The basic idea looks good. If you use regular springs make sure they’re bi-directional and can extend/compress enough along with the swing arm. How much width are you putting between the arms? I’ve been looking at pictures of the flexboardz system for weeks and I’m still not sure that works with their bushings. Everything looks bolted in place without a way to extend.
The video did say that it only had 1cm of travel for suspension purposes. Are you talking about the width in the upper diagram or the lower?
The upper one. I meant the distance between your wheels. Can you link to the video? I see how the rods attach at the very back of the arms, does that mean that the 1 cm of travel is up/down rather than in/out?
I like the idea of a foldable design. I wonder if this could be achieved with a cotter pin to hold in the arms which could be removed for transport. You may still run into issues however with a battery box.
True, for that reason I’m treating this as a full fledged mountainboard with everything mounted on top. I like the folding idea, but you’ll need to design some offset into the arms so they’ll clear the baseplate. “…it only provides a bit of suspension effect…” Hmmmm…
I wonder if it would be possible to have the arms detach
I wonder if there is a way to add like an inch of suspension
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This would not need to be the case if you had a spring on both sides of the support that it attaches too
If you use threaded rod or thread the rod yourself, you could have customizable suspension by applying tension to the springs.
Detachable arms- probably, but you might have to take apart part of the suspension system with it. The “axles” for the arms in mine are probably going to be long shoulder screws, so I can simply unscrew them to remove the arms. Don’t forget, you’re probably also going to mount the motor on the arms, right? Adding suspension - do you mean you want a higher ride or a softer ride? I think I see what you mean with two springs per arm. Threaded rods could work, but just like with trampa trucks your travel (and steering) will decrease the more you tighten it. I’m going to try to design mine to simply swap out different tensioned springs.
@High-roller I am definitely looking for a softer ride not higher. You could still replace springs with my setup if you wanted to. Are you planning on making yours for personal use or to start selling?
I get that, I just mean that a lot of thought has to go into choosing the springs themselves. You’ll need to get ones that don’t need too many turns to increase tension, but are still long enough to have a decent amount of travel. Depending on how well this works I might start selling in small numbers. I don’t have money for more than the one prototype set, so it depends on that. If it works and enough people are interested I have a few more features I can add in. Does anyone know how many of the vendors here in general are doing this as a side business?
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Few reminder about the interest of suspension : 1)improving wheel/ground contact to maintain control on the ride 2)protect frame from pick load 3) comfort of the user (vibrations)
The main interest of independant tiltting wheels is definitely to improve the grip (independant wheels) and the stability (no speed wobble if tiltable)… Suspension of the deck is only a detail as the stroke is limited to 1 to 2cm before bottoming (basically a flexible deck and low pressure tires can do the same).
Last point,make sure that your suspension will not compress on one side when you tilt the deck otherwise,it will limit the steering.
Last last point, the loads are very high with such design and you will need large heavy spring to handle it
At the moment I am working on idea of independent suspension board (kinda similar to baja board). The main problem everyone tries to solve is good turning at low speed and stable (no steer wobbles on high speed) The idea is that for e.g. Baja board uses swing arms and springs/dampas to stabilize steering the problem is the same either carvable at low speed and wobbly at high or no steering at low speed but stable at high speed.
This is possible to solve this problem, but the solving involves active components because passively I don’t really imagine how that can be achieved. My idea is to use electric steering dampener from bikes to control the board tilting instead of springs, so that way I can let steer the deck really high level on low speed and resist big changed on higher speeds… But I am just beginner in these kind of suspension designs so I am still learning and reading about it.
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I think most of here are learning as we go. Already with you, me, and Trdolan03 it sounds like we have three distinct designs taking shape! I just sent my initial sketches to a cnc shop. We’ll see how it goes…
To Kug3lis : Baja is designed as a 4WD car (double wishbone suspension, transmission) and ends up with all the defaults of a (RC) 4WD car : heavy,complicated and expensive (almost the price of a real car)…
For me, a board is not a car, it’s a simple flexible object that bent to turn like a snowboard (see picture of one of the first proto below)… That’s how I developped the Flexboardz venture with longitudinal swing arms.
The advantage of the longitudinal swing arm/tilting wheels is that there are 2 steering effects like on a bike (wheel rotation + tilting angle that increase the steering).
So it can turn very tightly (both steering effects add up) and still be stable at speed (wobble happens around 0 degre tilt angle where only 1 steering effect happens)!
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