Another 3D printed EUC project

[MattJ]

1 minute ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

So how is the new 3D printer working out?   Any new developments in shell design?   Headlights / tail lights ? 

It´s up and running and I really like it, definitely great bang for the buck. It´s nice to have such a large build volume to work with. Assembly took a few hours last weekend. No new developments yet. I am thinking about a slightly larger handle with headlight on one side and tail light on the other, but I might have to change several other parts as well.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

Is the print quality better than the dual feed printer you used before?   Can you give your opinion about the new unit as compared to your old one? 

[MattJ]

28 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

Is the print quality better than the dual feed printer you used before?   Can you give your opinion about the new unit as compared to your old one? 

Print quality seems similar, but I can do much larger parts with the new one (220x220x240mm vs. 150x225x150mm) Also it seems that I can achieve faster print speeds without running into mechanical problems. The new one is also much easier to tweak. I´ll probably convert the old one to single feed because the dual extruder is causing way more trouble than advantages.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

Nice!   With two printers that should halve the print time for projects if you have them both going at the same time. 

How are your current wheels running so far?   Any issues or new findings?   Have you tried any more off roading with the larger tire?  Are you finding that a little more speed would be nice if only MW could tweak the controller or sold a new one to be capable of doing so?   How's the climbing ability with your wheels? 

Sorry about the million questions. . . 

[MattJ]

1 minute ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

Nice!   With two printers that should halve the print time for projects if you have them both going at the same time. 

How are your current wheels running so far?   Any issues or new findings?   Have you tried any more off roading with the larger tire?  Are you finding that a little more speed would be nice if only MW could tweak the controller or sold a new one to be capable of doing so?   How's the climbing ability with your wheels? 

Sorry about the million questions. . . 

Actually, I´m planning to speed things up even more. I´m thinking about removing the second extruder from my old one, which will reduce the moving mass by half, so I´ll be able to run it at much higher speeds than before. The wheels are running great, no issues whatsoever, except for snow on the ground which currently keeps me from riding.
I´ve been riding on rough gravel and on grass with the larger tire and haven´t had any problems at all. Climbing ability is decent, I have yet to find a hill on a regular road that I wouldn´t be able to climb. I don´t think it would be wise to go any faster with this motor, so it´s not only a controller issue. You also need sufficient power reserves to maintain your balance.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

I can't wait to see how the open source firmware pans out over time.   If there was a way to source Gotway motors say,  you could create your own Msuper Matt Edition with custom shell. . . .  Or maybe not. . . .  That would be a huge sized print job which might not be possible at that larger size?   Maybe too many pieces. . .  I wonder if a controller could be programmed to calibrate itself to work with any sized wheel if one knows and could punch in the inner specifics of the motor. . . 

[MattJ]

2 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I can't wait to see how the open source firmware pans out over time.   If there was a way to source Gotway motors say,  you could create your own Msuper Matt Edition with custom shell. . . .  Or maybe not. . . .  That would be a huge sized print job which might not be possible at that larger size?   Maybe too many pieces. . .  I wonder if a controller could be programmed to calibrate itself to work with any sized wheel if one knows and could punch in the inner specifics of the motor. . . 

Well I don´t know anything about firmwares - I´ll leave that to those who know what they´re doing and concentrate on creating hopefully useable shells

[electric_vehicle_lover]

10 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I can't wait to see how the open source firmware pans out over time.   If there was a way to source Gotway motors say,  you could create your own Msuper Matt Edition with custom shell. . . .  Or maybe not. . . .  That would be a huge sized print job which might not be possible at that larger size?   Maybe too many pieces. . .  I wonder if a controller could be programmed to calibrate itself to work with any sized wheel if one knows and could punch in the inner specifics of the motor. . . 

