New 10s Electric Skateboard *Project Inertia*

[okp]

great, I bought acrylique graphittis sprays which are just dope, ultra quality for like 3,50 euros (or dollars) for a spray ! they don't smug, paint perfectly, highly resistent to abrasion, weather and so on.

I will post my build soon and you will see the results

 

[mccloed]

Check these guys out. http://www.mouser.com/Enclosures/_/N-5g3o I used them for some of my enclosures. They have a great selection and you could find something a little more compact.

 

[Hightower]

Thanks for the link Mccloed! I could spend hours on that site lol. Im sure i'll be able to find something that'll work well.

Okp that paint job is insanely good! Im so jealous that I won't even post a pic of the plain old black paint that I used....haha

 

[okp]

excellent !!!!

 

[Hightower]

Hey guys, it's been a NY minute since I've posted something new here. Just a few updates:

I wanted to have a video to bring to the table but unfortunately I took a small fall. Nothing too serious damage wise, just a sprained wrist and tweaked lower back. I found that one of my motor wires wiggled out, maybe it was from aggressive turning with my kicktail...but it made my motor take a lot of sudden resistance and it threw me off balance. I'm going to sugru that connection together, it can always be removed later. But the worst part is that my gopro case slid face first on the pavement, and is scratched right on the lens cover!! So no filming, without endangering the actual lens, until the new one comes lets hope amazon prime pulls through this time.

The black paint I used looks really nice. Most people say that it doesn't even look like Tupperware (i think the glowing blue on/off switch distracts them) but the problem is the paint scratches off easily.

As far as enclosures go, i'm going to start stepping my game up. I built a small vacuum former that will allow me to make custom fitted enclosures. I'm still working out the best way to attach them to the board while keeping it water resistant and easily accessible, as well as fine tuning the forming process...but this should get interesting.

-Any good suppliers for ABS sheets? i'm thinking 1/16" thickness, but i'd love to hear what other people have tried as far as thickness vs protection vs plasticity vs ease to work with.

I also went back to do that hill climb again at the local school. The total climb is probably 3-4 stories with various grades of incline with the steepest at the end. I gave my electronics a good groping after I got to the top and everything felt...kinda warm but not dangerous. I'm known for pushing my luck, but I like to call it testing my boundaries. So I did the hill again! After reaching the top, things started to slow down and I flipped over the board to check out the damage. The motor was fine, still slightly warm...the batteries, not warm at all....the ESC BURNED THE FINGERPRINTS OFF OF MY HAND! I noticed that it had just ever so slightly melted the plastic on a couple of the cables but luckily the wires weren't exposed. It only took a couple of minutes to cool down the ESC, and the board was behaving like new again! I won't be doing that again though lol

I'm also going to be swapping out my 83mm flywheels for 90mm and swapping out my 44T/18T and going with 36T/20T. Which, now that i'm looking at it...is going to make this board faster than I want it to go, but he trade-off should be a smoother acceleration.

I also want to know if anyone has issues with braking. A lot of the time i'll push my trigger forwards expecting to slow down but nothing happens at all. My drag brake is 30% and works fine, my brake is 60% and rarely even works...which imo is very dangerous!
-Will adjusting my trim fix this?
-Does motor timing have anything to do with this?

Anyways, I appreciate all your feedback. I found an un-authored quote that I wanted to share "The optimist sees the glass as half full, the pessimist sees the glass as half empty, but the engineer sees the glass as twice as big as it needs to be."

 

[torqueboards]

Good thing the fall wasn't too bad. It's common for motor wires to wiggle out if your stretching them and they aren't long enough. Either extend the wires and makee an extension adapter and/or tape them together with black electrical tape that seems to hold it.

This company is pretty cheap and you might be able to ship out to you - https://www.interstateplastics.com/Abs-Black-Extruded-Sheet-ABSBE__ST.php?sku=ABSBE__ST&vid=201504150947-5p&dim2=12&dim3=12&thickness=0.177&qty=1. You want at least a 2 to 3mm sheet as they do shrink. The more the better but depending on your machine and how you heat it up thicker might be harder. Also the thicker it is the less bendable it is. You might at least want .090" versus the 1mm thick one.

