The BEST and FIRST Qulbix Raptor mid-drive build!

LightningRods said:
recumpence said:
Woh, $500 hub? :mrgreen:

For you, $495. :D

I don't know what it's going to cost to make batches of these. This first one is going to hurt. I'd like to be able to sell these in the $250 range.

I've spent my entire life making things. I do talk about things that I don't end up making, but typically it gets made.

I hope this hub is bullet proof! Bomb proof even! The sprocket will be .135" stainless steel. These parts are stronger than many motorcycle parts. We should be good to go.

This just texted to me by my machinist:

Qulbix165Hub-Machined.jpg

Two words;

Awe - some. :mrgreen:
 
This is brilliant. It makes me want to build a bike just so I can use your hub. Since it will use a freewheel like the White Industries or a sprocket set and also have a flange for bolting on a sprocket and a brake rotor...what can't this hub do?
 
ElectricGod said:
...what can't this hub do?

"That's right, it filets, it chops, it dices, slices,
Never stops, lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school
It gets rid of unwanted facial hair, it gets rid of embarrassing age spots,
It delivers a pizza, and it lengthens, and it strengthens
And it finds that slipper that's been at large
under the chaise lounge for several weeks
And it plays a mean Rhythm Master,
It makes excuses for unwanted lipstick on your collar
And it's only a dollar, step right up, it's only a dollar, step right up"
-Tom Waits, "Step Right Up"

Sorry. Every time I feel tempted to go into a sales pitch I think of this great song and how much I loathe pitch men and advertising.

My machinist is stoked about making hubs for ebikes. He's been very cooperative about making parts up until now but this really has him lit up for some reason. It is a pretty part.

My plan is to offer variations of six bolt disc brake flange mounts, freewheel threads, and freehub mounts in various widths. The narrower hubs are going to be more challenging in terms of fitting two left side flanges, but I have some tricks up my sleeve for those. I'm also making #219 sprockets with a five bolt freewheel pattern and the six bolt disc brake flange pattern. Those are either hard to find or didn't exist before.
 
I tore a freehub all the way down to the bare alloy hub today. I'm sure that we can make a 10 speed freehub right side for this new billet hub. The tricky bit is the ratchet ring and you can buy that as a replacement part. I've heard that it's possible to get the ratchet ring and pawls for a DT Swiss. If so that's the way I plan to go.

I also got a BeamTS hall effect torque sensor working with a CA3 today. This nifty little gadget will read the tension on a run of human powered drive chain and translate that tension into a throttle signal. This will work on this new swingarm drive because the human power and motor power run separately. My mid mount drives for cargo bikes and cruisers will also work with this torque sensor.
 
He's been very cooperative about making parts up until now, but this really has him lit up for some reason

Most machinists make money doing production work. They get an order for "X" amount of part number "Y", for a price "Z"...boring...it's not often they are the first person to make an innovative part that was long overdue for an entire industry.
 
LightningRods said:
ElectricGod said:
...what can't this hub do?

"That's right, it filets, it chops, it dices, slices,
Never stops, lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school
It gets rid of unwanted facial hair, it gets rid of embarrassing age spots,
It delivers a pizza, and it lengthens, and it strengthens
And it finds that slipper that's been at large
under the chaise lounge for several weeks
And it plays a mean Rhythm Master,
It makes excuses for unwanted lipstick on your collar
And it's only a dollar, step right up, it's only a dollar, step right up"
-Tom Waits, "Step Right Up"

Sorry. Every time I feel tempted to go into a sales pitch I think of this great song and how much I loathe pitch men and advertising.

My machinist is stoked about making hubs for ebikes. He's been very cooperative about making parts up until now but this really has him lit up for some reason. It is a pretty part.

My plan is to offer variations of six bolt disc brake flange mounts, freewheel threads, and freehub mounts in various widths. The narrower hubs are going to be more challenging in terms of fitting two left side flanges, but I have some tricks up my sleeve for those. I'm also making #219 sprockets with a five bolt freewheel pattern and the six bolt disc brake flange pattern. Those are either hard to find or didn't exist before.

I like it LightningRods, good plan for hubs. #219 is awesome, and capable or 400NM to the ground if you keep the tooth count high, and if you want to get sprockets made it may help to know that they can also be pretty cheaply cut out from 4mm sheet by waterjet, let me know if you want details, or a dxf file.
 

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Thanks Toolman. Because of it's strength and compact size due to it's fine pitch I think that #219 is the best choice for single run chain on e-bikes. Of all of the components I've been building and selling for the past four years, I've had the least trouble with 219 chain.

I have a 96T sprocket in production now. It's being laser cut from .135" stainless steel. Thanks for the offer on the CAD file. I've figured out a process to make pretty much any sprocket pitch, tooth count and hub pattern.
 