After more than 1 year, I found myself working on the firmware for the same reason: increase the speed on my EUC (my current EUC gives 30km/h and the gen1 gave only 16km/h). My EUC gives 30km/h max but I find it slow now - I need to keep working on firmware so I can in future use a faster motor :-)

[MattJ]

4 hours ago, electric_vehicle_lover said:

After more than 1 year, I found myself working on the firmware for the same reason: increase the speed on my EUC (my current EUC gives 30km/h and the gen1 gave only 16km/h). My EUC gives 30km/h max but I find it slow now - I need to keep working on firmware so I can in future use a faster motor :-)

I agree that it would be nice to have even more than 30 km/h, but I doubt it´s possible with the current 500W motor. I don´t think it has enough power reserve to maintain a stable balance at speeds beyond 30 km/h. So it would require both new controller/firmware plus a new, more powerful motor.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

It would be interesting to get one of those MW 40A boards without speed limit to see what the code is like as they mentioned there is no speed limit on the control board side of things.  If you could source a powerful enough wheel and matching battery I wonder how much higher the faceplant speed could be made than the safe cruising speed.  

Say we all end up finding that a safe useful cruising speed is 45 kph tops with tiltback set to that speed.  If the wheel could actually manage to hit 80 kph with a 250 pound rider that would give a healthy reserve speed amount of 35 kph to take into account downhill speedups or any slight overspeeding.   There would still be people wanting to test the 80 kph failure limit, but the test pilots wanting to crash at 80 kph probably would be fewer.   I like where Gotway is headed, but I think they need to place mandatory safeguards to protect their riders against themselves since they, the manufacturer, know their hardware best.  Not everyone is a EUC genius who understands and can take into account all the factors involved while riding.  

On a Ninebot it is uncomfortable to ride when tiltback kicks in.  It makes you want to slow down since it's similar to hitting a virtual wall that forces you to tilt back a bit.  It has a healthy safety limit as I've accidentally hit 26-27 kph zooming over a slight hill.   You would really have to work hard at over-accelerating to prevent the wheel from being able to tilt back in time to slow down.  Responsible manufacturers really need to crash proof wheels as much as possible I think.  It's likely impossible to make a 100% safe wheel, but some should consider the factors involved more carefully.

[Mougna]

On 10/09/2016 at 11:56 PM, MattJ said:

I can´t do that yet. It will be published elsewhere and I promised not to publish any how-to´s until 30 days after they have published it. Right now, I am only allowed to publish the files, but no step by step instructions.

 

Hello @MattJ, is this still ongoing? When can you release your step by step instructions?

This would be really helpful, as I am starting to print your shell.

 

On the other side, I noticed that you are thinking of Light support: this would be really needfull as winter is here, and we are really invisible without lights while riding our marvelous wheels. When do you expect to finish the design? Would it be compatible with parts already printe?

I'm asking just to know if it's better for me to wait a few days before printing E15S-v1.21.

 

On the other hand, Microworks has a 16" inch motor, since 2015 : https://wholesaler.alibaba.com/product-detail/2015-New-Products-brushless-motor-16_60237639861.html

Weren't you looking for something like that ?

[electric_vehicle_lover]

I really think lights are a must for safety. I really hope MattJ can do it :-)

MicroWorks 30B4 boards just runs their 500W 30km/h motor. But I am developing OpenSource firmware for that board that I hope it will "unlock" other motors!!!!!!!!

 

[MattJ]

Ok guys, I am now trying to do some fenders which should be compatible with the current version. I just did the first design and I am now starting my printer to see how well it fits. Once I find it´s ok I will try to add a lamp enclosure to the fender. I plan to glue the fender on, but also secure it with four small screws. You´ll only need to drill four small holes into the current parts, so feel free to start printing...

Step by step instructions will be released in Make magazine issue 54 (makezine.com) but I´ll do my best to help if you need more info.

I know that Microworks has a 16" version on their Alibaba page, but it is not available. I have asked.

[electric_vehicle_lover]

Congratulations Matt for having your work on the Make Magazine!!!

I am also curious about the electronics for the lights.

[MattJ]

31 minutes ago, electric_vehicle_lover said:

Congratulations Matt for having your work on the Make Magazine!!!

