Insane Electric Longboard Budet With Carbon Fiber Deck

hey before I talk about myself and why I decided to go on this journey, I will like to say please check out my vid for an epic riding montage and my practices of making also importantly please subscribe it will really help my college course, because my lecture challenged me to get 1000 subscribers by the end of this college year to show improvement and continuous progress,

okay, now we got that boring stuff out the way lets talk about why I did this?

I've been making wooden longboards for years which you can actually see the first one I made here https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Lo... (they are much better now) ;-) but I wanted to try something new which would give me the next rush, so I wanted an electronic longboard which could get me going 30mph + and at least a 12 mile range and a hand made carbon fibre deck which I also never done before , also it had to get me to college to save my dads car from potholes so it had to get up some mean hills, so lets get started

this instructable was inspired from this build https://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Electric-Longboard/ who promoted it being a budget build, this was definitely something that I wanted to copy and steal use quality components, but I wanted mine to be even faster and much more range!

Step 1: Materials

so to start any good project you will need some materials, I've brought the materials to form a range of suppliers including hobbyking aliexpress ebay and homebase

1. 6374 192kv motor , this motor was chosen because 192kv is the perfect hotspot for torque(= hill climbing) and speed and 63mm 74mm motor because it only being used singlely not dual hub and bigger motor = better colling which should therefore last longer £64.11 Hobbyking
2. HobbyKing motor mount, this connects motor to truck £6.74
3. xt-90 anti spark connectors, these are great for the loop key switches to turn of the long board and to connect battery pack to the vesc £4.51 HobbyKing
4. xt 60 connectors, i used these as the charger port to create an diferncial between the xt90 loop key switch £2.19 HobbyKing
5. 12 awg wire buy red and black for positive and negative HobbyKing £3.20
6. 4mm bullet connectos for connecting vesc cables to motor HobbyKing£2.22
7. flipsky vesc 4.12 this is proberllry one of the most important parts of an electronic longboard build because this is the brains behind the longboard this tells the motor what to do and helps protect the battery also adds alot of satey nets includeing if the remote cuts out the longboard will break and turns of board if something oveer heats Ebay £45
8. 10s 35a bms, this also super important because this will keep the 18650 batteries in ballence which is crucicial otherwise the pack will eventalley break and it may be a fire risk also this allows the pack to charge safely Ebay £8.99
9. 106xl belt Ebay £2.27
10. insulation paper this is really important helps stop short circuits and fires Ebay £2.68
11. 2.4ghz remote Ebay £21
12. 18650 battery samsung 30q, it is crucial you buy these batteries from nkon youll need 30 around euro 3.60
13. 10s 36v output 42v charger , i only reconmend a 4 amp max charger or lower to prolong the life of battery pack as they are expenisve this will take longer to charge thogh Aliexpress
14. 83mm wheels these wheels are important as they are the only cheap ones which fit the thingverse gear Ebay £17
15. trucks 180mm Aliexpress £24
16. 16t 8mm gear aliexpress £2.82
17. pine board from home base £10
18. griptape ebay £2.95
19. 18650 battery holder
20. 3d printed gears

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tools

1. jig saw
2. sandpaper
3. sander or spokeshave
4. files and rasps
5. drill
6. router (optional)
7. epoxy resin
8. carbon fiber fabric
9. battery spot welder (optional)
10. 3d printer (optional)

Step 2: Maneufacture of the Deck

1. the reason why I used pine for the longboard deck is because my local timber shop was closed , I wanted to use poplar wood because of its lightweight properties , but then again this pre-prepared pine board makes it more available for anyone to do at home easily who may not have expensive tools like tables saws and thicknessers, they took a lot of selling models and makes to save up for
2. now you got your timber ready you will want to draw your design or print out a template of the deck mine is 39" long and 26cm wide i recommend a more rectanlear design so you have room to store your container for the batteries and vesc
3. one mistake that i did make is that i did not mark out the rebates for the batterys and the coves for cool aerodynamic looks before it was cut so it was really hard to mark it all out sqaure when the board was alleady cut in a curvy shape so markeing yp guised for the router was hard to jue there not being a stright esdge to mark ot from,
4. onece etherything has been marked out you will be ready to router in detail or compartments for batterys then cut the template with the jig saw use a fine cut balde, and if your desighn has samll complex curvrs in i recon mend useing a thiner blade to enable you to get around them curves and to reduce burning and heat stress which will mean your blades last longer
5. after its cut you will want to refine your beatiful shape, i used a range of tools , like a spoke shave which is allways a plesure to use and a files vareious sanding blocks, and just shape away untill its all symetrical
6. i aslo wanted to add in some wheel wheels which i thought whould add a allmost formula car vibe to my deck, to get this i used a rasp then further refined it with a sander
7. then round over all the coners for the grip tape side i just used a round over bit on an router then for the bootom , the ends are round over then the sides i used a chamfer to give it extra style
8. give it a final sand to around 120 grit, if you did not want to carbon fiber it and keep the deck costing £10 just varnish it now or paint it then varnish and your finnsih the deck

