Long Range Commuter | Custom Deck | 2x 6354 170kV | 10S 8P 30Q | Dickyho Trucks, Wheels, Mounts, ESC (for now)

[VykkuF]

This is still in progress. Copied everything from the other forum and will only update this page from now on.

I am currently using a 27" Ownboard deck swap for commuting to uni since that’s all I could fit under the seat. However now I have a space to store and charge it there, so I decided to build one from scratch suited for my needs and wants.

I am planning to keep stuff relatively cheap but still decent, and then replace stuff with the higher quality ones when I can.

To keep things short, I have main 3 requirements:

• Bigger wheels . The current 90mm are very unforgiving for the London suburb roads.
• Range . I was hoping I could get about 25 miles of realistic range on it. I live 22 miles away from uni and sometimes it would be nice to ride the whole way. This means that I can cross out the pneumatics, so I decided to go with Dickyho’s 145mm solid wheels since I should hopefully get better range on them while still making the ride more comfortable than on 90mm wheels. Eventually I am thinking to get the Trampa Gummies since I like the look of them.
• Larger deck . I am not constrained anymore in terms for size, and I would need a big deck for the wheels and batteries.

Parts List:

• Deck : I was thinking to get the Hummie deck, but I couldn’t find any for sale for a while, and I would like having the motor mounted forward so it would be a bit more stealthy (and I wanted to be able to hold it vertically and not have the motor mount hit the ground). I found a local guy who makes custom decks, and he made a deck for me following my designs. I don’t actually like much flex on boards, so it is made from 12ply of canadian maple, so should not have a lot of flex. Here are some renders of the deck (along with a crude model of the trucks, wheels and motor mounts):

It would have a logo laser etched in the middle. Undecided between laser cut black griptape just where the feet are, or clear griptape on the whole deck:

The board will not be uniform, with the front tip being shorter than the rear, to accommodate for the motors.

• Wheels: Dickyho’s 145mm solid wheels seemed to have pretty good reviews, and they are pretty cheap, so I ordered them. Worst case scenario, if they are not quite what I want, I can always resell them for a reasonable price, and buy something else (probably Trampa 125mm Gummies).

• Trucks and Motor Mounts : I ordered these from dickyho again, since they are the cheapest things on the market, and still seem quite decent quality. All I would need is new bushings and pivot cups since they are not too great, as expected. Since I bought them he came out with a new revision of his mounts, which look even better.

• ESC: I’ve been using the Ownboard ESC for a while and it seemed pretty decent, so I decided to get the Dickyho’s ESC, since it was only about £50 including remote and power switch. I will get VESCs eventually, once the board is finished and I’m ready to buy upgrades to it.

• Motors : I am using 2x sensored 6354 170kV, again from dickyho, since they are cheap and the right kV for my setup. I am using 15/60 gearing, so I would be aiming at about 25 mph max, which is pretty much perfect for me. The roads here are not good enough to be trying to go faster, and I will not go offroad to justify bigger more expensive motors.

• Battery : Originally was planning to go with Lipos, but ended up changing my mind and will build my own battery pack. I got a Boss spot welder, and a Bestech BMS with a switch. Will probably just make the biggest battery that can fit as a double stack with PCBs (so most likely 10S 8P with 30Q cells).

• Enclosure : It would be a custom deck, so I will need a custom enclosure. I got a CR10 that sits idle most of the time, so I am planning to make the enclosure out of fibreglass while using a PLA negative mold. There was a Youtube video where someone has done fibreglass parts using 3D printed molds and he achieved impressive results, so I would follow his instructions.

08/04/19:

I received dickyho’s parts, and I am pretty happy with them. First think I noticed is how heavy it turned out to be, the rear truck with wheels, 60T pulleys, motor mounts and motors are 3.9kg, but it does feel pretty high quality. Here are some pics of the rear truck with motors mounted:

Front view:

I will spraypaint the outer circular aluminium piece that holds the pulley black so it would not be as noticeable.

Top view:

Rear view:

I have bought his adjustable crossbar (Ebay number 303033848672), but I found it hard to install, and once installed it is hard to move the motors to adjust the tension. Since my motors are forward mounted, I wanted some cover for them to help against small pebbles and dirt. I designed and printed the following cover which uses the pulley covers and bolts and nuts that come with the trucks:

I printed it out of PLA mainly as a test. When I will have more time I will reprint it out of PETG or ABS.

