Link's first ebike. (Now: The S-Go)

[Ben]

I can't access it here.

[biohazardman]

Ouch ugly arm! Mine was messed up too at the time of my first build but not on the outside. Still is for that matter. I tried to get to the checkout for you and could not. They may require registration and log in for to purchase as some places do. I am trying to do a new build myself found out I am to old and beat up for my first build the GM36 500w Schwinn hardtail. Need a nice marshmellow bike with the cushy suspension so I can enjoy my ride instead of pay for it afterwards. Good luck with your build.

http://goldenmotor.com/SMF/index.php?topic=279.0

[docnjoj]

Sorry Checkout doesnt work 4 me either! Wadduwant, these folks are from Alabama
otherDoc

[Link]

Hmm, I noticed the little checkout button in the upper right, but trying to get to that screen gets the same result. Seems to be the secure server they're using for transactions rather than the site itself.

I'll flip them an email to let them know. Normally, I'd just find someone else, but I can get ABS sheet for about half of what I can in most other places, and they've got a bunch of beige ABS surplus for like $0.53/ft².

[Link]

Interstate Plastics just got their site up and I FINALLY got my order in. Two 24" x 48" sheets of black 1/8" ABS and 30 pieces of 12" x 24" beige ABS surplus. Think I'll be set for a while. Now, about that toaster element...

I am so broke right now it's not even funny. I've got like barely $100 to my name.

Oh, yeah: I got my stitches off yesterday and the crepe maker makes excellent quesadillas, even with its odd shape. The microwave makes decent ones, but the crepe maker makes the tortillas a little crispy. Nom!

[Link]

I'm expecting the plastic Monday or Tuesday.

In the meantime, this thing arrived.



It's freaking HUGE. I mean, yeah, I know a 400A controller is gonna be big, but that's a 12" ruler. The thing weighs like half of what my Ping pack does.

But I got it quite cheap as a project piece, as I guess it needs a rebuild. I have absolutely no idea what exactly that entails.

[TPA]

A separately excited motor controller works with your hub motor? (Forgive me but I'm new at this).

I like the little critter templates in that ruler

[Link]

Nah, that's for a separate project not yet worth its own topic. The goal is to get that thing running at over 100kW. Haven't specced out the parts yet, but I took the thing apart and counted 20 1,000µF capacitors and a whopping 36 FETS.

In relation to the bike, I checked over the bent rim to see if I could bend it back. I could, but, unfortunately, the join in the rim split. It'll probably wear a hole in the sidewall if I tried to use it.

I like the little critter templates in that ruler

My favorites are the chicken and the moo-cow. XD

[Link]

Gave up trying to find a broken toaster/whatever (I'd have to go outside! Le gasp! ), so I just got 16ft of nichrome ribbon with something like 1.2Ω/ft of resistance. Should give me about 1kW if powered straight from a wall outlet.

I'll dado out a groove in a thick sheet of plywood and basically just wrap and solder the stuff to a few nails. Power that through a light dimmer/router controller and I should have a nice little variable strip heater. I might put up a short tutorial post on how to do it.


In unrelated news, I just bought a Casio Privia PX-200 digital piano. I found a code that got me $75 off orders over $500 from Musician's Friend. It would've been just the piano and the pedal, but neither of the good pedals they had were eligible for the discount. So, I got the keyboard, a sustain pedal, and a cheap X stand for $460. A certain parent with whom I live chipped in for half, so I only paid $230 for it. I've been without such a thing for too many years now, so I'll be ecstatic when that thing gets here.

[Link]

Woo, plastic's here.



Quite a bit of it, I might add. Now, I just gotta wait on that nichrome.

...

*twiddles thumbs*

[kbarrett]

My favorites are the chicken and the moo-cow. XD

Post gifs after you rattlecan those onto your ride.

[Link]

My favorites are the chicken and the moo-cow. XD

Post gifs after you rattlecan those onto your ride.

...

Dammit, now I'm tempted to do it. >_<

Also: The nichrome showed up today. I may see what I can do after work, but I dunno how the neighbors would react to a table saw being run at 9PM.

[TPA]

if your tablesaw splinters and cracks the plastic....look into getting a plywood blade...they are faily cheap.

[Link]

I've already cut a little of the stuff. The blade that came with the saw makes a pretty smooth edge by itself.