Step 3: Aplicattion of Carbon Fibre

now for a modern aesthetic to too ad strength to the pla 3d prints will cover all the parts in carbon fibre, check out my video on good methods

https://youtu.be/caJs6WLj5MA

1. Now your deck is completed your ready to carbon fibre the board and make it look modernly cool, I used a 1 to 2 part epoxy resin, if you want to save money you can you a polyester resin but its a super strong solvent and will make any room stink and its corrosive to skin, also you'll want to grab some carbon fibre , I just bought the generic sort from eBay properly not the cheapest place
2. I recommend spraying your deck with a coat of matte black spray paint because as we are only doing a one layer skin of carbon fibre there is a tendency of the fabric being slightly transparent and you could see the grain underneath which will just ruin the general aesthetic
3. through trial and error I found the easiest method is to spay a contact adhesive on both parts then lay the fabric on top to get a instant pain free bound, it took a lot of hassle when I just put the fabric directly on top of the epoxy resin, hard to get it to stick to curves, but the contact adhesive gets rid of that, then your ready to apply your first coat of resin
4. once you applied your first coat you'll want to do the next one in like an hours time whilst it was still slightly tacky this is best for layer adhesion, you should have 3 coats of resin then wait 2 days for it to dry otherwise when you wet sand the water will cause a reaction with the curing epoxy and turn it cloudy
5. just sand whilst increasing the grits recommend starting on 120 and go to the finest possible grit you have, I went up to 2000 but more would be better
6. now your ready to polish I first used a cutting compound which is used in cars, sort of like a whigting thooth paste for your paint work, i buffed it with a orbital sand posilshing whell i made my self by placeing vecro on a lambs wall pad
7. then after its buffed up you want to apply a car wax on the carbon fiber t give it a bright glossy shine, this board whould be perfect for mirrors a permimant black mirror that goes 30mph

Step 4: Battery Makeing

this is by far the most dangerous step of any electronic longboard build so please do a ton of research on the esk8 forum about the 18650 batteries, they are super dangerous if done poorly ill give you a brief guide as I want you do read on this subject from more experienced people than myself. soon I'm making a detailed video on batteries, I prefer videos due to being heavily dyslexic

https://youtu.be/od9hAs69crk

so first things first you'll want to buy genuine 18650 batteries, I'm going to tell you something which would have saved me a lot of time and money, only go for Samsung 30q's from nkon https://eu.nkon.nl/samsung-inr-18650-30q-3000mah.h... they grantee all the batteries are genuine and ship worldwide for a super reasonable cost, beware there are a lot of fakes, also Samsung 30q are a tried and tested battery they have a great current output (15a) which gets you the speed and a good capacity of (3000mah) which gives you the range , I once made the mistake of buying 2nd laptop batteries thinking it would save me money but no it actually wasted money because they are only like 2 amps which will not get you the speed, not all 18650 are created equal so please get Samsung 30q from nkon, then there will be no problems,

I create a 10s3p battery pack which basically means 3 batteries welded in parallel which increases the amperage giving you a capacity of 9000 mah, like 1 set then you make 10 of them sets and welded in series giving you a the higher voltage of 42 volts which will get your motor zooming down the roads of 30mph

first, you will have to prepare your batteries, you will want to make sure the voltage difference is no more than 0.05 volts, you need a voltmeter for this build. also, you will want to place some insulation paper on the top of every battery (positive side) to save any risk of shortages and the fire,

now the battery is prepared you are ready to connect them together you can use my battery holders here https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3499015 which I designed to dovetail together and use mechano as connections or you can just spot weld

once your battery is glued or connected together in 10 sets of 3 you are ready to start connecting the nickel strip. so with the sets of 3 just put a nickel strip across the negative and positive terminal and repeat this step to all the sets are done,

then connect each part like in the 2nd diagram each positive to negative

now you're ready to wire the bms leads to follow the first diagram

black one goes on the first negative then the red ones go on each positive of the 10 groups,

next wire the other wires to your bms instructions and add an xt60 for the charge port and test each connection to make sure everything is connected with a voltmeter if each battery is 3,2 volts the whole pack should be 32volts

Step 5: Connecting Board

now your battery is made its relatively straight forward to put together as you can see from my diagram above, its more simple than an RC car, so lets start with making the lop key, a loop key is an anti-spark XT-90 with a piece of wire connecting both terminals together, then female part is soldered between the negative part of the battery so when you plug it in it creates a full circuit, this saves the need of the expensive switches that can support the amout of high amps necessary (dont use normal 12v switches on eBay they will not work), lets sort out the charging port used an xt60 to void confusion with the xt90 loop key because that would definitely create a short circuit which can case fire.

now the switches and charge port is sorted you're ready to connect the vesc, I recommend using an xt90 to connect the vesc to the power source. then you are ready to connect the receiver to the vesc this is relatively straight forward it will come with instructions on how to use your specific model, you will also have to bind it to the remote.

then you'll have to connect the phase wires of the motor just make sure the middle wire of the vesc is connected to the middle wire of the motor then nothing is gonna break, when you use your board if it reverses when you throttle, it means you got the 2 outside phase wires wrong way round.

now its all connected you're ready to download the vesc tool https://vesc-project.com/node/17 this is a free programme, which helps you configure your vesc this makes sure your not pushing too much or too little amps to your motor which can break your motor, just use the motor setup wizard and input wizard to set it up properly

Step 6: Your Ready to Ride!!

once you've put your esk8 parts in the enclosure, and installed your loop key your part of the eks8 team if you have any questions please feel free to ask me and I really hope you liked this instructable and please give me feedback! and please vote for me