19/04/19:

New update, the deck mold was done and it is ready to be vacuum pressed.

01/05/19:

The deck is almost done, just needs a few more layers of varnish.

30/05/19:
Due to recent drama I’ve decided to copy my build thread to this page.

The deck was made by Big Aye Skateboards. I still don’t have and haven’t seen the deck in real life. It looks great in pictures and is pretty similar to what I asked for, although I did have some small issues with him. I will probably get my hands on it in 1-2 weeks, when I will also be done with my uni exams.

[VykkuF]

Time for some pics of the deck with trucks and motor mounted on it:

So far it the slight drop feels very comfortable while riding unpowered, and I think it will be great once it is ready as well.

Now I want to scan it using photogammetry so I can design the enclosure and all the other parts to fit well. I did a few quick tries and got some acceptable results:

However I still want to get even better ones of the complete deck.

[VykkuF]

Well, I ended up taking about 200 RAW 24 Megapixel photos for the photogrammetry, and I’m using Meshroom according to the Prusa Guide. I am using the 2018 edition since the 2019 seems to have a lot of issues on my PC.

It has been about 8 hours since it started running, and it still has 4 out of 12 stages left to do. I am using a relatively decent PC, i7 5820K and GTX 1070, so if you want to do this yourself keep in mind that it does take a long time, during which both the CPU and GPU are running close to 100%.

Here is the “Structure from Motion” generated so far:

There do seem to be some misplaced squares in the air, which are basically noise. I hope they will not cause issues to the model itself, and I am not sure what caused them, as I used so many high quality photos.

After one more hour the non textured mesh is ready:

Here is the deck after some clean up from the above in Meshmixer:

So far pretty satisfied with it. It is not perfect, but it is good enough for my uses.

[VykkuF]

And here it is textured, after about 11 hours of processing:

[Balta_6]

Just a small advice on on photogammetry, the material need to have the most detail possible, like spot for the firmware to catch on
The best option would be to cover the deck in small dots, it will make the capture of it much more precise !

[VykkuF]

For the battery, I will make modular PCB modules, connected between each other with XT30 connectors and 12AWG wire. Here are some quick renders:

The bronze coloured cylinders are just meant to be stripped 12 AWG wires.

Here is the PCB layout for it that I quickly made:

Going to order all the parts for it now.

[VykkuF]

Starting to design the enclosure now:

[VykkuF]

And here is the mold for it:

I still need to add mounting parts to hold all the 6 mold pieces together.

[VykkuF]

Just got the PCBs from JLCPCB. Very impressed for the price and the delivery was quite quick, even for the slowest option

[VykkuF]

Started working on the battery modules. So far very happy with how they are turning out. I have welded the nickel to the PCB, and then I will also solder it when I will add the extra wires. I did not receive the XT30 connectors yet, so that will wait for a bit.

The Boss welder is very easy to use, although I will need to add some extra cooling as it does get a bit warm, it got to 45 degrees after finishing these 3 modules. I did not like the Automatic mode, as sometimes I might need some extra time to align the pen properly, and using the stock switch on the pen itself makes it harder to apply proper pressure. I did not have time to design a proper pedal, so I ended up using parts that I could find around to make one in 2 minutes:

It is just a random plastic box with a hole cut out for the switch, and also I hotglued random metal bolts to add some weight to it. It works perfectly, and made the welder much easier to use.

[VykkuF]

I had a pretty long break from pretty much all my ongoing projects as I build a workshop / shed over the past few 2 months. Good news is that I finally have space for my 6040 CNC.

I used the CNC to make cutouts for the battery modules. Only went for 6 mm (which makes the deck around 9 ply where the cutouts are. I definitely could go a bit deeper, but it is good enough for me as I still have plenty of clearance.

I controlled it manually with jogging instead of preparing G code since it did not have to be exact, and it would have taken too much time otherwise. However I did end up making a few small mistakes, but they were easily covered with some wood fill.

Then I finished building the batteries, and covered them in fish paper (will be covered in heatshrink after they will be soldered):

I would love to get it ready next 1-2 weeks, so I made a temporary enclosure for now, and at some point I will do it properly. I 3D printed it using vase mode in 4 pieces (Only took 14 hours total, each piece was 1mm thick). Then I glued all the parts together using Mitre Fast Glue (which is absolutely amazing), sanded the 3D printed enclosure with 80 grit sand paper to rough it up and make the fibreglass stick.

