Person Shows How to Build DIY Electric Skateboard
This person showed how to build an electric DIY skateboard. They bought all its parts and assembled them while giving instructions. The end product came out as a cool-looking skateboard with a remote control that was cost-effective too.
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*The underlying music rights are not available for license. For use of the video with the track(s) contained therein, please contact the music publisher(s) or relevant rightsholder(s).
Transcript
00:00The first thing that we're going to get to is the drivetrain, which is how the motors are connected to the wheels.
00:04Here are all of the parts that we used in our drivetrain all laid out so you can get an idea of the things
00:09that you'll need. The first thing that we have are these trucks, which are caliber 2 truck clones.
00:14We got these from DIY Electric Skateboards or Torque Boards.
00:17It's crucial that you use either caliber 2 trucks or caliber truck clones because of the D shape that they have on their hanger,
00:23enabling them to fit with your specific motor mount,
00:25which we have here is the Boardnamics idler tensioner caliber 2 truck motor mount.
00:30The next part that we have are these 5055 200 KV motors from Flipsky.
00:34These are different than any other motor that we used before because they're 50 millimeter instead of 63 millimeters,
00:40and they also have a D shaped shaft, enabling them to have
00:44specific motor pulleys that don't need a keyway and making it a lot easier to assemble while also being more reliable.
00:49So the first thing that you're going to want to do is place your motor mount on your motor and then use the four M4
00:55bolts to secure the motor plate onto your motor.
01:01After all four bolts are in, the motor will sit nice and flush with the edge of the motor plate,
01:05and you'll want to do the same thing on the other side for your other motor. Next,
01:09we have the motor pulley, which is included with your motor.
01:11You'll want to take the set screw included and screw it into the side of your motor pulley.
01:15Next, you can place the motor pulley onto the shaft of the motor, and it's pretty easy because there's only one way you can do
01:21it with the D shaped shaft. To prevent the pulley from sliding off,
01:24you can tighten the grub screw on the edge of the pulley all the way down using an Allen key.
01:28I personally really loved this D shaped motor shaft system. As the motor pulley sits nicely,
01:33it doesn't need a keyway, and it's easily fastened to the motor. Again,
01:36you'll want to make sure that you do this to both of your motors.
01:39The next step is to take the clamping portion of your motor mount and get that assembled. So you'll take the cap head screws
01:46included and then put them through the two clamp pieces and then the nut on the other side,
01:50so that it kind of creates this clamping vice system that'll prevent the two pieces from moving outwards.
01:56You can then slide this piece over your hanger of your truck in the correct orientation,
02:00which you'll see that the two D shaped pieces of the hanger and the mount itself will line up.
02:05You can do this on both sides since you'll have two motor mounts. At this point,
02:09we're just trying to get our alignment of these mounts correct so that we have enough room for the pulleys.
02:13So what we did was to take our wheel,
02:15make sure that the wheel pulley kind of fit on, and then place the motor mount in a place that we thought
02:20would allow for enough clearance for the motors to both fit on, but also for the wheel pulleys to not scrape against the plate.
02:25Which, by the way, we're using these 100 millimeter MBS all-terrain wheels with 36 tooth bolt-on wheel pulleys from Torque Boards,
02:32which we won't show you how to assemble because we've shown this in many other videos.
02:36To further confirm that you've got your mount in the right position, you can slide the plate on top of it.
02:41It's not going to matter what angle that you put this plate on
02:44because you're going to mount it to the deck and then you can figure out what it needs to be at.
02:47But this loose fitting will allow you to see if you've got the mount in the right position.
02:52And once it's there, you can disassemble everything that you've just put together and then actually tighten down the motor clamp on the mount.
02:59To secure the clamp to the hanger of the truck, you'll want to use an allen key
03:02that's the proper size for the bolt and a wrench that's the right size for the nut.
03:06And then you'll want to make sure that you do both sides evenly
03:09to ensure that the clamp is nice and flushly on and not too far to one side.
03:15This is a really awkward and difficult thing to do since it can be a bit finicky.
03:19And once again, you're going to want to do this to both of your motor mounts.
03:28Once the clamps are securely on, you can finally place the motor mount onto the clamping portion.
03:33This is an adjustable plate so that you can adjust the angle and you'll attach it using these m4 bolts.
03:38Simply slide the four bolts through both the plate and the clamp portion
03:42and then you can adjust the angle slightly to what you want, but it won't matter too much because you'll adjust it later.
03:47You can then place the four nuts on the opposite side of those m4 bolts until you clamp them together,
03:53forcing the plate to stick to the mounting part. And then once again,
03:56you'll need an allen key and a wrench to secure it all the way down.
