FlavoWorks

Over my freshman year of college I spent some spare time buying and assembling parts for a DIY electric longboard build. I wanted to do this build as DIY as I could, trying to avoid purchasing any premade kits where possible.

In hindsight, I wish I did more extensive research before starting to buy parts. I ended up having to modify and change my plans which cost me money and lots of wasted time.

I hope this guide helps other electric longboard builders because internet research was really valuable to me when I was designing and assembling my board so I'm just spreading the love! I hope someone finds value in this guide!

I really wanted to build this from the Boosted Board / Casey Neistat craze.

I tried to complete this build in a very DIY fashion, without the use of pre-made kits. A lot of DIY boards are mainly just a board assembled with a premade drive-train kit, battery, and electronic speed controller.

HOWEVER, if you are looking for a little more simplicity I would still HIGHLY suggest this option as buying a premade kit should ensure that there is compatability between your parts. Keep in mind that this build took me a fair amount of time to build, although a lot of that time went into planning and design. Following this guide closely should reduce that the design time significantly (hopefully).

Another thing to keep in mind is the cost of an electric skateboard. Here is a cost breakdown of all the parts I ended up using in the build.

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Another thing to keep in mind is the cost of an electric skateboard. Here is a cost breakdown of all the parts I ended up using in the build.

|Item|Cost (USD $)| |---|---| |Longboard Deck|75| |Wheels|60| |Trucks and Bearings|58| |Motor|95| |ESC|80| |Drive Train (gear and belt)|20| |Motor Mount|25| |18650 cells|80| |Vruzend Kit|40| |Battery Charger|50| |Grip Tape|10|

If you are doing a DIY build, you will have freedom to choose whatever longboard components you want. These are still important to your build and I suggest you invest in just as high quality longboard parts as you do with your electronic components. The parts of the longboard are as follows...

• Deck
• Trucks
• Wheels

A strong, lightweight deck will keep your build safe and secure. I think any longboard design will pretty much do (pintail, carving, drop through). Drop through decreases your availible clearance so I would be wary about building with that style unless you know your components case plus the longboard will leave several inches of clearance from the board the road.

Your trucks are important because they provide stability and grip between your board and the road. They are the main factors in your turning stability as well. For e-board builds, they also serve the purpose of holding your motor mount. I ended up buying the Caliber II trucks because they had a nice flat surface so a mount could securely be attached. If you are looking for the easiest (but most expensive) approach, you can buy kits that come with trucks so you know everything will fit together. The second easiest approach would probably be

Wheels are crucial because of their diameter and also the material that they are made of inside. Common sizes used for electric skateboards are between 80 and 90 mm diameter. This is slightly larger than typical longboard wheels because larger wheels allow for a smoother and more stable ride.

The wheels I purchased are from Orangatang wheels. I purchased these wheels becasue they have a good diameter (80 mm) and also have nice holes that will come in handy later for mounting the gear system.

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Batteries are a crucial part of the build because essentially they determine how fast and how far you go. The type of motor you want is somewhat dependent on what kind of battery setup you have, so I personally would suggest securing your battery design and information before making a motor purchase. Batteries come in a few different types, but I would say only lithium types are suitable for electric longboards. Other types have disadvantages. Lead Acid and Nickel Cadmium are heavy and Nickel-Metal hybrid batteries don't last that long. Lithium is the wave to ride. Within lithium batteries the two main types are LiPo and Li-ion.

LiPo, however, have significant downsides that limit their use in commercial boards. For one, they are less safe and could start a fire if not handled properly. They also require a user to drain the battery to a specific charge for storage, so they just aren't for the everyone. On top of that, they have a shorter life-cycle compared to a Li-ion and LiFePo4 battery.

This is a picture of one of my packs in my build. It is made from 18650 cells, a very standard cell size. I bought them from here, IMR batteries. The pack in the picture is called a 6s2p pack, which means it contains 6 cells in series and then 2 in parallel, hence the 6 batteries lined up in a row with each row connected in parallel. My whole board however, uses 2 of these 6s2p packs in series to get a total of 12s2p. The reason I did this was because I had bought this charger which only can support 6 cell charging. Therefore my board has two charging ports, one for each battery. If you purchase a charger that can support a higher cell count, then go for a higher cell pack just for simplicity of wiring.

