Project E-Board

I have always enjoyed riding my longboard, it has been a way for me to get out of the house and get places without having to spend money on gas. While in Ms. Berbawy's class I was given the opportunity, along with all of the tools that I needed, to upgrade my longboard to an electric model that would be faster. I was able to mock up a parts list and come up with the things that I would need to make my project happen. All in all I hope that this Instructable will allow someone else to have as much fun building this as I did and also have as much fun with the final product.

Materials:

• Long Board Deck
• Batteries (35-18650)
• 90V Motors
• Motor Pulleys
• M-Boards Trucks w/ Motor Mounts
• Orangutang Wheels w/ wheel pulleys
• ESC/ Remote
• Battery Management System (BMS)
• Nickle Strips
• 5" Thick Foam
• 16 Gauged Wire
• Kapton Tape
• Electrical Tape
• Hot Glue/ Hot Glue Gun
• Battery Case

Tools :

• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors
• Spot Welder
• Soldering Iron
• 12mm Socket
• 3/8 Socket Wrench
• 3d Printer
• Tape Measure/ Ruler
• Sharpie/ Pen
• Philips Head Screw Driver
• Impact Driver

In the two pictures that I have shown you can see a few different things. The first thing that I did was find a box that was big enough to fit three batteries side by side. Once I had a box that could fit all three side by side in a corner of the box I did the following things:

- Make sure the single cell 18650 batteries could line up and be level

- Then I would make sure that all of the positives and all of the negatives were lined up correctly

- Making sure that they were lined up I took a hot glue gun and applied a liberal amount of hot glue so that they would stay stuck together

- Then I would flip over the batteries so that I could repeat the last step on the other side of the batteries

- Once the glue was dry I would make sure that they stayed straight then I would remove them from the box and set them aside

- I would repeat this step 10 more times

- Once I was done glueing all of the sets of three batteries I would take electrical tape and tape around them so that the groups of three batteries would stay together

The next step was to take nickel strips that I cut and line them up on both sides of the battery packs, making sure that they did not extend out over the contact points on each side. Once I had the correct size nickel strips I used our DIY spot welder, set to max power, and did one single weld on each of the leads. Each group of three batteries is welded together in parallel.

Since we built the spot welder ourselves, we had some occasions where the nails that the current flowed through would get a little corroded and they would make it so that the weld joint wouldn't be very strong. To fix this, every now and then we would take a piece of sand paper and clean the nails. Cleaning the nails was quite a bit faster than the alternative option of replacing them.

Once I had all of the leads spot-welded, I grouped 5 sets of batteries, so 15 total, using solder and 8 gauge wire. I soldered the sets of batteries in series to create two 5s3p battery packs.

The BMS that I have chosen to use is made for a 10s3p battery, meaning that there are 10 cells in series and 3 cells in parallel. The BMS has 10 different leads coming out of it, each of which will go to the positive sides of the cells. There is also one negative wire that you will have to solder onto the board yourself and ensure that it is connected to the negative side of the overall battery.

Once soldering was completed I used Kapton tape to seal the batteries so that once the two batteries were lined up side by side there was no chance for them to touch and short circuit.

You can also see that there is electrical tape over the Kapton tape, this is because I had to solder the leads from the BMS onto the battery packs. I cut through the Kapton tape to feed the lead through, and used electrical tape to secure the lead.

On the top side of the ESC you can see 6 different leads coming out of it. These leads will connect to the barrel connectors on your motors. This ESC will also connect to the BMS for power and monitoring systems. You do not have to use this exact ESC if you would like to use a single motor. This specific ESC is suggested for a 10s battery configuration and the dual motors that I am currently running.

For this step I used a large sheet of half inch thick foam to provide cushion under the electronics. I laid each item on the foam and traced around it and used scissors to cut the foam to the correct side. I used hot glue to mount the foam to the board and the electronics to the foam. You must work quickly while doing this so that the hot glue does not dry, but at the same time you want to be careful that you don't damage anything.

To protect everything on the underside of the board I used a plastic housing that I found on amazon. Once I had everything in place, I used a 4/16 in. drill bit to drill 5 holes into the box. These holes would allow me to mount the power and charging port to the box, then I would also be able to feed the leads from the motors to the ESC.

The motors that I have chosen to use are 190kv motors that have very long leads, or phase wires. You can chose to cut them down and re-solder the barrel connectors if you want. I decided to leave the leads long and make sure that they are just tucked away in the box.

In the picture above you can see I used 2 different colors of tape that correspond with the female end of the barrel connectors on the ESC. I found the correct order of the phase wires before I fed the wires through the box to make it easier when connecting the ESC and motors. Finding the correct orientation before adding them to the box allowed me to make sure that the motors would spin in the correct direction before I tucked everything away.

I used normal wood screws that were 1/4 in. thick. These screws were strong enough to mount the box securely but not so long as to go through the deck. One thing that I suggest doing while screwing into the box is to use a heat gun to heat up the edges so that they are flush and you have a better mounting point. Once you have all of the screw holes drilled and everything in the correct place I suggest taking all of the screws out and adding one washer to each screw and using some blue Loctite just for extra safety. This will ensure that none of the screws slip out of the holes while you are riding your board.

Thank you for visiting my Instructable, I hope you got some helpful insights and I hope you enjoy your new DIY Electric Longboard.