Electric Skateboard

This project started with the need for speed if you will. I bought an electric skateboard from Meepo, a company in China, at the beginning of freshman year. It performed great at the time and served me well for that fall semester. Over winter break I decided that I wanted something new with longer range and higher top speed. Over the next month I built out a parts list and did research on compatibility and performance. I bought the first components at the end of December and had the first working version in middle January. While it wasnt perfect, it was a proof of concept. I had built an electric skateboard.

It did not end in January though. There were a multitude of issues I had to work through to get to the functionality I have right now. The biggest thing was the speed controller. Unbeknownst to be, the speed controller I had initially purchased was a dud. It was outputting only about a quarter of the advertised current making the board basically un-rideable on hills of any angle. There was just no torque. I spent a good month trying different things to fix this before realizing that I just had to shell out another $230 to get a replacement. Once I had power, I realized how lacking my motor mounts were. With the new found torque, the motor mounts were vibrating loose after only a few miles no matter how much I tightened and loctited them. That combined with the general instability of dual kingpin trucks at higher speed led to the biggest upgrade yet. After taking a huge crash due to speed wobbles, I swapped out my dual kingpin belt drive drive-train with a reverse kingpin gear drive drive-train. With the stability massively improved I was finally able to ride confidently. That was before my gear drives started overheating and making screeching sounds while riding. Despite my best efforts I had forgotten loctite on the most crucial location of the whole board. The pinion gear, the gear that is attached to the motor axel and interacts with the wheel gear, was not loctited in place and was sliding around on the motor axle. It was rubbing against the housing of the gear drive, grinding a grove into the aluminum generating metal shavings, heat, and noise. I cleaned everything, applied loctite, and regreased and everything has been fine since.

The board in its present state goes 38 mph on flat ground. The board originally could go 45 miles per hour but my gear ratio changed with the drive train change, and my wheels have worn down about 5%, reducing the top speed by about 5%. It can also go anywhere from 10 miles to 25 miles on a single charge depending on how hard I push it. I am able to ride on big roads with cars in Atlanta like 10th and North Avenue with ease. I have also started an unofficial club of electric skateboarders and we go on group rides around campus and midtown together. It is the perfect vehicle for a college campus and aside from potentially more range, I see no further upgrades that need to be made.