Bicyclaser - the flatpack wooden laser cut bike without pedals - draisine

Let me introduce you a 100% wooden flatpack laser cut bike!

One can turn the handle bar and wheels!

It's not exactly a bike, it's a draisine, which means a bike without pedals. My children learnt to ride bicycle with (full-sized) draisines.

It's made with a sheet of poplar plywood (3 mm thick, about 1/8 inch). If you have another ply thickness, the easiest way to fab it is to scale the whole design proportionally. Dimensions (Lxh): 220 mm x 160 mm (8.66 inches x 6.3 inches).

You'll find several pictures I took of it; pardon me: I leave on Mon 23th of July for holidays and I wanted to have it submitted to the "Bicycle Contest" before the deadline... so I didn't have time for many improvements that I should have made... Anyway, you have the plans and the right to modify them, so enjoy and send me photos of your personal realizations based on this design...

I'll answer any question starting from August 5th 2012 when I'm back from holidays!

Comments

[rimar2000]

I think you can easily fix the problem, doubling the width of the weaker pieces.

Regarding the wheels, maybe you can insert ball bearings. Otherwise will be difficult to do turn them softly.

[r4f]

In fact, I'm not really looking for maximum performance, rather keeping it simple, so that instructees can replicate it as simply as possible...

But some readers could make such customization, sure!

Thanks for the advice...

[rimar2000]

It seems a bit weak... Speciallly the front fork.

Anyway, nice work.

[r4f]

Hi rimar2000, You're completely right, the front fork is miserably weak ;-( That's part of the potential improvements I was speaking about... Another thing is that the wheels don't roll freely; too much friction in the current state of the design. But what I'm proud about is that I designed nearly everything before the first try and it worked without modification...

[burnfatburn]

nice work, you did a good job. do you considering using bamboo for the front fork?

btw, what size the bike is? the wheel diametre?

[r4f]

Hello burnfatburn,
Thanks for all your kind words!
I'm testing bamboo, now (2mm thick), but I find it hard to machine, it breaks really easily. I must confess I'm a bit disappointed, up to now, I prefer poplar ply (the one that I used to make the draisine).

The wheel diameter is 84mm. The overall dimensions of the bike are in the description of the instructable: Dimensions (Lxh): 220 mm x 160 mm (8.66 inches x 6.3 inches).

Cheers!