Yeah, IMO for climbing hills unless you serverly overgear it for torque perhaps using 12T/44T (also I think you have 16T/44T as I don't sell 18T). One motor is tough climbing up some real steep hills. I feel much safer by going dual motor that way I know I'll never really burn out both motors unless I'm climbing up real steep hills and my setup isn't using the correct torque to climb up a hill.

So, if you want to climb steep hills with one motor. I'd opt for a gearing around 1:3 to 1:3.66 to stress your motors less on a single motor. Higher gearing of course is better.

Don't burn your components out they are expensive

I've been using dual motor 20T/36T. You wouldn't want to use this gearing ratio unless your strictly flat ground single motor. Dual motor 8S 20T/36T has been doing ok on moderate/steep hills but real steep hills the motors are overworked - A 16T/14T would be much better.

As for your braking, I would turn off your drag brake and just use your regular brake setting. You can increase your brake percentage even higher than 60%. Braking depends on the current setup you have such as motor, wheels, etc.

With unsensorless brushless - we only use regenerative braking. Your motors need to be moving to generate power to brake. If your at 0 speed and/or not moving that fast - you won't have any brakes. You'll need to let it roll for about 2-3 seconds and brake if going downhill. Let it roll for 3-5 more seconds and brake and you'll feel the brakes are much harder.

If you have an ESC issue and the brakes are still soft at a higher percentage. Let me know I have firmware and/or can adjust the brake percentage.

Here's a technical explanation from Ben it's regarding the VESC but all the ESC's work the same way. Typically, the only way to get that immediate brake without speed would be with sensors and a good ESC.

Currently the VESC cannot do active braking (putting power into the motor to slow it down) in the sensorless mode. That is why the brake force is quite weak close to zero speed. Only regenerative braking is possible. As soon as you stop, you will get full torque in the other direction. I'm trying to implement sensorless active braking in firmware, but it is quite difficult. If you connect the sensors active braking should work.

 

[Hightower]

Thanks Torque great explanation. My brakes don't like to work at any speed.

A few ironic times they didn't even kick in until I had nearly rolled to a stop. other times, when purely accelerating due to gravity downhill and the brakes won't work, i'll rev the throttle to get the rpm's up to see if the brakes will engage, but I only end up going faster and bail into the grass.

Will monkeying with the throttle tuning on my GT2B make my brakes more reliable?

 

[torqueboards]

Thanks Torque great explanation. My brakes don't like to work at any speed.

A few ironic times they didn't even kick in until I had nearly rolled to a stop. other times, when purely accelerating due to gravity downhill and the brakes won't work, i'll rev the throttle to get the rpm's up to see if the brakes will engage, but I only end up going faster and bail into the grass.

Will monkeying with the throttle tuning on my GT2B make my brakes more reliable?

No, it's not your GT2B which controls your brakes and/or shouldn't most of all those settings should be at 0.

Have you tried increasing your brake percentage to 80%/90%?

 

[Hightower]

I will before my ride today. It's not that the braking isn't enough to slow me or stop me. When it kicks in, I brake to a stop just fine. The problem is that 80% of the time I don't brake at all. It's been like this since day one so i thought it was normal, and I have been too busy tweaking other things and playing with enclosures that who cares about braking!

 

[Hightower]

I took the board out for a ride this morning after dropping the kid off at school.

I did what Torque suggested and turned up my brake 80% and took off. After about 50 meters or so I tested the brakes....nothing....I flipped over the board plugged in my ESC progarmmer and double checked everything. It looked good, so I tried again....nothing....

I sat down and decided to play with the throttle control on the GT2B a little bit. When I turned it clockwise, it engaged the motor as if I pulled the trigger. When I turned it counter-clockwise nothing happened at all. So, I left it in the counterclockwise position that was opposite of where it activated the motor in the clockwise position (if that makes sense). Nothing changed as far as how sensitive my throttle engaged while accelerating, but when I engaged the brakes they locked right up on me!!! I nearly fell when the brakes engaged but I was so happy that they were working that I did a little Irish jig, which got a laugh out of some people that were jogging by. :lol:

I think i'll be turning my brakes back down to 60% :wink:

What I learned today....if your brakes aren't working, don't buy a new ESC....CHECK YO TRIM!!!!

 

[torqueboards]

Did you move trim closer to 0? At least you found the issue.

 

[Hightower]

The brakes weren't working at zero, which was why I played with it a bit. I wonder if that was a result of where the motor was when I initially set it up.

It's about .5 to the right of zero currently and working great!