04:03Tighten the plates almost all the way just so that they stick to the mount nicely but not so far that they won't move anymore
04:13because you'll adjust their final position once the trucks are mounted to the deck and you'll know what kind of clearance you need.
04:19It is a really tight fit on this rear truck, but it is possible to make it work.
04:23Now, stepping away from the mechanical aspect of this build, we're going to move into what deck we're using,
04:27which is this 39-inch drop-through deck that we got from SkateShred.com.
04:32SkateShred offers a variety of really nice decks.
04:35They are pretty cheap, which is a really nice thing,
04:37but they're also really good to make electric skateboard builds out of since there's so much flexibility in which one you can get.
04:43To attach the truck to the deck, the first thing that we had to do was undo the single kingpin bolt
04:48and then take off the hanger from the base plate because you'll need to mount the base plate
04:53first through the top of the deck and then you can reattach the hanger of the truck.
04:57This is because it's a drop-through deck. On any other kind of deck,
05:00you wouldn't have to do this. Once the base plate is through the deck and mounted to it,
05:04you can reattach your hanger, tightening it with a T-tool. At this point,
05:07we can adjust the final angle that we want our motor plates to be at
05:10and thus our motors and how much clearance they'll have with the deck.
05:13You'll want to make sure that you have a little bit, and this is the amount that we chose,
05:16which is just half an inch or so, so that when you turn,
05:19your motor plate won't hit the deck. Now, moving back into the drivetrain, we have our belts, which are these
05:24315 millimeter HTD-5 belts, which we got from Poly Belt, which has a lot of different belts.
05:29And then once again, we're using these wheels, which are the 100 millimeter MBS wheels with 36 tooth pulleys.
05:34We first slid the belt over the axle and then the motor pulley and then added these four speed rings onto our axle.
05:40We did this because otherwise our pulley would hit the motor plate because they're 15 instead of 12 millimeters.
05:45So the next thing we did was to slide the wheel over the axle and then spin the pulley until it aligned itself with
05:50the belt. You'll notice that the belt does not have the right tension and that you can't adjust the motor,
05:55and this is because you adjust your tension instead with an idler pulley,
05:58which is just an extra pulley that goes on your belt to increase or decrease your tension.
06:02So you put the idler pulley inside the little slot on the mount and then you can tighten it using an allen key.
06:08You can adjust your tension really easily with this and I quite like this design.
06:12It also allows your belt to grip to more teeth and thus allowing you to have more traction and less slippage. For the tension,
06:18you'll want to make sure that it's not too tight. Otherwise, you'll snap the belt, but also not too loose so that it won't grip.
06:23You'll then want to repeat this exact process for the other side so that you have a dual drive. With the drivetrain done,
06:28it's now time to move into the electronics, which are the simple part of this build.
06:32The battery we are using is a 12s2p 30q battery, which we got from Torque Boards a little while ago.
06:38This battery is really nice because it comes with a power switch included, an indicator,
06:42it also comes with a charge port,
06:44as well as some usb ports to charge your remote or a phone on the go while riding.
06:49If you're following along and you're looking to find a 12s2p 30q pack, I would recommend checking the one out on mboards.
06:55It's a pretty good pack and it'll perform exactly like this one.
06:57The enclosure that we're going to be using is the enclosure that comes with the 12s2p battery from Torque Boards.
07:02And unfortunately, since they don't sell this battery anymore, you can't get this enclosure to go along with it.
07:07For the sake of this build, we're going to be using it, but if you're looking for an enclosure,
07:11you can always find one on mboards since they have a wide variety of enclosures for batteries this size.
07:16Moving on, we have the esc that we're going to be using, which is the bound motor esc,
07:20which is essentially a dual version 6 vesk.
07:23It's not the highest quality of escs out there and doesn't deliver as much power as some other options,
07:27but it's at a really good price. The first thing that we did was to place the battery inside of the enclosure.
07:32We lined it up so that all of the indicator and switch and charge port would be facing the outside,
07:37that way we could access them. Next, we attached the bound motor esc,
07:40which just plugs in with an XT90 connector. And that's pretty much it in terms of wiring any electronics,
07:45since the receiver is already built into this esc.
07:48This is how we ended up configuring it inside of the enclosure, and it's not really symmetrical,
07:52but it makes sure that everything fits in that tight little space that's given for the esc.
07:57The only thing left to do is just connect the phase wires,
07:59but before we did this, we made sure that the orientation of the wires coming off the mount was correct.
08:05The way that we initially did it made it so that the wires pointed upwards away from the enclosure,
08:10and it made it really awkward to fit inside,
08:12so we ended up rotating the motors 90 degrees so that the wires went down and towards the enclosure.
08:17This makes a huge difference and makes everything look a lot sleeker.
