Electric Roadster

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

No matter what, make sure you at least clear coat them, or they will begin to corrode.

Yeah, you're right. Actually I'm not sure yet if I'll paint/clear coat or even anodize them since I can have those professionally anodized for cheap, maybe even for free.

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

Some progress over the past week, but nothing very spectacular.
Essentially working on how to secure everything in the frame, and preparing it for the next steps of primer/painting.

I've 3D printed a huge L shaped bracket to attach the controller, the BMS and the battery all at the same time, while serving also the purpose of a heatsink. Obviously that is just a mockup and it will be replaced by a piece of aluminum, I'm currently in the process of finding a supplier to help me cut and bend it since I don't really want to go through the hassle of doing it myself.
Anyway, you can't really see it well on the pictures but that's the red piece that holds everything in place.

I also prepared and routed all the power wires, their path is as short and direct as can be:

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I think it looks pretty cool, almost like an engine,
I had to redesign my BMS enclosure to make it smaller, it didn't fit inside the cover. I'm actually having a hard time packing everything within the volume of the current enclosure, this will be a challenge and I hope I won't have to change the design I planned too much.

Also now I'm right into the tedious work of smoothing the frame. So, lots of time applying bondo, sanding, bondo, sanding again, etc... Takes forever to do on these complicated surfaces, but I guess that's the key if I want a really nice finish later:

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There's actually still a whole lot of work to do on the bike, now I realize it won't be finished anytime soon!

[SlowCo]

Wow, great work again

[JimVonBaden]

Looks great! I am looking forward to seeing it come together!

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

Thanks guys!

First coat of primer on the chassis, I'll still have to fill a few holes and make some more smoothing, but it's already miles cleaner than it used to be:

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I've also ordered the aluminum plate in order to hold everything in place in the powertrain compartment:
The plate will look like this:

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And the whole assembly should look like that:

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Hopefully I should receive the plate before the Chinese new year, so I'll have time to work on finishing the frame and maybe have the bike rolling on its own power.

[JimVonBaden]

Looks great! You are a couple of days ahead of me on the paint. I'm looking forward to seeing the finish color.

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

The final color should be red pearl, but I tried rendering the bike in 3D with many colors and frankly all of them looked really cool so I could change to basically anything

I reinstalled everything on the bike just to see the looks with the frame painted. It starts taking shape, I'm pretty happy with it!

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Now I ordered some foot pegs and waiting to receive those to install on the frame.
In my opinion that will be a critical step, many people assume that the bike will be very uncomfortable, but I think this will largely depend on the foot pegs position (and also the saddle materials,thickness and shape, obviously). Don't get me wrong, this won't be a comfortable bike by any means, you won't be able to do 100 miles distances with it in a row, but that's totally not the point of it anyways, I build it for having fun on short trips.
I hope for it to get more comfortable while riding faster. The idea here is that the bike should invite the rider to ride faster and not get lazy, my assumption being that a good riding position on a bike is a position that forces the rider to get involved.
Anyway, at least that's the plan, we'll see how it works, I can always change stuff later if need be.

I'm also trying to finalize the design for the side covers before I 3D print the mold, so far it looks like this, I think it is now close to the final shape:

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[JimVonBaden]

Very sleek! I like the red and the shapes.

[mannydantyla]

You're right, the battery pack and motor controller together, with the large wires, looks a bit like an engine and reminds me of the Electric GT "eCrate motor" - https://electricgt.com/413-egt-motor/

[MJSfoto1956]

Mhhh, this thread is a bit quiet, feels like I'm just talking to myself here

Which 3d printer is that? Would you recommend it to a beginner?

M

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

Mhhh, this thread is a bit quiet, feels like I'm just talking to myself here

Which 3d printer is that? Would you recommend it to a beginner?

