile on path sweep, so I inserted a few construction planes at key places in the mesh and sketched out the profiles of concave and swept it like normal.
The interesting part here is that I didn’t actually realize that I hadn’t scaled the mesh until I started looking at the enclosure design and saw that the dimensions made no sense. This is the fully scaled-up model with the sweep of the curves within. After all the effort, I didn’t have a perfect sweep or shape, but hey at least I only needed to measure two dimensions to scale it lol
Expand this section to read about the enclosure design
Enclosure Design
I looked over the 3D printed enclosures thread for some inspiration and I ended up deciding that I wanted a sleek design that overlaps in each of the segments. I went through a few revisions and this is the design that I liked.
This sleek design overlaps each segment of the enclosure by 0.5", creating less opportunities for dust and small amounts of liquid to get through. I may even consider lining each of the segment junctions with tape to make it splash resistant.
Little bit of a hint at the front of the enclosure there, there are wire exits in the front and rear enclosures, allowing for the dual hub motors at the front and back to be powered in a very tidy way.
One of the things I wanted to consider when designing these enclosures was their ability to resist the downfalls of 3D printing. I made sure that all load-bearing paths are well filleted and that there was plenty of space for each of the screw holes to have a washer under the nut. Some of these downfalls were things that I didn’t take into account on the FrankenWheel build. I lost an enclosure segment or two to vibration and hasty design. My goal with this build is to be proud of it, and with this new enclosure, I will be able to say that it is a well-polished product.
Expand this section to read about and see some of the printed parts
3D Printing & Finishing
As of right now, there are 9 of the 11 enclosure segments printed, and only one of them came out with a printing error. I am using black ESUN PLA+, and I think this will be sufficient for the loads it will hold on this board. The enclosure pieces look fantastic and with the care that I paid to the modeling, they printed really great with no warp and perfectly clean edges. All of the prints are from my CTC Bizer dual. This printer is a clone of a clone - its a clone of the FlashForge Creator Pro, which is a Makerbot Replicator ripoff. I wouldn’t recommend anyone buying it now, but its been running strong since 2016 with only a thermistor replacement and upgrade to PEI print surface.
As the rest of the enclosures get printed out I will update pictures here. However, I just ran out of filament so I will be a bit delayed on the final parts.
5/20/20 - Some updates!
Here’s some pictures of the enclosure fully printed. I actually ended up coming up a bit short on the enclosure and had to extend the piece with the power switch in it. Additionally, the very front piece had a pretty bad print and some major sagging on the corners. I will end up re-printing it, but my printer decided to break and stop working so I will have to deal with the crappy one for now.
There’s still some finishing to be done, most of the overlapping bits have brims that I need to sand down and clean up, and I am considering other options that might make it look a bit better.
Expand this section to see how all the electronics are installed
Electronics
This board uses two sets of Landwheel hub motors. One set I got from my review unit L3-x that I got several years ago and has long since been disassembled. Most of the electronics construction can be seen in the FrankenWheel thread, but there are a few small changes to be made for the 4WD upgrade.
When I built the pack, I didn’t really have 4WD in mind, but with the 6p of lithium polymer power, I am confident that I will have more than enough bang for the task. After I heard from @Penny_Pincher that he had some extra hubs, the idea was spurred and I started thinking about it seriously. Recently, @revel_flo hooked me up with some sleeves and the proper screws to get the hubs working again, and those are sitting in the garage right now waiting to be installed.
I will be using a MakerX dual esc for the front two motors because of its small form factor and the limits that the hubs should be run at. I’ll be running 35A motor and 30A battery limits on the hub motors and I think the MakerX should handle that on 8s with no problem. The rear ones have been running for quite some time now on TB 4.12’s from 2017.
Close to final wiring is kind of rat-nest-y but I assure yall that it is all separated and insulated well enough for me to not have a fire on my hands. I intend on checking back in on it after a month or so of riding to make sure all the connections are safe. With the amount of foam stuffed into the enclosure I think I should have minimal vibrations, but it is a hub board so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them make it into the wiring.
Expand this section to see all of the final images!
Final Product
This section will hold all of the finalized images of the 4WD board.
This thread is still in progress and I will happily take any feedback my friends here might have!
I already know that I am going to have a bad time with the bushings on the Landwheel trucks because they have been pretty awful on turning ever since the beginning; they feel like standing on a sponge and turning, with about the same amount of response as well. You could lean far enough to fall off and the board still wouldn’t turn, even with the trucks pretty loose. I refuse to believe that the turning can be only attributed to having 92mm wheels on narrow trucks, so I may have to hit up @RipTideSports for some suggestions on how to improve my ride once it’s all assembled.
Anyway, thanks for reading! I’ll be keeping this up to date as I progress.
– Ryan
but on a brands board and not on a diy.