Wider trucks! Shinyer trucks! Need shiny motors! Moar shine! I actually had a fantasy about a smiliar board…The silver surfer build. Here you go and just fullfill my dreams! awesome! Tell them I also can post stuff on instagram. Gimmie a board 
Interesting. What voltage do you run?
Cool name! Man, I wish I’d thought of that! Shiny motors would be interesting. Maybe I should polish the anodizing off… They’re @datroncnc on instagram.
10S5P pack. The 5P is more significant going up hills.
Max speed 26km/h on 83mm wheels, 30km/h on 97mm wheels. Not that keen to go fast. DIY remote so it can be potentially flakey at times.
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Steal the name! I’m never going to do that build! lol! I’ll take a small credit ofc. If you ever get tired of the board and wanna sell it I’m your guy
This was the early stages of the CAD model. If any of you using Fusion 360 for design, let me know your Autodesk ID email and I can add you to the design if you like. If you don’t know about Fusion, it’s an awesome design and manufacturing tool that is completely free to hobbyists and education.
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Designing the battery pack
Bought some used cells from http://hipstar.co.nz Tielman was super helpful, answered my questions and gave me all the info I needed. They’re Sony VTC4 cells, which he recommended because even though they have a fairly low capacity (2000mAh) compared to some others, they’re good for 30A continuous draw. Good charge specs too. He sent info in a spreadsheet, with all the cells tested capacities and internal resistances.
This was when I was balancing the groups. I did it in excel and got all the 3P groups really close in capacity (within <8 mAh)
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5P would be nice! I only get 20km range. Would love to be able to go a bit further. It does 42kmh/hr max. I’m using the remote from buildkitboards. It was something like US $30 including receiver. Works great.
I was going to go sequentially through all the build stages until the final reveal of the complete board, but it might take me a while to compile it all, so here’s a teaser.
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5P is heavy… esp when you have to get a 4 year old and your board on a backpack onto a bus.
I have a couple of RF remotes (like your BKB remote) but I’m mostly in the game for making the electronic gadgets.
“The Silver Surfer (inspired by / stolen from Linsus)”
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Oh, fair enough then! I’m planning to mould a handgrip in plasticine, then laser scan it, 3D print it, and mount the electronics from my cheap one into it. I don’t have the knowledge to create the electronics from scratch.
Cool build, I saw it on Instagram the other day
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Don’t if you don’t have heaps of time (or no other hobbies 
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I’m into my 3D-printing so I want to try my hand at using the Sculpt tab in Fusion 360 and have a go at doing something funky like some molded controller case.
like these?
ps love that deck to bits. I had a french pintail 42 inch a few years back with bamboo plys and a top and bottom aluminium plate. Looked fantastic and always wanted to find one to do a silver surfer build but for the life of me I can not remember the name of it.
Mocking up the battery. I downloaded this series of cell-holder models from thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2526936
I modified one of them to support 15 cells, using Autodesk Fusion 360.
I then printed 4 of them on the Markforged X7 at the company I work for, CADPRO Systems.
They fitted up really nicely.
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I then got to work building a DIY spot welder with some electrodes I turned on my father’s lathe, as well as some 3D printed components, a motorbike starter solenoid and a car battery. It worked, but the welds were slightly too inconsistent for my liking and I ran scared.
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So I ended up buying this on Aliexpress:
The welds were really good, and consistent, so I started assembling the pack. I used a dremel to clean up the ends of the cells, as they had a few remnants of the tabs that were torn off them.
I added some tabs for the balance leads.
I then mocked up the layout of the electronics, and wrapped the pack.
I ended up cutting the heatshrink off, and redoing it with the BMS integrated. I left little flap in the heatshrink on the back of the bms so I can get the multimeter probes in if I ever need to check the individual cell voltages. I also glued in a 1-wire temperature sensor in case I want realtime battery temp monitoring one day. The wires are not hooked up at the moment, but they’re accessible if I need them.
I was super happy with how the pack turned out.
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I was going to make the enclosure out of aluminium, but forgot to order the material before the Christmas holiday. In desperation to get riding, I decided to make one out of bamboo, and it’s turned out so nice I think I’ll stick with it, if it lasts. I used my Vertigo M2 CNC router to machine the components. You can see Vertigo’s page here: https://vertigotech.co.nz/
I was worried about the stiffness of the enclosure making the deck rigid, as I wanted a bit of flex. I designed the base of the enclosure to mount to the deck with 2 screws in the center. To give the ends some support, I added screws there too, but I made extra deep counterbores in the bamboo and put springs under the screwheads. This means that as the deck flexes, only the center of the enclosure stays against the deck, and a gap opens up at the ends of the enclosure, as the springs compress. So the enclosure stays flat, but the deck bends. Works great! I was then worried that the screws would work themselves loose… and then I realised that they won’t be able too, because the lid of the enclosure will prevent them from doing so.
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