Just been through the whole thread, amazing work man. Seeing the process like this is great.
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This weekend the buck is getting created and the deck is getting made!!!
Deck is going to be 9 plies (6 long grain plies and 3 cross grain) and then top and bottom will get a beauty veneer to hide the zig zag butt joints of the long grain plies.
Got materials for the deck bending jig, and the enclosure build. Unsure if I want to build the enclosure mold out of foam and build it from the inside > out, or out of MDF and build it from the outside > in.
This is the template for the deck jig.
I am currently also looking into how I can condense all the electronics I have.
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Would have been a hell of a lot easier if I could have CNC’d this MDF but 2 days with a jig saw and it’s done. Haven’t fought like that on something for awhile… I’m sore, but I won. Giving myself the day tomorrow to focus on other projects before prepping the veneers and actually making the deck.
Feel like a coach builder now with this buck/jig made.
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Yeah !! Well done, its gonna be beautiful !
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Holy shit I miss the facilities at school! My last week of progress has been so slow because I was doing it the Amish way without CNC’s or lasers. Hoping the human elements won’t ruin the final outcome. Almost said f*ck it today and gave up… drank a beer and am back at it trying to get it done!!!
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THAT WAS A FIGHT! and I am sure it’s not going to come out quite as planned I just hope it is solid and gives me something to work from. The “wings” were a much bigger pain than first imagined. The back rest mounting will have to be tweaked. But that will be thought of in 15 hours when I can take this thing out of the vacuum bag as see what I actually have created… hopefully it isn’t just an expensive piece of bent fire wood.
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Wings were a fail. It was my first ever attempt at anything like this so I am trying to stay positive. I have some ideas already for what to do about that though as I am going to make a buck for the back rest soon and can adjust my plans accordingly.
Overall it is very solid with the 6 long grain and 3 cross grain layers. I flipped it upside down and put all of my weight on it with little to no flex.
Tomorrow I will trace out the shape and cut out the rough shape, prior to sanding the top and bottom smooth and rough cutting the 8’ face plies of Maple I have for the top and bottom to cover up the zig zag joints I had to do. Basically fix it to look right and cover up all the ugly.
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I have some issues to deal with… I need to add the beauty layers now that the rough cut is done and have some ideas on how to try and fix some of the issues. The vacuum bag will be much easier to deal with now that it isn’t clamped around that crazy 60lbs buck.
Figure after I sand the top and bottom, I’ll drill small 1/16th” holes into the visible bubbles (there are a few), I’ll then epoxy the deck without any microfiber so that it penetrates the wood. I’ll then mix up more with micro fibers so that it adheres the layers together and then put the layers on, put it all in the bag and give ‘er a suck.
24 hours later, pull it out and clean up the edges. 
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Things are happening but most involve the upcoming graduation…
I am going to lace a molded back piece to the much smaller wings on the deck now that the wings didn’t turn out like I wanted.
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Baby medicine syringe to fill the gaps within the deck then applied the beauty layers.
For the first attempt at this I’m ok with this but would obviously prefer that I would have had a successful glue up and not had to take the steps I did but hope it turns out well. I also stripped V1 to transfer the components over once it is out of the mold and finished being shaped.
Felt good to retire V1 to the rafters.
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Gave myself a day away from it and came back with fresh eyes… as long as it’s sturdy and looks good from 10 feet I’m cool with it I guess. There are ways to cover the flaws further.
It’s shaped and I need to make the back rest and the foam buck for
The fiberglass enclosure as well as polyurethane it when I am don. I’m happerier with it now than I was a week ago and I could actually have this thing done before graduation?!?!?
New goal is to race my mother-in-law on her 50cc scooter and smoke her off the line with an all wheel drive, plywood, go-kart.
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What would you estimate the chassis weighs? (or the CAD calculation, if you have that)
As a Design major and not an engineering one, I never figured out the simulation parts of Solidworks.
The maple and epoxy chassis is definitely heavier and if I were an engineer guy and the plies were glued up perfect, I would figure out where I could cut holes.
The original one weighted about 40lbs fully loaded and if this was under 50lbs I will be happy.
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Perfect, thanks for the info.
It’s been a while since I’ve used solidworks, so I can’t say that it’s just a right click into material properties or anything like that. tbh, if you had given me volume, I’d just assume the SG was 1 and use that as a max weight estimate.
Holes might help with alignment of the piles, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone that has the level of precision to layout and align all that while keeping everything concentric. Maybe with some sacrificial alignment plugs? Seems like a lot of extra work without much benefit to me…
Either way, it’s looking good to me, anticipating seeing the finished race footage.
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To my understanding simulations of plywood are hard to do accurately because of the organic nature of the material.
By holes what I meant was “toplogy”
Where the stress is input and the unneeded material is removed. This would be done after the initial glue up not as single plies.
But then you run into cutting long grain layers into shorter lengths and weakening the whole board.
*This is all an assumption on how plywood properties would be simulated and output from solidworks.
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Ah, I completely missed your intent.
Some of the modelers have rudimentary FEA plugins, but like you said, the oriented strand nature of an organic material makes it tough.
The best approximation I can come up with is to break down and re-stack your assembly as a series of uni-directional grain plates and then stack those 9 high to approximate your laminate. …but I’ve only ever worked with materials that can be approximated as isotropic or gone in and broken it into different zones after the fact.
I think if you had opted for a matching count of long and cross strand sheets, you might get closer to an isotropic material, but it’s kinda backwards to sacrifice the final product knowing you need lots of longitudinal strength to improve the simulation 
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little something as I head to the finish line.
EDIT! in an attempt to clean up my Youtube channel I have deleted this video, but there are better ons towards the bottom of this thread!
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Looking forward to seeing people try this out.
How young of a kid do you think could ride it?
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i mean, they put training wheels on dirt bikes so i am going to say depends on the parent HAHAHA
Probably restricted by height required to touch the nose (~ 66")
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