LightningRods said:
Thanks Toolman. Because of it's strength and compact size due to it's fine pitch I think that #219 is the best choice for single run chain on e-bikes. Of all of the components I've been building and selling for the past four years, I've had the least trouble with 219 chain.

I have a 96T sprocket in production now. It's being laser cut from .135" stainless steel. Thanks for the offer on the CAD file. I've figured out a process to make pretty much any sprocket pitch, tooth count and hub pattern.

yep, laser was a noticeably more accurate cut than waterjet when we tried it, just surprised we got away with the imperfections for lower cost waterjet after a 5 min dirt run in :wink: and im curuios if laser might bugger the heat treatment but thats more relevant for alloy.
 
My experience with laser is that the cut is much harder than the overall material. In parts with tapped holes I have to spec the hole undersize and then drill the laser cut edge out before tapping. Otherwise it's a bitch to tap the hole and taps last no time at all.
 
That 92T sprocket will almost allow a single stage gear reduction from the motor for a bike wheel. I haven't done the math to determine wheel RPMs, but is a 13T driver to the 92T sprocket or 7:1 enough reduction? I was thinking it needed to be something like 24:1, but that may be for matching human cadence which wont be relevant for a direct left side drive.

I think I need one of your hubs when they are ready to be sold. I'm building up a kick scooter with spoked wheels. This hub would be ideal for that.
 
The big rear sprocket is a 96t. Combined with a 12t driver it's 8:1 which should be a good overall ratio. 24:1 is more typical for a BB drive where there is a final stage of 3:1 overdrive. Which coincidentally puts the overall reduction for the motor at 8:1.

Production on the hubs is coming soon. I have to figure out how to manage dropout widths, freewheel vs. free hub, etc. Onesies are easy. Production runs are much harder to manage.
 
LightningRods said:
The big rear sprocket is a 96t. Combined with a 12t driver it's 8:1 which should be a good overall ratio. 24:1 is more typical for a BB drive where there is a final stage of 3:1 overdrive. Which coincidentally puts the overall reduction for the motor at 8:1.

Production on the hubs is coming soon. I have to figure out how to manage dropout widths, freewheel vs. free hub, etc. Onesies are easy. Production runs are much harder to manage.

Yeah and you need people lined up to buy your hub. Even then you are going to dump a lot of change into hubs to do a production run and then you want a lot of spares/inventory AKA: a bunch of money tied up in inventory. Ugg! Been there and done that myself!
 
Interesting, never thought of a custom hub. Wouldn't another way be to thin out the swingarm? I.e. reduce to 135mm and use standard hub? or is the power greater than what a regular bike rear hub would happily take?

I tried contacting Qulbix re getting a thinner swingarm previously, which was ignored. I'm still considering whether to take it to a engineering firm locally and either get a revised swingarm or the standard one altered...
 
Lurkin said:
Interesting, never thought of a custom hub. Wouldn't another way be to thin out the swingarm? I.e. reduce to 135mm and use standard hub? or is the power greater than what a regular bike rear hub would happily take?

I tried contacting Qulbix re getting a thinner swingarm previously, which was ignored. I'm still considering whether to take it to a engineering firm locally and either get a revised swingarm or the standard one altered...
The width of the hub is heavily influenced by the distance of the front sprocket from the bikes centreline. Reason being that chains like to run in straight lines else they chew sprockets or jump off so the rear sprocket has to be in line with the front. As such thinning the swingarm is not a viable option. You can of course use a standard hub with spacers as I did in my build but it isn't ideal.
 
The 165mm width of the swingarm that I was working with (Qulbix also makes a 150mm) gave me enough lateral space to have the disc brake flange in it's standard position, allow enough room for the piston side of the caliper, properly align the motor sprocket and it's flange and then still center the two standard MB spoke flanges. Nothing is weird offset or out of line. Even with the 150mm hub the spacing on all of the parts would start to get too tight.

Nothing is going to be particularly difficult about producing these hubs other than keeping the cost down. I'd like to offer a bunch of hub widths with different ends on them. Brake flanges both sides, double brake flanges on the left and freewheel thread on the right, double on the left and free hub on the right. It would be good to offer at least 135mm and 170mm, plus the 165mm for the Qulbix. The 170s will be easy to design. The 135mm will require a couple more tricks on my part.

All of my laser cut parts were supposed to be ready yesterday but as is typical for this shop they promise delivery on Friday and end up delivering on Monday or Tuesday. I just hope they don't run past that. I want my parts!
 
Awesome hub LR. It temps me to try left hand drive with the FW on the motor. . . I have been happy with my right side parallel though, and the SBP HD FW on hub has been holding up fine to alot of beating @ up to 100a 200a phase.