I am also curious about the electronics for the lights.

Thanks. Make Magazine will have an assembly instruction for the version currently on Github.  I still haven´t decided on how to do the lights. My knowledge on electronics is rather basic. I´m planning to use a small 12V LED spot (see picture). The simplest way would probably be to use a switch with a resistor in series to drop the voltage from 60V to 12 V.

[electric_vehicle_lover]

Why not use the DC-DC converter from MicroWorks? it outputs directly the 12V. There is also the need to turn on/off the lights.

[MattJ]

Just now, electric_vehicle_lover said:

Why not use the DC-DC converter from MicroWorks? it outputs directly the 12V. There is also the need to turn on/off the lights.

That would probably be a more elegant solution, but it will take time to arrive and there is also very little extra space inside the enclosure. I was thinking of connecting  a light switch to the 60V output and put a resistor in series before the light bulb. Simple, cheap and compact.

[MattJ]

I made a new version of the fender with enclosure for headlight. The first version is still printing. Let´s hope it fits.
EDIT: The one without headlight is finished and fits very nicely. Now printing this one.

 

[MattJ]

First one printed. The other one with the headlight housing will be ready in a few hours.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1879793/#files

[Mougna]

Hello @MattJ, it looks nice.

My 2 cents: I would put a red back light in addition of a front light, especially in order to be seen.

Here is another good idea, maybe to adapt to your design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1747703

In this case, lights are decorrelated from the mainboards, thus do not need electronic modifications. You can just change the lights/batteries when they die, and use standard bicycle lights.

 

Next step, I'll think about a trolley adapter, as this is really convenient when you need to carry your wheel.

[MattJ]

28 minutes ago, Mougna said:

Hello @MattJ, it looks nice.

My 2 cents: I would put a red back light in addition of a front light, especially in order to be seen.

Here is another good idea, maybe to adapt to your design: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1747703

In this case, lights are decorrelated from the mainboards, thus do not need electronic modifications. You can just change the lights/batteries when they die, and use standard bicycle lights.

 

Next step, I'll think about a trolley adapter, as this is really convenient when you need to carry your wheel.

I might add a rear light as well as soon as I have found a suitable lamp for which to build an integrated enclosure. Otherwise you could use the same enclosure as for the headlight but with a weaker red light instead. Until then, I am using these: http://www.banggood.com/Two-In-One-Electric-Wheelbarrow-LED-Pedal-Lights-Turn-Lights-p-954764.html?rmmds=search 

You can see them in the picture mounted to the pedal. You can choose betweekn constant red light and blinking.

[MattJ]

Here are some pictures of both fenders installed. Print quality is not the best possible because I was using a very fast print speed in order to test fit them as quickly as possible.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzTnngKJGuzSZ1Y0R3p5OF9ScWs

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzTnngKJGuzSb05OWkpFN0MtZVE

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

That looks pretty darn good!    I wasn't sure of the yellow, but it's actually a unique constrast to the black body.  Nice job!  How long did it take to print those two fenders?  Now you just need to hotglue some gel mousepads onto the sides for cushions!  

[MattJ]

2 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

That looks pretty darn good!    I wasn't sure of the yellow, but it's actually a unique constrast to the black body.  Nice job!  How long did it take to print those two fenders?  Now you just need to hotglue some gel mousepads onto the sides for cushions!  

Thanks! Actually I am planning to make black leather cushions for the sides. The fender with headlight housing printed for about 4 1/2 hrs and the one without for 3 1/2. They would have been too big for my old printer, so the new one already proved itself useful. Maybe I´ll make new ones using lower print speed. The finish on these ones is a bit rough.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

I noticed the slight surface texture from the faster print speed.  Is it possible to sand the rough areas down with 3M finegrit sandpaper?  I know for autobody work they have various grits that you work down from to get a smooth finish.  I don't know how whether you can do that with plastic, but if it's hard enough maybe?  Wet sanding?