What are you looking at for retail pricing? Or will you sell the files so we can get them machined ourselves?
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My plan is to keep testing the prototypes myself until I’ve ironed out all possible issues and weak points, hopefully Prototype V2 will be the last one before release 
Once I am happy with the quality of the design, I will do a beta release at a discounted price for people that want early access. I don’t want to put an exact figure on the pricing yet, as it depends on manufacturing batch size, but it will be competitive.
Who knows I might find that manufacturing and selling gear drives is a ball ache, if that happens I would consider selling the design files or open sourcing it.
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Update! Prototype V2 – CNC machined metal parts assembly
Sorry about the lack of activity on this thread, I’ve had the metal parts for a while now, but my day job has been pretty hectic over the past 4 months, so I’ve taken a break from eskate.
I’m really happy with the new truck clamp design, I think it should be much more robust compared to the 1st prototype. The press fit onto the truck hanger is tighter, it has two rows of grub screws, and the grub screws are larger M6 instead of M5. Here are some pictures of the finished part:
I’m very please with the machining quality and the black anodising turned out great. This prototype is functionally the same as V1, however a lot of effort went into saving weight whilst preserving durability. The design also changed slightly to retain grease close to the gear teeth and the drive is smaller compared prototype V1 for better ground clearance.
The weight of each drive is now down to 683g per drive which is 200g lighter compared to prototype V1, I could make the drive even lighter if I reduced the gear face width to 10mm instead of 15mm, but I don’t want to compromise the durability of the drives. My initial design goal was to produce a gear drive that is hard wearing and will hopefully outlast your board.
Over the next week I will be installing the gear drive on my board and completing some functional tests. I will put them through some thorough tests this winter with the aim of releasing the 1st batch to the public in spring.
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These are so pretty, I might just have to postpone my eMTB until spring. Really really pretty.
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Thanks mate really appreciate that! I do like how proto V2 turned out, the functional changes made it look nicer too 
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Update! Prototype V2 – Installation and testing
The installation for the gear drives was straightforward, it’s pretty much the same process as for prototype V1.
I’m happy to announce that the new truck camp design works wonderfully! Now the clamp has a tighter fit onto the hanger and an improved grub screw design, it’s rock solid even after lots of testing 
One thing I noticed during testing was that these drives are noticeably quieter compared to protype V1, which is weird because the fundamental gear design hasn’t changed (helix angle, No. teeth, face width etc…). I think the weight saving measures and tighter spacing around gears has helped with noise. Here is a short video showing what they sound like, it’s mainly motor noise:
I’m pretty sure I have ironed out all the kinks in the design now, I haven’t found any faults whilst testing. Expect a pre-order campaign to drop relatively soon 
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any plans for straight cut gears and matrix III compatibility :))
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Yes As soon as I can get my hands on the MBS Matrix 3 trucks, I will design a truck clamp for it, they seem to be out of stock at the moment. I will also be supporting:
- Apex Air
- MSB Matrix 2
- Trampa CNC 19.5mm
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mbs Europe have a preorder on and i believe atbshop is due there delivery any day now.
whats the thickness of the drives?
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Thanks for the heads up, I will be keeping an eye out on ATB shop The design is well optimised in terms of thickness, I don’t think there is room for making them thinner without compromising on the gear face width of 15mm.
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TBF that’s pretty wide. IIRC the BNM1 is only ~10mm
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wide gears increase the life span before you need to replace them
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Exactly a key design goal of this design were gears that never need to be replaced. After completing my gear simulations 15mm face width seemed like the most robust option.
Boardnamics weigh in at 675g per drive my drives weigh in at 683g, so not much difference there even though my face width is 5mm wider.
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Idk how often people usually replace gears, but from the passed 2 years of (abusive) wear and tear on mine I don’t think they’ll ever need to be replaced. Hardened steel lasts seemingly for ever.
You will need better alignment and tolerances though.
My guess would be that 15 instead of 10 will give a 50% longer cycle life. Since thats aproximately how much more surface area you add.
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i think you can definitely shave a lot of weight off the bull gears via pocketing. theres a lot of steel there that isnt doing much except increase MOI and overall weight. you could probably take off about half the weight of that gear which would put you ahead of BN if i had to guess. this does complicate machining a fare bit tho so maybe not worth.
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i’ve nearly worn out the steel gear on a steel-pom greased gear drive. fast high mileage will eat a drive for breakfast. (hardening will help wear)
i’d take 50% longer life for ~13g weight, reliability is king imo
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this is probably (like you said) highly dependent on the precision of the gear’s alignment. if you have perfect face contact then id imagine increasing face width by 50% might even get you more than 50% extra cycle life because the pressures on the tooth surfaces are reduced in addition to there being more gear that needs to be ground away before failure.
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How many miles? Backlash makes a big difference on gear tooth wear. There are many of us with over 1k miles on gd and barely any noticeable tooth wear
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yeah i definitely agree. i think the weight savings is more than 13g tho. Also, I think the main thing you gain from smaller face width is the increased space afforded for motors tho.
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