Makes a mess, though. That bag on the bottom of it is useless. One of my projects is going to end up being making a proper dust collection system for that thing, I know it.

Mebbe just stuff a big fan in the opening of that bag...

[Link]

Well, I finally got off my lazy ass and built the thing.



Working out how to get five strips of nichrome into the thing without them touching proved troublesome, so I just used a single strip and decided to run it on 48V. I decided on 24V later.

What a good idea that was.

For starters, I had forgotten exactly how much this stuff expands when hot. Had I been running five parallel strips on 120V, they would have for sure touched and then blown something up.

Anyway, moar pics. Here's an interesting one.



What!? Less than 0.1W!? Tell me if you can figure out what's wrong with that picture.




My Wattmeter (after I plugged it in the right way ) said that this thing was drawing 6.6A, which gives me about 150W. This seems to be just about right for bending this ABS, so it's a good thing I decided on a much lower wattage.

On 36V it turned bright red and started charring the wood, as you can see in that last pic. Luckily, I tried that first, so I avoided the disaster 48V might have caused.

Interestingly, the wire under the plastic still gets a dull red on 24V, since the air is somewhat trapped under the plastic. I'm guessing this is the secret to why these work so well without being variable. Awesome for me, since this means that I only had to buy $7 of nichrome to make this thing, and I only used a little over 3 feet of 16.

I might make another, longer one of these since it was so easy to do, and I still have over 12 feet of nichrome strip left. BTW, that stuff makes some really weird noise when you wiggle it and it scrapes against itself. I was standing there for like five minutes just playing with it. Sounds kinda like a baby Metroid, actually.

EDIT: Oh yeah, keyboard gets here tomorrow and the dehydrator in my room is now being used. If my nose doesn't deceive me, it's full of pineapple.

[TPA]

A new work bench!!

Glad to see that you've given the dryer a break.

[Link]

LOL, yeah. My grandma was MAD when she saw how scratched up the top of the dryer was.

Anyway, that keyboard got here and that's pretty much what I've been playing with for the past, oh, 5 or six hours. I'm only stopping because my wrist is killing me and it's 3:30AM. The keys on my typin' keyboard barely feel like they're even there after the action on this piano. Quite heavy.

I was supposed to go to Disneyland tomorrow, since my little cousin is down here and I know a guy who works there, but it turns out it's a blackout date. So, I figure I'll mess with the bender tomorrow (maybe make another, better one), see what I can get done with the box, and then end up giving myself carpal tunnel with this Casio.

I put in an order for about $50 (plus $10 for tax and shipping) of connectors and whatnot from Powerwerx, since I only have four pairs of connectors left. Not enough to get that free mousepad, though.

[Dee Jay]

Please tell you got MIDI on your new keyboard . . .

gotta have MIDI . . .

J

[Link]

Of course! It's got a MIDI out and in, but I've been running it through the USB port since my computer doesn't. Reason has some very nice instruments in it, I must say.

I'm waiting for the pedal and stand to show up a few hours from now, because the cheap little one that came with the keyboard keeps sliding around, and this desk makes the keyboard a bit too high to be really comfortable.

In the meantime, I'll go mess with the plastic some more. I didn't really notice it before, but the bend I made with it was surprisingly tight; moreso than any of the ones I made with the clamp/heat gun method.


Also, I just found out that today I'm supposed to register for school. Blaaaah...inneruptin' ma toosday...mebbe do it tomorrow...

[Link]

Well, it's been a while, but I finally got a little more work done. I made another heater before this one, but it failed spectacularly. So, like a phoenix from the ashes (not too far from the mark with all the charred wood that I left...), I rebuilt it. It's not perfect, but it's much better than before. I discovered that the size of the airgap the element rests in is fairly crucial: too much and it will heat too much of the plastic; too little and it burned it before it got hot enough to bend.

First, I cut a new channel into the wood. Wide enough to staple down two strips of nichrome.




Then added some connectors. The black connection really needs more wire between it and the strip, because it gets the connector pretty hot (feels around 120F). Not really a problem, though.



The nichrome strips are in parallel, so they draw about 11A from the 35Ah SLA I'm powering this with after it's heated up.



This nichrome stuff really expands when it gets hot. It was scalloping in between the staples (which is why I had them there), and wasn't heating the plastic evenly. So I doubled the number of staples and it worked better. I may double them again...