Building the battery pack Now if you selected LiPo, your pack is premade and you are done! Just wire it up! But if you selected lithium-ion and just bought a bunch of individual cells like me, you will have to somehow assemble those into a pack.

I was in a real dilemma at this stage because I wanted to spot weld my battery pack. You can read about spot welding here. Essentially it is a welding process that is very quick which is ideal for lithium-ion batteries because if you heat them up they will get damaged and lose potential charge. I searched everywhere at my college and found a spot welder, but the terminals of it were for welding plates together and not for batteries. Here is a picture of a battery spot welder.

These can be bought for about $170 bucks which is money I did not have. My next approach was to build my own spot welder which can be done with a microwave transformer. Again, there is a tradeoff between time/money here. The reading I did about microwave transformer spot welders led me to believe that there is a lot that goes into them and more often than not they don't produce enough volts to create a good weld. So I decided to explore other options.

An option similiar to spot welding would be soldering nickel strips on the cells. This is fairly easy to do, but the heat produced by the solder iron is more likely than not to leave some damage on the cells.

The option I decided on and you can probably tell from my picture is a kit from a company called Vruzend. These are little plastic caps that cover each cell and have screw terminals for you to place your nickel strips. My kit cost me $35 which is a LOT less than a spot welder and saved me a ton of time, also saving my precious cells from heat damage. Looking for an even more DIY route? You can theoretically 3D print the caps that Vruzend has and create your own kit, I know there was an .STL file somewhere. I decided to just buy the kit for simplicity. Again, a tradeoff between time/money.

I didn't do too much research into speed controllers. I know they are POSSIBLE to build by yourself, but I thought the time would be a lot. I ended up buying a 4.12 VESC from HobbyKing. After adjusting the settings on my VESC my motor started spinning out of control and I ended up burning the DRV8302 chip on the VESC. Had to buy a second one which is working great. I don't have much to say about this section because I didn't do a lot of research. The VESC I bought is compatible with software that has a lot of settings suitable for electric longboard riding. You can grab that software here.

This part of the project was the most labor intensive, required a lot of going back to the drawing board, and is also a crucial part of the board! If your drivetrain is poorly built your board will be extremely unsafe.

The drivetrain itself can be separated into a few different components

• Motor mount
• Wheel gear
• Motor shaft gear
• Belt

Motor Mount The part I spent the most time on was the motor mount. I had bought the Caliber II trucks because they had a nice flat surface on one edge. My hope was that I could save some money and CNC mill my own motor mount. This was a lot easier said than done. I did come up with a model, but it required a little reworking to be functional and I had to go home for the summer, losing access to the machine shop at my university.

At home I spent roughly 30 minutes trying to reshape the mount with a Sawzall before realizing I needed another solution. After shopping around a bit online I found out that premade mounts for the Caliber II trucks are pretty widespread, here is an example. This is not the exact mount I bought, but it's a very similiar price and design. One VERY important note is to add Loctite to all your nuts and bolts.

My case is constructed from fiberglass, a super strong and lightweight material. I had done some fiberglass work on my dad's car before this, so I had at least some experience. If you don't have any fiberglass experience, don't worry it is still very doable to construct but maybe do some practice before.

Before I talk more about my case, I'm going to bring up the other options. Time and money again. Your first option is buying a premade case. This website is super cool and has a lot of other components

The first step in creating my case was a cardboard core. I measured the dimensions of my battery pack and constructed the cardboard cutout, leaving a little clearance for the eventual fiberglass layers. After this I laid down 2-3 layers over the whole thing, allowing a fair amount of drying time between layers. The eventual case is super sturdy and has survived multiple hard collisions with curbs!

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The board is no longer-functional and it's parts have completely been dismantled and harvested.

This project fills me with a lot of pride. I remember the moment I got my motor to spin, installing the component case, the first test ride. I think it's beautiful that an idea in my brain is now a real, functional thing. I hope this guide helps anyone else with their build!

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