How to Build a Hoverboard You Can Ride : 17 Steps (with Pictures)

Remember those hover boards that everyone rides around. now you can build your very own electric hover board at home that you can ride. To see how you can go through my instructables tutorial and watch the video to complement the tutorial. You can find all my other projects on my website joshbuilds.com or my youtube channel. If you need parts like motors and batteries for this build you can check at my website's store where the batteries and motor will be posted

Materials:

- Two 24 volt scooter motors (should be somewhere near 120 Watts)

- A 12 volt, 12 amp battery (12v, 7amp should work as well smaller and cheaper)

- a 2”x 2” piece of wood

- ¼ inch sheet of plywood

- ½ inch sheet of plywood

- wood glue

- screws

- epoxy

- small rubber wheels (1” diameter)

- a children’s bike (12” wheels)

**To make it work materials do not need to have the exact specs, just reasonably close.

Step 1: Getting the Wheels

Start off by removing wheels from a children's bicycle. Once the wheels are removed, remove all of the bolts from the axle that do not play a part in holding the bearings in. As much usable axle as possible is required.

Step 2: Cutting the Frame

Next cut out the frame from 2 thin pieces of plywood and also cut out the frame from the thicker piece of plywood. You should then have 3 sheets of plywood all the same size. The shape of the frame does not matter and only needs to be wide enough to fit your feet and a battery.

Step 3: A Slot for the Battery

Next cut a square out of 1 of the thiner pieces of plywood. The square should be the size of the battery.

Step 4: Hole for the Wheels

Now cut the piece of 2" x 2" wood to the same length that the frame is wide. Drill holes slightly bigger than the wheel's axles into each end.

Step 5: Attach the Wheels

You can then proceed to fill each end with epoxy and mix the epoxy for 1 minute while it is inside of the hole. Use a generous amount of epoxy and do not use the dollar store stuff. This will give the wood strength. After mixing the epoxy inside of the hole for 1 minute, insert and screw the axles of the 2 bike wheels into the each side. Let this harden for a day before putting any weight on it.

Step 6: Start Assembling the Frame

Attach the wheel and axle assembly onto the thin piece of plywood with the square cut out of it. Cut 2 more pieces on 2x2 wood as shown and attach them using wood glue and screws.

Step 7: Building the Frame Continued

Next you will build the bottom part which will hold the battery. Using the same 2x2 pieces of wood and another one of the thin pieces of plywood, build the structure shown . You can then attach the bottom part of the frame to the middle frame (the one with the wheel assembly). In the picture you can see I removed the wheels for this to make it easier to work with. You can also disregard the driving assembly visible there, that was all removed later. Once you epoxy the wheels in place, you should not remove the wheels like I did. You may find it beneficial to leave epoxying the wheels into place until after the frame is complete and dry.

Step 8: Attaching the Balancing Wheel

I then attached a 2x2 piece off the back to hold a rotating wheel. This back wheel will give us balance.

Step 9: Preparing the Motors

Next I move onto the two motors and their drive systems. The drive will be friction drive meaning the motors spin against the wheels. To do this I need to attach something of high friction onto the motor’s axles. I found a small solid rubber wheel and drilled holes through the wheel and through the black belt gear on the motors axle. I then apply epoxy to the wheel and attach it to the motor's axle. I secure it in place by sticking pieces of cut metal clothes hanger through the holes in the wheels into the holes in the belt gear. After that i found a small red rubber wheel (from a dollar store toy car tune up kit) to slide over the black rubber wheel that was attached. I didn’t this so the black rubber wheel wouldn’t wear away. A simpler alternative that I thought of later would be wrapping the motors belt gear with electrical tape until it was one rubber wheel . Whichever you chose to do, do it for both motors.

Step 10: Motor Brackets

Now build the mounting brackets for the motors. This will be used to hold the motors against the wheels. Build it so that it is long enough to hold the axle of a motor against the wheel while the back end is used as a pivot point. Also attach a piece of wood or dowel sticking off the end. This will be used to attach an elastic from.

Step 11: Mounting the Brackets

Next two pieces that extrude off the back are added and the motor brackets are attached to them as shown. They are attached with 1 bolt so that the motor bracket can rotate freely.

Step 12: Attaching the Motors

The motors are then held in and attached with duct tape. I tried glue and epoxy but neither held it reliably. Make sure that when you attach the motors, the wheel on the end of the motors will line up with the hover board's wheels

Step 13: Wiring

I then wired the battery to the 2 motors in parallel And added a house switch in between so that each motor could be controlled separately. Attached Is the diagram of how it was wired.

Step 14: Putting the Top On

After it is completely wired, the top of the hover board (the thicker piece of plywood) can be screwed in. Only screws should be used and no glue

Step 15: Adding Elastics

To finish it off, attach a few elastic bands from the motor's bracket to the wheels axle. This will make the motor press against the wheel. If the motor is not pressed hard enough against the wheel to make the hover boad move when you are standing on it, then add more elastics on each side