The wood smoked for a little when it was charring, but it doesn't anymore. The channel should really be ceramic, but I doubt it would make a difference to much but aesthetics, so it doesn't matter to me.




The heat seems to be forcing water out of the wood. Huh.



Anyway, it's a pretty okay heater, and I was testing it on some plastic scraps. FAR easier than the heat gun rig.

[Link]

Moar work done. Managed to get a fair bit of the actual box finished.

I doubled the staples in the bender again, with excellent results. Heating is now totally uniform. Bends came out excellent.




Got the join plated up and the PowerPole jack installed, too.



And noticed this on the corner of my battery. Uh oh...



That connection on the strip heater that was getting hot is now completely shot. It managed to oxidize to the point to where it had enough resistance to completely char the insulation and desolder itself from the PowerPole. The nicrome was getting red hot near the copper/strip connection, enough to turn the outer copper into some weird brittle oxide. Damn. When I redo it, I'll try to add some conductive grease to it to keep the connection solid, because I suspect this was the problem; the other side should have had the same problem if it was by nature of the way they were connected. I'd normally just solder it, but this nichrome stuff doesn't seem to want it, at least without being really hot, something I can't do to it unless it's not touching the wood. Hmm...

Oh yeah, another thing. When I was messing around, I managed to knock over the bike. The axle hit first. The rear axle. The side with the effing wires sticking out. I inspected them and can see bare spots. FVCK! I don't WANNA have to rewire the motor yet!

And did I mention that my controller seems to be AWOL?

[Link]

Turns out the controller was merely located in some archaic location in the garage. Namely, a box at the end of the overcrowded work bench.

Here's an idea of how badly that connection on the bender was fried:



That insulation used to be clear, mind.

Turns out you can't solder to nichrome. At all. Or if you can, it's really hard to do. It just doesn't seem to stick.

I figured if I couldn't solder to it, I could crimp it, at least. I scrounged around in my stuff box and found some ring terminals. They'll make a great heat sink to keep the wire in good shape.



I did it to both connections, since that one was starting to have problems, too. I think it's because the wood was charring behind the nichrome and shrinking back, loosening the connection.

I've discovered that there is enough room in the box for the controller, so I'm going to go with the original idea and have everything important inside this box. I was browsing around the Digi-Key catalogue for suitable connectors until I came to a good one. The main issue was that I needed 8 contacts (or more) and that BOTH connections had to be panel-mount. After a while, I came to to the various types of computer connectors and found some good ones that I could find locally. Can't believe I didn't think of it before, actually. So, later, I plan on a trip down to Fry's to get a pair of D-sub (serial) connectors to take care of the throttle and hall connections. Maybe I'll mess with the Watts-Up and connect it through that, too, if I'm feeling adventurous. Then I can glue it to that broken headlight's handlebar clip and put it where I can see it. Certainly has enough contacts for it.

[Sturdly]

Do those little connectors handle the amperage that will be flowing through a Watts up?

[Link]

Nope. Hence the modding. Voltage is as simple as plugging it in, but amperage requires removing its shunt.

But, I suppose, you could run a fair bit of power through a D-sub if you paralleled a bunch of the contacts. Don't know how much each one can carry, though.


Also, the ring terminals and bolts do, indeed, work great. The wire behind them only got warm to the touch.

[Link]

Results of today's work:



Bent up a piece of plastic to act as a separator. The batteries need to stay in place, but the controller needs airflow, so this solves that problem.

Then I needed to cut out the sides. The box is visibly imperfect (one of the sides is too long...), so it's kinda wonky. It's not very noticeable unless you're looking at it head-on, and I really didn't want to have to make another one to fix it. Up to now, I've worked everything out so that I had a relatively huge margin of error for everything (the hole the PowerPoles are in, for example, was cut out with a drill bit), but the sides have to fit nearly perfectly. I just stood the box on end on some plastic and sprayed some paint in it to get a perfect outline of what I needed to do.



Worked out pretty good, even if I had to use the table saw to nibble the edges round...



The plastic itself will be covered with some of that black sort of netting-like fabric, so it won't be seen. They shouldn't show through, but I painted them black just in case. I tested the paint on some scrap earlier, and it sticks pretty well. Just don't scratch it.



Fry's was closed by the time I was able to get a ride there...