The Step Bro - A Largely 3d Printed Build - COMPLETE!

Yeah I feel that. I keep the back binding 1-2 ratchets looser than the front.

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The next few parts of the build required me to get some stuff, so i went shopping last night.

Lifetime supply of grease for the drives :rofl:

Got a bunch of m5 bolts and t nuts for the enclosure. Plan is to counterbore the top of the deck so that these t nuts sit flush, and then skin over the top. Gotta hope that i never ruin the treads, but shouldn’t be too much of an issue considering the bottom box will only be holding batteries.

Also need to get some of these in m6 for the bindings.

Dudn’t get a photo, but i scored a half tube of black sikaflex from work which will help fully assemble/seal the enclosure.

Ordered a couple of metres of basalt to be used as face layers for the deck. Ideally i wanted flax, but couldn’t find any in stock locally in 300gsm twill. Will use this top and bottom, with some other sections of glass as well.

It’s all happening, just gotta find some more time!!!

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Found a tiny bit of time. Slapped on the Contino Condoms and got messy with the sikaflex. Sealed between all the aluminium/petg/tpu sections, as well as sealing in the joins where the petg walls connect together for the larger sections.

Didn’t realise how heavy this enclosure would be :flushed: it’s not ridiculous, but definitely got some heft. Should be tough as nails tho!

The weather is also making a turn for the better it feels like, today was a ripper. Really starting to notice the days getting longer :partying_face:

I doubt i’ll get any time tomorrow, but hopefully onto gear drives on Friday!

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Things happened yesterday and took away my gear drive time, but i had an hour this morning to play with the enclosure.

Removed all the temporary bolts and the sikaflex polyurethane sealant is doing its job perfectly.

There are some bolts that won’t go all the way through and have a housed nut inside the petg walls and the tpu flex connectors.

The nuts in the tpu don’t hold when trying to tighten them so i’ve superglued them in and hoping that will do the job :grimacing:

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Gear drives installed!!!

Was a super easy and pain free installation, start to finish, fully loctited and greased in 1.5hrs :partying_face:

Thanks @ApexBoards !

Deck is gonna need a slight haircut, but that’s ok, I wanted to tweak the shape slightly anyway :grin:

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I took a minute to reclaim my bench space in the garage! So much better working off a proper bench! Enclosure is looking super sleek, i am stoked with it!

Drilled all the holes through the deck and then counterbored them with a spade bit for the t-nuts

I tried clamping them in and while this did work, it tended to follow the curvature of the deck, rather than following the line of the hole… this resulted in some of the screws cross threading when I tried to install the enclosure :expressionless:


The problematic nuts were removed and replaced. If i ever do this again, I will skip the clamp idea and just go straight for bolting them in. The bolts pulled the t-nuts in beautifully.

I still don’t have the basalt fabric I ordered, so I think the next step is to position the bindings and install t-nuts for them as well as for the top box.

I also need to countersink all of the aluminium holes to appease @Bavioze … i wasn’t going to do it, but I tried a few and it looks great.

I haven’t actually designed anything to interface the deck and the top box, so I’m gonna need to find some CAD time!

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It’s looking so good! U always seem to try out of the norm things.

Very much looking forward to seeing this one finished!

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Its all about the experience dude! You never know if you never go!

This enclosure method has been brewing in the back of my mind for years, its exciting to finally be making it.

Wait til you see my parallel battery method once I have the top box completed :sweat_smile:

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Have you tried heat set inserts?

I imagine that would have the same problem as the nuts (the tpu would deform around the inferface features allowing it to spin) only worse (because those interface features are smaller).

For my money, I think his strategy of glueing the nuts in place is his best bet, as it actually bonds the interface features of the nut to the faces of the plastic. Maybe a t-nut in the TPU would be even better than that, because its interface features would anchor into the plastic :thinking:

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I’ve never tried heat set inserts cos nuts are easy and cheap and they work :man_shrugging: plus nylock ftw.

Fucking worked, i was stoked. Cross threaded a single nut, but one out of 16 not too bad! It got in far enough for it to just be considered as permanent thread locker :rofl: even though it worked, i wouldn’t recommend it as a viable method… was kinda touch and go

I did think of maybe using some petg over the top of the tpu like a washer that would hold the nut, but i wanted to try the glue first. Those bolts are permanent and will never need to come out so it’s done now anyway :grin:

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Ooooh the basalt is prettier than I thought it would be… keeeeeennnnnn

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When cros threading you massively reduce to contacting surface so it stains on one little part instead of sharing the load on all of the thread.

In this application I wouldn’t worry to mutch just run a tap thro it will help a lot and call it good.

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Ooh… looks like snake skin :fire:

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Trimmed up my tips and i’m much happier with the new shape.

Countersunk all the holes and filed any sharp edges

Filled in around all the t-nuts with thickened epoxy. I put a bolt in each hole to protect the threads… hope it worked :rofl:

Not quite sure how i’m gonna protect all these threads when I do the actual skinning, but I do know it’s gonna be a fucking pain in the dick.

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Just order a custom griptape maybe? That’s too simple for you though i guess

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The skinning is to add strength to the deck, i can’t skip it.

Final grip will be vicious on stomp pads :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Grease the tip of a bolt, thread it most of the way into the underside, fill the insert with hot glue, back the bolt out. You’ll be left with a membrane of glue at whatever thickness you want.

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Got a little CAD time in this eve. Pretty happy with the shape of the box, still gotta figure out how i’m gonna split it to fit on the print bed. I got ideas, just need to finesse them into reality.

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I don’t think heat set would work very well in tpu. Tpu is such a weird material I think it would just deform around it. They work amazing in the materials though if you set them right

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