a build thread for ChortL, an electric commuter skateboard
My newest DIY-esk8 has been born. This is a commuter board for moving around town, grocery shopping, and is friendly to trains and shopping carts and hauling cargo. It is really heavy at 18kg (39 lbs) but it has the range to go almost anywhere. It has a handle on the nose. It has lights so I can be seen. It’s a sister board to the Blue One, the Green One, and the Red One.
hand-built 100 cell Li-ion 42.0V battery | hand-built fiberglass enclosure | hand skinned deck with aluminum oxide grip | loopkey power switch | Mini Remote | trigger Z.Mote | Hoyt puck remote | 6380 main motor, 6355 secondary motor, 5055 tertiary motor | @Boardnamics 145mm hangers on Caliber2 50° baseplates with CaliberE green bushings | one modified BN caliber mount, two modified BN “XL” mounts, one custom mount, all hand-machined | 29.75" x 9.75" Vision John Grigley Street Ghost deck | three FOCBOX motor controllers, two 1.6 and one 1.7 | 15:48, 15:48, 15:50 belt drives | Torqueboards TB130 72A prototype wheels | Metroboard 2W riser lights
There is also a “stealth mode” key which, when pulled, cuts off all lights and voltage gauges and only energizes the drive train.
Its range is probably around 93km (58 miles) under ideal conditions and 56km (35 miles) in real world conditions.
The enclosure also has the bottom edge made out of 7mm thick grinding wheel material.
It has a brake burner that will sound a buzzer and start burning off energy as heat if the charge begins to exceed 100% while braking.
All of these things fit together with mere millimeters of extra space — the clearance on this at full lean in both directions is almost exactly a millimeter in several places.
If you kick up the board and grab the handle with your left hand, then you are greeted with a battery voltage readout if you look into the nose end. It may be upside down, but it reads correctly as used.
You can see there are slots in the front of the enclosure for a socket and ratchet to tighten the truck nuts. You also can’t see it, but there is a hollow for the kingpin head so it doesn’t collide with the enclosure which sits 1mm from the front trucks.
It has a tailbone brakelight.
For being a shortboard and having 100 cells, it actually has enough clearance for all normal street riding that I do. It sails right over speed humps and various road imperfections.
But if something were to stick up too far and not clear, it could eventually, in theory, remove the offending concrete as I continue to ride over it. The bottom edge is a thick aluminum oxide, glass fiber, and polymer soup. An early mockup of this material was tested on actual concrete, and it does eat through it just like a grinding wheel.