I added 3 layers of fibreglass (not sure what gsm, but it was pretty coarse). It is definitely not perfect or even great, but it is good enough. Overall cost of the enclosure was around £1 for filament, and £12 for fibreglass kit.

I then spray painted it black, and will add a clear coat later. I kinda like the texture of the rough fibre so there is no point spending too much time to fill it and make it smooth, as I will end up eventually making a nicer enclosure with a negative mold (and probably a vacuum bag)

Now I am just waiting to get all the small things required to finish it, like fuse, charge port, foam, etc.

[visnu777]

The enclosure turned out great, why do you want to make another one? Do you own that keyboard on purpose? If yes, welcome to the secret red dot society

[VykkuF]

It looks better in photos than in real life, and it had some air bubbles trapped in the fibre layers that I couldn’t get rid of, so it is not as strong as it could be. Also I would want to get some patterns into it, which wouldn’t be too hard to do with a negative mold.

And yeah, I use Thinkpad laptops exclusively (currently on my 7th one, X1 Yoga 1st Gen), and I love the keyboards, so I wanted one for my desktop too. I paid around £12 shipped for the keyboard and I am super happy with it, which is funny cause my previous keyboards were £100+ each (custom 60% & TKL keyboards with green, blue or brown switches, Terminal Model F etc).

[esk8god]

hey i’m getting the same kit and was wondering if you would be willing to share the design for the motor guards, crossbar and belt guards so i could 3d print them?

Thanks!

[VykkuF]

Hi, he has changed the design of his motor mounts a while ago, and the one I have is the old one. Not sure if he still has this one for sale, but yeah, I can share the design of the motor guard / crossbar. It will be in .step format so you can change the length if needed in any CAD software.

The belt guards came with the kit, but I think I saw them on Thingiverse as well

[UKrider]

Yes please if you could share the design for the guards would really appreciate it. I have the older mounts too and would love to print off some guards

[VykkuF]

I finished the build (haven’t updated the thread yet), and after about 10 miles I broke the PLA+ one, reprinted it out of PETG and it broke after about 50 miles. I probably hit a small rock or something like that since I was on relatively smooth asphalt.

Anyways here is the link to the Fusion 360 file so you can make changes to it easier if required: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DUGRiCD9RMyAwJLg5kDExlU6bCNiwitm

Now I am back to metal ones I got from dickyho together with the trucks. He doesn’t seem to sell them anymore but might be worth contacting him regarding them.

[VykkuF]

So this build has been finished for about a week, but never got around to finish the build thread.

I used 2x 12 awg leads to connect the battery packs to each other., and then 1x 10 awg for the terminals. Then added the balance leads, another layer of fish paper on top, fibreglass tape to hold the fish paper properly, and then black heatshrink for each module. Then I wired up pretty much everything else, the BMS, ESC, connectors. Using JST-SM 3 pin connectors (only using 2 pins) for the battery indicator and BMS E-switch, and XT30 for the charge port. The reason I used JST SM is because I have a buttload of them due to working with adressable RGB a lot for PC modding. Also added a 10A mini automotive blade fuse with holder to the charge wires. Everything worked straight away with no faults. All the parts are secured to the deck with heavy duty Velcro, so the enclosure does not support much weight at all.

I am very impressed by the ESC. It is quite cheap, has roll to start working perfectly out of the box, does not seem to heat up too much, built in antispark switch, and does tseem to be handle quite a decent amount of power as it accelerates in seconds to max speed uphill without a sweat. The remote is decent with 3 speeds, board battery indicator (with 4 leds), and feels comfortable in my hand. However it has a bit of a large dead zone that takes a bit to get used to.

To mount the enclosure, I drilled through the deck instead of using inserts as I actually like the look of evenly spaced black hardware on maple top

It currently has cheap clear griptape applied while I decide on something more permanent. Would love glass frit but don’t want to try to apply it myself and @Sender is too far away.

Here is a photo of the insides that I took 2 days ago after about 70 miles total:

Here it still has the PETG motor guard, which has cracked since then and I replaced it with the old metal one from @dickyho that I had laying around.

I wanted to take proper photos of it today, but it rained the whole day so I did not take it out. Will hopefully do that tomorrow.

[VykkuF]

Finally some photos of the finished build. It is extremely stable and very nice for carving. Also perfect for UK roads as the wheels and the large deck absorb most vibrations.

[Skyart]

Are thos motors from dickyho? How are they performing?