M

It's the 3D printer I designed.
I cannot recommend it to a beginner since a beginner wouldn't be able to buy it anywhere, this is litterally the only one in the entire world

But now that it is finished, it works really well and indeed a beginner could totally use it, it's almost entirely automatic, just hit print and wait for the part to be done, not much else to do aside from loading a new spool of plastic from time to time (it is VERY hungry, it can eat an entire spool in less than a day).

You can have a look here if you're interested, this is the thread where I documented the build of the machine while I was designing and assembling it:
https://forum.v1engineering.com/t/mpcnc ... uild/19393

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

You're right, the battery pack and motor controller together, with the large wires, looks a bit like an engine and reminds me of the Electric GT "eCrate motor" - https://electricgt.com/413-egt-motor/

That's a very cool product and great idea, love it!

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

That wasn't a very productive weekend, I actually broke more stuff than I built...

I wanted to make the little brackets that attach the carbon tubes to the chassis on the saddle side, so I used some stainless steel stock and started machining it.
First I cut my thumb pretty bad with the lathe, some very long shaving got suddenly suck into the spindle and unfortunately my thumb was in the way, the shaving acted basically like a bandsaw blade and well, thumbs are soft. Luckily that resulted only in deep cuts but no real permanent damage. So the weekend didn't start very well.

I then had my revenge on the lathe by destroying it. At some point during the machining of the last bracket, the spindle got stuck during a drilling operation, which fried the motor controller board. Karma I guess, take that, sucker!
Well in the end I'll pay for this, but it was totally worth it.

Anyway, The little standoffs were already finished machining, so the last thing I had to do was to grind them to the appropriate angle, which I did with a grinder and the part secured in a vice. Worked perfectly well, I got a really perfect fit and so I was able to test fit those things on the frame and take a few shots....

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....and then suddently the bike fell heavily on the ground, throwing everything on the floor, battery, controller, BMS...
The BMS box is ruined and the carbon tube of the stand broke in two pieces. The battery took a small hit but I think it is fine, The controller also seems ok. A few scratches on the brake handles and on the primer here and there...
I didn't think about taking pictures as I was a bit pissed off and worry about the battery. Actually it was my fault, I knew that my stand system was still missing a mechanical stop, but I thought I could just be lazy and make it later. I should have known better. So next step will be to actually build this thing.

Well, anyway, nothing major but it sucks, that wasn't a great weekend. On the positive side the 4 standoffs are built an ready to be welded on the frame, plus my machining shop told me that the aluminum plate is done and has already been shipped so I should receive it today or tomorrow!

[JimVonBaden]

Wow, it was looking good. Bummer on the mishaps!

[MJSfoto1956]

It's the 3D printer I designed. I cannot recommend it to a beginner since a beginner wouldn't be able to buy it anywhere, this is literally the only one in the entire world!

I'm looking to design & print custom motorcycle seat pan, fenders/mud guard, body panels, etc. Would this be a decent model to start with? Also, what software would you recommend?

https://www.banggood.com/TRONXY-X5SA-50 ... s=category

Michael

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[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

I'm looking to design & print custom motorcycle seat pan, fenders/mud guard, body panels, etc. Would this be a decent model to start with? Also, what software would you recommend?

Yeah it seems to have at least all the basic functions (auto bed leveling, heating bed, filament detection). Seems a bit flimsy but I guess it's ok, didn't see anything really wrong with it aside from the bed's thickness which seems to rather be on the thin side. It's not very expensive either.

For the software I'm not sure what you mean, for 3D design or for slicing the model to create the path strategy for the printer?

For 3D designing I'm using Onshape, but there are plenty of other softwares (fusion360, sketchup, rhino, solidworks, etc.). If you're a total beginner in 3D design, like I was a few years ago, then you can start by using tinkercad, it's very easy to grasp and it's sufficient to do most basic things.

For slicing the model, I'm using Kisslicer, which, in my opinion, is the best slicer (but very few people use it, dunno why). I guess your printer will come with a software package, including some kind of pre configured version of the slicer with your machine parameters, so at first you can use it, then later, if and when you'll become more experienced, you'll be able to experiment other slicers and see which one's the best for you.