08:20The next thing that you can do is to put all of the phase wires through the holes in the edge of your enclosure,
08:25that way you can connect them once they're inside to your vesk.
08:28It's a little bit of a tight squeeze, but they'll all make it in there.
08:31You can then flip over your enclosure so you have access to the inside,
08:35and once you've done this, you can connect all of the phase wires together to those on the esc.
08:39Three wires will go into one side from one motor, and three wires will go into the other side from one motor.
08:44You'll have one wire left over, which is this sensor wire,
08:47which needs an adapter that's included with the motors and with the esc.
08:51One adapter is from your motor wire to the sensor wire, and one is from the sensor wire to the connector included on the vesk.
08:57It's kind of weird since all of the motor and the esc use these abnormal connectors
09:02than the regular six pin JSTs on most vesk sensor wires,
09:07but you'll be able to connect the sensor wire port wires all together using all of the adapters.
09:12At this point, everything in the build is connected,
09:14and the only thing needed to get this thing up and running is to plug it in and connect it to your computer
09:18so that you can open up vesk tool 1.29,
09:21which is the recommended vesk tool for the bound motor esc, since it's not very upgradable,
09:26which is kind of unfortunate, but it still works great to get these things up and running.
09:29We programmed the motors in censored FOC mode, and if you're wondering how we did this,
09:33we'll have a tutorial linked in the top right corner here, so you can watch how to program your vesk.
09:38The only thing different about the bound motor one is that you'll need to program each side individually.
09:42The only part we have left to talk about is the remote, which is the remote included with the bound motor esc.
09:48I think that it's super nice that they have a remote that's already completely paired and included with an esc,
09:53and all you need to do is program your vesk to get it up and running.
09:57Overall, the remote works well, and I don't have any problems with it.
10:00Now that the vesk is programmed, the only thing to do is to test to make sure everything works,
10:04which you can do by just doing a simple bench test by turning your board and remote on
10:08and throttling it to see if it works, which in our case it did.
10:11With the motors ready to run, all we had to do was to seal up the enclosure and fasten it to the deck,
10:15which we did using these threaded lock nuts.
10:18We already had them mounted into the deck, and we have six in them,
10:21four in each corner, and then two in the midpoint of the enclosure.
10:24These are super nice because it eliminates the need for a nut and bolt system.
10:28All you need to do is just worry about one screw, which goes through the bottom of your deck with a washer through your enclosure,
10:34and then nicely into those threaded lock nuts already in your deck.
10:37The final step is to just mount your front truck to your deck,
10:40which you do the same thing that you did to your rear truck.
10:43Just take off the base plate from the hanger,
10:46mount the base plate to the deck, and then place the hanger back on, and the wheels and everything were already mounted.
10:51So at this point we were done, and this is what the finished project looked like.
11:07So
11:09So
11:34Having been riding this board for a couple weeks now,
11:36I can say that this electric skateboard is so much fun to ride.
11:39Not only is it super easy for any beginners to just hop on and get right to it,
11:43but it also offers a bunch of higher-end specs that you won't be able to find on traditional pre-built electric skateboards,
11:49primarily the top speed, which is a whopping 35 miles an hour.
11:53The torque obviously isn't as great as some other DIY builds, but it still is quite impressive.
11:58As shown here, we're climbing hills that are around 22% with relative ease, which is not too shabby at all.
12:03The total price for all of the parts in this build was right around $925.
12:08Give or take, you might have a little more from shipping or if you choose different wheels or a different deck,
12:13but it's right around that $900 mark, which isn't bad at all for a board that goes 35 miles an hour,
12:18has a range of 15 miles, and can climb hills up to 25%.
12:22The one thing I will say that I would absolutely recommend changing is the wheels.
12:26We already had these 100mm MBS wheels on hand,
12:29but they do take quite a while to break into before actually feeling good.
12:33I would just recommend getting some 97mm ABEC flywheel clones,
12:37or if you have a little bit more money, buy something like the Torque Board 110mm wheels, some Boas, or anything
12:42that's a little bit higher quality.
12:44Of course, that's just if you have a little bit extra to spend.
12:47Another really great upgrade if you're looking to spend a little bit more is just upgrading to some 6355 motors.
12:52This is going to up your power by so much while maintaining that same top speed and just slightly decreasing range.
12:58It also might be a good idea if you're using standard caliber trucks to just go with 12mm wide pulleys and belts
13:04instead of the 15mm that we used because it does cause some issues with all of those extra speed rings.
13:08Overall though, this board was so much fun to make and even more fun to ride,
13:12so if you're looking for a mid-range priced board with decent specs,
13:15this is definitely going to be a super great and fun to make DIY build for you.