Archer Boards Storefront

Vendor Corner (SERIOUS)
#1

I’m happy to announce that the Archer Boards website is finally live, and our E-MTB gear drives are available to pre-order! :tada: :gear: :gear: :tada:

The gear drive pre-orders will be available to purchase for one month from today, and we expect delivery of the gear drives to your door by the end of October.

Development of these gear drives would not have been possible without help from the esk8 News community, that’s why we are adverting the pre-order here first. Manufacture of our first batch of gear drives would not be possible without people willing to pre-order, and that’s why we are selling the gear drives for special price of £275, a saving of £50 off the RRP.

For more information about the gear drives and the pre-order process carry on reading, or to place an order visit our store!

Our Story

When I set out to design my own electric mountain board gears drives, I thought it would be a quick and easy job I have a PhD in Electronic Engineering, how hard could it be to design some helical gears to mesh together, right!

Sadly, I was wrong, I started designing my first gear drive prototype in in early 2022 and after going through multiple 3D printed and metal CNC machined prototypes, and 1000s of miles of testing in hard terrain and weather conditions, I have arrived at robust final design that I’m very proud of.

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I have maintained a public build log of for the gear drive development, and the amazing electric skateboard building community at esk8 News has had a lot of input into every step of the design process based on shortcomings they have experienced with existing gear drives. If you’re interested, you can see the entire journey here on the esk8 News Forums.

I’m going to continue this development philosophy going forward, all Archer Boards products will continue to advance and improve with input from the community.

E-MTB Gear Drives

The fundamental design goals were to produce a E-MTB gear drive that is:
Robust | Water and Corrosion Resistant | Easy to Use | Affordable

I’m proud to announce that we have met all these goals, this has been confirmed during months of hard off-road testing including jumps and muddy trail riding.

Robust

  • Hardened steel all metal gears with 15mm face width: never break a gear tooth again! We expect these gears to outlast your board.
  • All metal construction: The majority of the components are machined from 6061 aluminium.
  • Bash guards: all gear drives come with ABS plastic bash guards to protect the gearbox casing from hard impacts.
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Water and corrosion resistant

  • Water resistance: every single possible point of water ingress is sealed using gaskets, O-rings, bearing seals or V-ring seals to ensure your gears are never exposed to water.
  • Corrosion resistant: all exposed components and hardware are corrosion resistant either made from aluminium or stainless steel.

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Easy to use

  • Rapid wheel changes: Simply undo the axil nut and then pull the wheel hub away from the gear drive hub mount.
  • Compatible with many hubs: We implemented a single hub mount design with a hole pattern for MBS hubs and Tramp hubs, allowing you to use lots of different hub variants without buying new hub mount adapters.
  • Simple maintenance: The only maintenance required is periodic greasing of the V-ring seal, bearing seal, and gears via the convenient grease port. There is no need to disassemble the gear drive.
  • Light weight: Even though we used hardened steel gears with 15mm face widths and full metal construction for the rest of the parts, they still only weigh in at 683g/drive including everything even hardware. For reference Boardnamics M1-AT Drive: 675g/drive, Newbee 4GS: 692g/drive (not including hardware).

Affordable

  • No gear replacement required: Unlike some gear drives that use plastic POM gears, our hardened steel gears are made to last, say goodbye to broken gear teeth and gear wear.
  • Cost effective: We set out to design and manufacture the most cost effective all metal E-MTB gear drive possible without sacrificing quality and robustness:

Pre-order price: £274.99 | Regular price: £324.99

Specifications

  • Compatible trucks: MBS Matrix III, MBS Matrix II, Apex Air, Trampa CNC 19.5mm
  • Compatible hubs: MBS Fivestar and Rockstar; and Trampa Superstar, Megastar and Phatlaz
  • Available gear ratios: 5.3, 4.5 and 3.9
  • Gears face width: 15mm
  • Gear material: Hardened steel
  • Compatible motors: Any motor with an 8mm shaft, 44mm diameter M4 hole pattern, up to 100mm long.
  • Weight: 683g (including everything even screws)
  • Dimensions: See drawing for details:

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Pre-order Delivery Schedule

The reason we are opting for a pre-order method for the EMTB gear drive release is so we can bulk order components, which will help us get our first batch of gear drives to market. We couldn’t get started without support from people like you, so in exchange we are offering a hefty discount.

Collection period: For a limited time only the Archer Boards EMTB gear drives will be on sale for a special price of £274.99, the store will be open for pre-order payments for one month.

Go or No go: After the Collection period closes, if we have received at least 40 orders we will proceed to manufacture and deliver the first batch of gear drives, if not a full refund will be given to all the people that placed an order.

Additional truck clamp development: We haven’t developed truck clamps for the MBS MATRIX III, Apex Air or Trampa CNC 19.5mm trucks yet, this will be trivial and rapid for us to do. Aluminium prototypes will be manufactured and tested within a month.

Gear drive manufacture: We already have trusted manufacturers in place that we used for our protypes, typical lead times are around 15-20 days.

Gear drive assembly: All the gear drive components will be we inspected, assembled, and packaged at Archer Boards HQ.

Shipping: All gear drives will be shipped via tracked courier service.

Pre-order timeline
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Pre-order Terms and Conditions

Please refer to our Pre-order Policy.

Pre-order Now

Please visit our shop to pre-order the E-MTB gear drives, £274.99 for a limited time only!

12 Likes
#2

Looks like you’ve done a nice job on these. Congrats.
If I were to send money for these drives, and wait for 40 more people to do the same, I would want to know why they are worth waiting for as opposed to BN drives which are very popular and inexpensive, or apex jump drives which are a little more expensive, but well worth the money

2 Likes
#3

On another note, I see you have a phd in EE!!!
I can think of numerous things this community could benefit from your knowledge.