Also, keep in mind that the stuff you plan to print is quite big, and printing these things with a 0.4mm nozzle ill take a really, really, realllllllly long time. In my case I'm using bigger nozzles, you sure lose a bit of quality, but the gain in printing speed is exponential. The longer you print, the more chances there is that something goes wrong and the print fails, so you should always keep this in mind.
Anyway, I could talk about 3D printing for hours, maybe months, there's so much stuff to say....

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

Good news, I received my aluminum plate and it seems to fit just right!

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So now I'll just have to build some kind of bracketry to secure it very solidly to the frame and basically the bike should be in the last straight line for its first actual low power test rides.

Plan is for it to act as both a support for the BMS and the controller, a clamp to tighten the battery in place so that it cannot move, and a heatsink for all these elements since aluminum is a great heat conductor.
Cost me around 25bucks for the plate, including machining and bending. I'll make some finishing later, maybe brush it. Doesn't really matter since it isn't visible anyway, but can't hurt to make it look good.

I'm now working on the saddle since this is the last part I'm not yet sure that is gonna work. So the plan is to first build these two parts:

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The bottom part is a shell that I'll make out of carbon fiber, but I'll do that in the very end, the first versions will just be 3D printed.
Now the actual challenge of the seat is to make something comfortable. So the idea I had was to use soft silicone. Don't know if that will work, I never used silicone in my entire life, so I suppose we'll see.

I went for a quite complicated shape:

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The reasons for all these holes is to, hopefully, make the saddle very soft. I'm also using the softer coumpound I could find, it's something usually used for making comfortable shoe soles.
So, to do that, I have to make a mold and pour the silicone in it. I'm going to try 3D printing the mold. I made the design of the mold yesterday, this will be the bottom half:

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And I'm printing the top half already:

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Hopefully I should be able to print the bottom half this evening, then it'll be a matter of receiving the silicone and pour it inside. Also need to smooth the mold to get a nice surface finish on the top. In the very end I'll try to cover this with a nice leather, so it doesn't matter too much, but the smoother it is now the smoother it ll be later with the leather on it (I guess, I haven't done stuff like that before).

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

Smoothed the top half with body filler:

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Meanwhile, 3D printed the bottom half of the mold:

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This thing's huge, it took me 22 hours to print (I did print it a bit slower than usual to make sure it would print perfect, would have taken 17 hours if I used my regular settings). That took around 80% of a filament spool to get there.

Both halves of the mold ready to go:

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Then I mixed the silicone and poured it into the mold:

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Now I'm waiting for it to cure and I'll try separating it from the mold this evening. I really hope this will work that would be really awesome.

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

Success!
Tadaaaaaaaa......

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Worked awesomely. Too bad I screwed up a bit and didn't mix the silicone well enough, some spots didn't fully cure and the black pigment tends to imprint anything it touches... Rookie mistake I guess. But I don't care, this one was just a test to see if it was a viable option and if I could do it.

So next is to print the bottom shell, try it out to see if it's comfortable, and then later I can cast the final version, now I know the process works and it's not very hard to do with the 3D printer!

Super pleased with the result, Only defect I got were from bad mixing, all the rest worked perfect.

[SlowCo]

Impressive!

[MJSfoto1956]

Bravo!

[Warren]

This bike is a work of art. Your craftsmanship is amazing.

[Elektrosherpa]

Absolutely amazing work.

The only thing I don't understand is:
Why do you make the seat so narrow and so much inclined to the front?

I have something like this (also made by myself- in "oldschool" technique (glass fibre/resin base and foam padding) on my Bultaco, and due to the inclination, gravity tries to make me slip to the narrow front part all the time - not comfortable at all!

In my case, I couldn't avoid the inclination because the frame is like that-
but you built your frame yourself and could choose the inclination of the seat.

Is it merely a matter of looks?