Anway, I may have thrown this out there before . . . but since going thru with a custom marketable hub, what about making one along with a custom 219 gear cluster of 4 or 5 gears that FW's on a SBP HD FW that would allow extreme performance from all the serial middrives already out there ? :?: :idea:

A custom hub, deraileur, chainring, and gear cluster. . . . reliable and usable power of 4-8kw thru variable reduction on middrives like tangent, LR, and cyclone. . . .

I'm stoked there will soon be more owners/riders of parallel middrives, but it seems there would certainly be a market for a custom 135mm serial bike drivetrain for all the powerful serial middrives too.
 
I wish that it were possible to make a derailleur with #219 chain. It's way too stiff to be able to shift with a derailleur. Derailleur chain has to flex side to side and also twist. My plan for motor power through the gears is to make the thickest possible 1/2" pitch sprockets and use the thickest, stiffest chain that will still shift. Easy shifting and staying in gear/not skipping under high power are opposites, sorry to say.

I've finally accepted that mid drive users who run 1500 watts and pedal are different animals than mid drive users who run 3000 watts + and don't pedal. I'm going to try to serve both groups, but the low power guys seem more easily seduced by the cheap stuff. My high power/low power split may well be 3000 watts and under vs 3000 watts and over.
 
That's a good point on shifting. I figured there was a reason it's not been done or talked much about.

Cryin shame though, imo! Maybe a beefed bmx chain with custom cluster will offer at least 30% improvement for power capabilities - there's still def a market for that imo.

Dam I wish there was an easier way to give even one extra reduction to 6kw+ though. Guess I'm not bitchin, just chasing that dragon lol.

Good job on the hub and bike so far, I can't wait to have a lot more single reduction parallel mid users on here. Simpler and stronger design, and bigger power = alot more funnnn!
 
I picked up the Qulbix parts from the laser cutter today. Everything is looking good. "Measure three times, cut once" applies more to designing laser cut jigsaw puzzles like this than to most things.

Qulbix165Hub-Assy1.jpg


Qulbix165Hub-Assy2.jpg


Qulbix165Hub-Assy3.jpg


I need to fabricate the 5/8" square tube upper mount and assemble the chain tensioner and then this sucker is basically done. No mods are required to the Qulbix frame. It's as simple as I could make it.

I also have the parts for the BB mount drive for the Qulbix which will run through the gears on the right side. You'll see that it has a family resemblance to the drives I've been building for the last couple of years but is different. There are lots of new heavy duty custom parts.

Both of these drives should be completed this week. Progress photos throughout the week.
 
This is looking great! Do you have any idea what you will sell the complete kit for?

It looks like the motor bracket doesn't use those two large bolt holes on the motor.
 
I need to total my cost for all of the various bits before I can set a price. The cost of the swingarm drive itself will be hundreds less than my current bottom bracket drives. The one-off prototype hub shown cost considerably more to have made than I hope to sell the production hubs for. My machinist finished the prototype and then ran off to shoot furry things in the woods for a few days. I'll put the iron to his feet on the cost for runs of 10 at a time when he gets back.

Space is very limited between the frame and rear tire. Orienting the motor with both mounting ears at the top, which seems like an obvious decision, wastes nearly an inch of much needed space. I was able to use one of them, plus three perimeter case bolts and one of the three bolts around the output shaft. The motor is not going anywhere.
 
I have the motor mount worked out. The 5/8" square stock fits the gap between the arms of the swingarm and the rear shock mount perfectly. And because I measured everything many times before having the sheet metal cut and formed the square stock lines up perfectly with the 10 gauge sheet metal below. The bolts are hardened M10s.

Qulbix165-Swingarm1.jpg


The front two bolts will be M10 all thread. One of the challenges in mounting to the Qulbix swingarm is that the square center brace is a bit shorter than ideal. I decided to use the square upper tube as a cantilever to help support the front of the motor and also to resist the motor twisting upward under heavy load. The point of the all thread is to have nuts above and below both the upper and lower brackets to resist motion in both directions.

Qulbix165-Swingarm2.jpg


Another challenge in mounting to the swingarm is that the side arms are not square. They're long triangles. I have a 10 gauge center plate that contacts the square center brace and provides a solid base. The formed 10 gauge bracket that holds the motor doesn't actually touch the swingarm.

Qulbix165-Swingarm3.jpg


The motor can't twist sideways because the square upper mounts are tight in between the side arms and the shock mount. Also the M10 bolts just clear the inside of the arms. It's a simple design, but everything had to be fitted exactly right to fit and do it's job.

Qulbix165-Swingarm4.jpg


While I'm waiting for the all thread and other hardware to arrive I'm going to pull everything back apart for paint and anodizing. I've designed a DH roller chain tensioner that attaches to the motor. With the motor mounted to the swingarm it won't have a lot to do since there is zero chain growth during suspension movement.
 
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