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#4

Could you explain why you feel that using thrust bearings on a helical gear setup is bullshit?

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#5

I thought they were rebranded BN drives at first.

#6

I was gonna ask the same thing actually🤣

4 Likes
#7

Exactly. Iam mechanical engineer and if some engineers write this, it looks for me like he do not understand mechanics well.

General rules : less parts mean less potential problems is not applicable everywhere.

Iam not big fun of buying Chinese goods, but must say that Newbee gear drive is clever because of split force to additional gear mean less wear and better sound.

Personally like hardened helical gears. It looks promising, and I prefer lifetime instead of sound properties, just thinking if gear drives are not over engineering it self compared to stupid chain drive which is lighter, in correct setup is long life and easy maintenance. And it is open so You see conditions of it before each ride. I had also big plans to design my own gear drive but now on chains Iam absolutely satisfied:)

7 Likes
#8

Every Boardnamics helical gear drive owner whose threadlocker eventually gave away on the pinions would like to have a word with you :sweat_smile:

This is why I only trust 3DS and Apex when it comes to helical gears.

5 Likes
#9

Congrats on the website launch and the new product!

Seems like the main product differentiator is the 15mm wide helicals? Does this width improve the loctite bonding of shaft to pinion to a point that you don’t think they can break loose? Does it do anything else? I would assume there is more tooth engagement? is it smoother? Quieter?

Personally, I don’t think it’s very nice to call other vendors solutions “bullshit”. They just made different design choices from you. It’s an unfortunate choice of words. You might want to rephrase that.

3 Likes
#10

STRAIGHT CUT GANG

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#11

he has new wider helicals with a support bearing! :partying_face:

1 Like
Boardnamics M1 Gear Drive + Other News
#12

I was trying my best to be nice, as we all want some good innovation here, but I feel you might’ve missed the mark thus far.
I might be wrong, but I don’t imagine anyone paying for a gear drive in advance that might, or might not be made, especially when competing with jump drives, or even BN, could make that decision in a right mind.
(Might also want to re think the thrust bearing decision)

3 Likes
#13

Firstly, i have to compliment your design, it looks different and i like it! At the moment i mainly see cad screenshots here, do you perhaps also have pictures of prototypes/ newest design in a bit more detail? Would help people convince to step in and pre order a set.

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#14

i believe he doesn’t personally have the money to purchase 40 sets himself, especially if he only ends up selling a few to forum members.
a thrust bearing on the pinion can be a good design, imo it is not needed

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#15

I have been taking a look at thrust bearings when i was working on a bevel gear drive but i found that most of them are only rated for about 3000rpm? (I cannot remember exactly) I could be wrong though but the ones i found that did spec higher were usually pretty expensive.

1 Like
#16

I’m glad your PhD has helped you. im struggling, to understand how you have dealt with the axial loads.

I guessing the hanger part could act as a bushing increases material were but simplified parts can increase life span have you got the material coefficient calculations to show this?

What about the particles and extra heat that will accumulate in the grease how did you compensate for that?

What motors do you recommended that are suitable to taking the axial load your design will impose on the pinion gear and thus motor bearings?

Are you clocking the helical gears in opasit directions or are the unit interchangeable from left to right?

Are both your gears the same grade of hardened steel? Same hardness?

It’s not as simple as that as the slave gears are much smaller than the pinion gear reducing the mech. this in turn increases where in tear so it’s giving and taking just not sure how much by. Also requiring the mesh at a higher tolerance is critical for the load to be shared equally it will increasing where in tear defeating the objectives if not perfect.

I was impressed by the clever work around to one of the disadvantages and innovation newby gears brout to the table look forwards to long term use how thay holed up.

1 Like
#17

And Newbee for that matter… but I had the same experience with my BN drives…
I won’t go back to anything that is not designed with axial forces in mind.

2 Likes
#18

Same! I thought it was very clever, makes it much easier on all three of the pom gears. I haven’t had one break yet and the fixed backlash makes it super easy to setup

In addition, they ALSO use bearings that are more suited for higher axial load than standard groove bearings

Also it’s worth mentioning everyone keeps saying thrust this thrust that when there are other bearing types that can handle the low loads of our application. Angular contact, for example, or even deep groove ball bearings.

Thrust bearings are really bad with any forces except axial loading, so not necessarily the best choice for us.

Is agree tho, one seeing profanity on a product listing is always confusing to me, but besides that, talking about other vendors decisions like that is yuck

Believe me, when I was running my BN helical they were awesome! Until I got stranded on a trail with one pinion digging a hole in the motor mounting plate. Even though the forces were small, I applied a good amount of loctite, and let it cure properly, it still wasn’t enough. Maybe if you don’t have a angular contact bearing, at least having a physical constraint would be enough, rather than relying on loctite alone

2 Likes
#19

Thanks, mate a lot of work went into designing and testing these drives, and I’m proud of the result.

If you’re looking for cost effective and robust gear drives for mountainboarding, then I would say if your based in the US, it probably makes more sense to go with Boardnamics due to import tax and shipping reasons, but if you’re based in the UK/Europe I would hope people would consider purchasing my E-MTB gear drives.

There are a lot of differences between my drives and Boardnamics drives, I think mine are bit more refined, but I don’t want to turn this into a pissing contest, compared the specs and make your own decisions.

If you have large budget for your E-MTB build and you want to save all the weight and width you can then go with Apex Jump drives, they look like a quality product. There not a little bit more expensive though, there £100 more which is significant.

#20

Thanks mate :grinning: I’m a qualified as EE, but I work on lots of electro-mechanical products for my day job involving electric motors and drivetrains. I have lots of ideas for other esk8 related products, stay tuned for updates.

4 Likes