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

Absolutely amazing work.

The only thing I don't understand is:
Why do you make the seat so narrow and so much inclined to the front?

I have something like this (also made by myself- in "oldschool" technique (glass fibre/resin base and foam padding) on my Bultaco, and due to the inclination, gravity tries to make me slip to the narrow front part all the time - not comfortable at all!

In my case, I couldn't avoid the inclination because the frame is like that-
but you built your frame yourself and could choose the inclination of the seat.

Is it merely a matter of looks?

Thanks

Yeah, it's essentially for looks, I tried other angles and shapes on the 3D and this one looked the best to me.
The saddle looks smaller than it actually is, it's actually not as small as people would imagine before seeing it in real life.
Keep in mind that the saddle on a bicycle is way, way smaller and this motorbike has large tires, shocks, etc, so it's likely more comfortable than that and people don't seem to be worry that much of riding bicycles
But it is by no means a completely definitive design, I'll first test it and see for myself if it is actually as much uncomfortable as people would imagine. I don't expect it to be comfortable, that's for sure, but as long as I can ride for half an hour without being too sore I'd be happy, since I never really need to ride for much longer anyway.

I welded the foot pegs in place these past days and I'm in the very last steps of securing the battery, the bike should very soon be able to move by itself, so I should be able to know soon enough what mods I'll need to do on the saddle. The foot pegs position was very important indeed for couteracting the effect of the angle you mentionned, I spent a long time finding the position which would ensure me not relying too much on my arms during riding. I tried sitting on it for a while afterwards and I actually quite liked the driving position, but that was only a static test, let's wait until dynamic riding to find out if it is still ok.

...And if in the end it turns out to really be an issue, then I'll use my trusty angle grinder, cut the tube and weld it differently, no biggie.

[Dui, ni shuo de dui]

A lot of work done during the past week and some very good news!

First Thing I've done was to build the foot pegs brackets:

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They are placed pretty high so there's very little chance that they rub on the floor ever again, which is an annoying problem I have on my other bike.

Also, I welded the little brackets for the frame's carbon tubes, and this time I actually did a decent job:

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Then I worked on securing the battery, which was a complex task.
I first welded a few anchor points on the frame, then created some 3D printed brackets to attach very solidly on the aluminum plate:

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The battery is held in place by keeping it under pressure (not a crazy pressure, just enough so it can't move around), and is secured to the frame on 5 different points. The controller as well as the BMS are bolted to the plate, so the whole thing is tight and secured. I tried to move stuff rell hard but it is solid as a rock, I'm really confident with this mounting solution now.

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So that was the first great step: the frame is now entirely finished (except for painting, of course)!

Next I installed all the power wiring:

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I rebuilt and improved my stand, this time going for a thicker carbon tube and building a solid stop. The stand feels great now, I don't think it'll break anytime soon. Just need to print the little end cap in black instead of white, I had white filament in the printer at the time and didn't want to go through the hassle of changing it.

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Also trying some different designs for the saddle, a bit bigger to make it more comfy:

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Connected the vital functions to the controller: throttle, halls and on/off switch, and also finished wiring the BMS.
Then I connected the BMS to my phone through the app and set up everything, BMS works fine and basically almost everything was ready at this point.

Next step was to connect the controller to my computer to program it. I have to say that the Kelly software interface really isn't intuitive nor convenient to use, but eventually I did understand how to run the self calibration of the controller.

Finally, reset of the controller, turn it back on again, twist slightly the throttle and........



it's working, Alleluia!!
I was super excited at this point, about three months of hard work starting to finally pay off!

Actually I was so happy (and stupid) that I took her for a quick spin outside, even though it had no brakes (brake lines aren't connected). So needless to say that I didn't go fast, but I couldn't resist to at least have a little ride.

My objective was to have it running by the end of the chinese new year holidays, I'm glad to say: Mission Accomplished!!
Still a lot of work to do, but at least now the mechanical and powertrain are done.