So anyone who’s followed any of my builds knows I’m a bit unique in the construction of my boards, but I believe I have stumbled upon the perfect carving machine (for me). Yes it’s heavy and slow but it seriously rides like a dream and hasn’t tried to kill me in at least a year.
In fact, I like it so much I’m going to make another one, exactly the same, only different.
This constitutes the beginning of my build log.
For reference here’s the original one:
It’s 10S5P 2170’s with a FocBox Unity, Torqueboard 6355’s on Trampa 12Fifties with 6" pneumies. Headlights, taillights and a e-ink display up front.
The new one’s not going to be quite so fancy. it’ll be 12S5P with a Stormcore 60D, same motors, same trucks, but Hoyt St. 7" Pneumies, but no lights (at least not at the start) and no fancy display.
So slightly larger tires, slightly more battery, slightly newer electronics. And I’m actually going out on a limb and putting an onboard BMS on it.
Here’s all the goodies
Batteries
This board is using BAK 2170’s with a 5,000mAh capacity. The original board was running Lishen 2170’s at 4500mAh. So not only 12S vs the old 10S but higher capacity.
A few minor improvements to the battery packs - They are the same design as the old ones, but I’m taking it a couple of steps further this time towards my goal of completely solder/weld free battery packs. The idea is that if you have a weak bank or a weak cell you can simply crack the thing open, R&R some of the batteries in the pack and be back on the road.
And it gives me the ability to swap out batteries for higher-capacity at a later time with no welding required.
And the old weaker cells that come out go into other projects, so don’t have the spot weld marks on them.
Anyway, it worked pretty well last time, so I’m doing it again with the following improvements.
I changed out the contacts for ones with a larger contact patch. I also swapped out the original aluminum connectors for nylon. A little less strength, but non-conductive.
Here are all the connectors, cut to length drilled and tapped
Here are some of the the frames fresh out of the CNC ,machine and PCB’s.
and here’s a couple of completed banks
As you can see they have screw-terminal connectors so I no longer have to solder wires directly to the PCB’s. I can now solder the wires into little harnesses.
Drivetrain
Ok Vendors, please consider the following - Standards! Yes, I know there’s so many to chose from but wouldn’t it be cool if we had a standard method of connecting the pulley to the wheel? Here’s my problem
It won’t be that hard to cnc some little inserts out of Delrin that slip into the slots on the Hoyt wheel and attach them to an aluminum plate that then attaches to the pulley (an MBS 47072).
Frame
The frame is recycled from one of my very early builds - the first machine I built that had 18650’s and a not-home made ESC and unarguably the best motor every made, the Tacon Bigfoot. In fact, if I can get HFI working correctly on the Stormcore I might actually try to find a second Bigfoot and use those instead of the Torqueboard motors.
This board, as you see in the picture, chain drive and single motor and thanes, had more range than any board I’ve built since. If I were to load it up with some modern batteries and I swear I could get 60 miles out of it. I would totally win a single charge iron foot competition.
That’s it for tonight.