I probably have the answer to my question already: Because flywheel and kegel cores and their associated pulleys work fine.
But, why not have esk8 specific wheel cores? I am picturing a couple things here.
A core with integrated pulley
Drawbacks I see
Need for many different cores- not everyone likes the same belt width, tooth count or belt profile.
Probably cost
Benefits
Could design a much smaller core, more urethane, smoother ride. Wheel profiles like grippins would be possible without drilling holes in the urethane itself and ruining the benefits of certain wheel profiles.
No integrated bearing? pulley is still straight- integrated bearings could be optional.
Wheel core with community agreed upon standard attachment point, something like BKBs modular pulleys but clamping onto the core instead of through the core
benefits?
change your pulleys, compatibility with gear drives, etc
Again, biggest benefit IMO to having a pulley adapter built into the wheel core is that you can have smaller wheels, or much less core. Smaller wheels with smoother rides than our big wheels now with less overall diameter than 83mm flywheels would be possible.
Anyways, I understand these are pipe dreams. I don’t see the cost being fronted for such little gain or there being any kind of standard “core attachment” thingy in such a niche market, but it would be cool to see one day… I’d really just love to ride a lot of my all urethane nearly no core wheels without drill holes and bolts mucking up the all thane feel.
I saw someone cast their own wheels on the old forum so with maybe casting a custom core and pouring the thane I’d imagine you’d have some really nice wheels.
You could have a pulley in the center for super narrow builds and it would fair better in rain
A) we have no industry standards
B) we don’t have enough money to pay for molds and production costs
C) pulleys in mass cost like $12 a set
D) market is tiny
Yep, agreed… addressed A, B, and D in my post as well.
What it boils down to for me, is that wheels like grippins, or flashbacks, or any other wheel with cores that only serve as a minimal support layer between bearings and urethane (as opposed to flywheels, speedvents etc where originally larger cores meant less mass for larger wheels), it could be easy enough to have a circular bracket extending out from the core a bit that you could twist lock pulleys on, or attach another way that makes sense. As analog wheels, they would be the same as any other longboard wheel, but with the ability to just toss a pulley on. Making a core like this, and we wouldn’t even need pulleys, we could design the pulleys themselves to work as long as the core design makes a little sense and the wheels are great.
Wouldn’t it be lovely but a way off I fear. Would require some serious investment and as stated its just too small a market to be feasible.
Personally an integrated pulley on specific sized wheels would be fine because there is an optimum size wheel pulley for each specific size and if changes to ratios were necessary then motor pulleys can be easily changed.
