Jason McNeil Posted July 24, 2016 Share Posted July 24, 2016 WARNING: it might take some time for the page to load, there's a ton of photos below.. Today I spent much of the afternoon tearing apart the V5F+ in order to get a sense of how the Wheel was constructed, assess the difficulty of routine maintenance (like changing the tire) & what areas could be improved upon. Inmotion have a fairly good disassembly video with step-by-step instructions (in Chinese for now). Taking the Wheel completely apart took about 45 minutes the first time, second & third attempt got the process down to less than 10 minutes (second time was to install the datalogger). Similar to the KS16 & Ninebot One, the trend in design is in favour of both outer & inner shells. Outer shell gives the Wheel its strength & rigidity, while the inner one is just for show. Here's a picture of the work desk(s)(neither of which are technically mine ) with all the components flayed out. Curved battery pack is pretty unusual, the only one of it's kind, its what allows the Wheel to be so slender; BMS housed in the central hump. Even though the battery compartment chamber is completely protected, Inmotion have done a great job on adding sealant where the wires feed into the pack. Close up of the Control-panel: no rats nest of cables here, everything properly laid out. A couple minor things here: 1) connector sockets just have Chinese labels, 2) on the left side, there are 2x two-pin connectors; if you don't have a reference photo, it's possible to get them mixed up. Fuse is rated to 30A. This picture gives you a better sense of the MOSFET heat-sink, it's similar to the 9B1 in that the MOSFETs are mounted vertically. Also like the KS & 9B boards, there is a thin film of protective coating over the circuitry. On closer inspection, there some parts of the PCB that does not appear to be coated. As this Wheel operates at a higher than normal voltage, 84V, it's important to ensure that board is discharged after shutdown. This is the battery housing compartment, internal speaker, charging port & reset switch. Holding the reset switch down powers off the Wheel (& I believe also discharges the control-board). Front headlight (yes, the V5F/+ has a directionality to it), battery meter, and spin prevention switch. Inside the Wheel housing: should keep the water out where it shouldn't be... The control-board heat-sink exposure is comparatively not very large. At the moment there is no temperature reading within the App—obviously this is an oversight that needs to be remedied. Now onto the weighty business of weighing up the components.... This scale has 50g resolution. Battery pack is 2.1kg. Each of the 40x 18650 cells individually weighs ~50g, so this this pretty good with the packaging & BMS etc. Motor, tire, support arms & one pedal (I was testing the pedal angle): the pedal is 400g, so the motor support arms, inner-tube & tire is actually around 5.9kg (exactly half of the Wheel's total weight) Outer-shell is extremely light at 400g each. As an aside, these are symmetrical; when taking them off, quite a bit of force is required to pry them from the inner-shell. Inner-shell, 750g (+30g of dirt!). I was too lazy to take off the control-board from the inner-shell: knowing the weight of just the shell, it's easily enough to calculate the weight (along with the speaker, wires & switches is 350g. Pedals: with the supporting arm, this is exceptionally light by the standards of other Wheels. The traverse covers protect the Wheel from water ingress, padding for the legs & control-board cover—interestingly there's a cover installed in the empty bay on the opposite side, not much room in there for anything, but don't know why they bothered adding a protective cover. Finally all (optional) handle kit, 450g. After putting the Wheel back together she looks as good as new! Well not quite, this is the original photo... I managed to scratch up the shell a bit (nothing major, just not pristine anymore.), recommend putting something underneath to prevent scratches. We'll be ordering a bunch of this sacrificial outer shells for replacements. It's only about a 5 minute job to swap them out. Conclusion of the exercise: there's a lot of thought & attention that has been put into the construction of this little Wheel wonder. Nice to see the detail that Inmotion have put into this that make servicing less of something to be dreaded. It also has the appearance of being adequately water-resistant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rehab1 Posted July 25, 2016 Share Posted July 25, 2016 @Jason McNeilIt is so awesome you took the time and effort tearing down the V5F+ along with excellent photo documentation and review! Such a professional! I really like your idea of ordering extra shells to have on hand. I ordered spare inner and outer shells for my NB1E+ from Speedyfeet. No breakage yet but it will just be nice to have them. Let me know when they arrive. I plan to use the same clear auto protective plastic molding on the V5F+ that was used on my NB Flame. You can barely see it but it really protects the shell! Pick up the V5 tomorrow. Hooray!! Thanks again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason McNeil Posted July 25, 2016 Author Share Posted July 25, 2016 56 minutes ago, Rehab1 said: awesome you took the time and effort tearing down the V5F+ along with excellent photo documentation and review! Such a professional! All in the name of duty Projects of this kind are funny, once you do one Wheel, doing another becomes routine, mentally you know what the exact sequences lay ahead, it has a definable end, guess I'm a creature of habit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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