July 23, 2012

Site Change

Until now, this site has been organized so that all my projects have exactly one post associated with them.  I started out posting that way because my early projects on here were ported over from Instructables I had written, rather than posted here initially.  I've gotten a bit fed up with writing one massive post when I finish a project, so from now on I will be posting about projects all along the way, instead of just at the end.  

All posts about in progress projects will show up here...


...which can also be found by clicking the "In Progress" tab under the header image.

Since Blogger doesn't support having two blogs within one website, the In Progress page is actually a completely different website, with the same template as the main site.  

The main page of this site will not change.  When a project is more or less finished (as I've learned from my electric scooter project, some builds may never be truly finished), I'll make a post on the main page with final pictures and details, but without any of the normal "how to" I used to include.  All the "how to" will be under the In Progress portion of the site.

In Progress posts will be labeled by specific project (e.g. "All-Terrain Electric Scooter"), rather than type of project (Mechanical, Programming, etc), as they are on the main page, so that one will be able to easily find the entire build log of one project by clicking that project's unique label.  

July 5, 2012

All-Terrain Electric Scooter

As seems to be the case with many of my projects, for this one, I acquired the parts first, and then designed a project to fit the parts I had. Here is the back story of how I got the parts, and what drove me to use them to build the vehicular monstrosity this post is about.

But first, a brief overview of the scooter's specs:

Motors: 3x CIM motors
Batteries: 8x Turnigy 5000 mAh 4s LiPo packs, 16s2p configuration (59.2V, 10 Ah)
Controller: Kelly KDS72200E, 72V, 120 A continuous, 200A peak
Wheels: 12.5" with knobby pneumatic tires
Deck: Hand laminated carbon fiber with polycarbonate top
Frame: Royce Union Transit kick scooter, with about 200% more aluminum added
Brake: Pedal actuated rear disk (sprocket) brake

Videos are at the bottom of the post.