Noel Hwang's Project Blog: September 2013

Riding my gallant steed

U-channel: check.
Motor: check.
Wheels: check.
Aluminum plate: check.

Thanks to the magic of ~~oxyclean~~ caffeine, most of bluescooter (yes, it has a name now), was done in the lead up to Maker Faire New York. Sadly, it wasn't completed in time for the faire due to a lack of functional waterjets, but the progress so far deserves a post of its own.

Among the first tasks completed was the fitting of the motor hardware. Since I was using a motor with a 6mm OD shaft and had an 8mm ID sprocket, I bought a bronze bushing to fill the gap.

But, as with the best laid plans of mice and men, it required some love on the lathe.

Something's telling me that I should've used a smaller chuck.

The motor shaft was then milled to accommodate the set screws, and the sprocket was slipped over the bushing to drill the hole that would let the set screw hit the mating surface of the motor.

It turned out something like this:

Not too shabby...

Following no specific order thus far, I thought it'd be a good idea to get some work done on the chassis.

Then I realized I had to mill diagonals. Kids, don't mill diagonals.

The process involved clamping a reference-specifically a nicely water-jetted octagon someone had left in the stock pile- against the bed of the mill and then resting the u-channel against it. The u-channel was then held in place with the magic of step clamps.

yummy

Le result.

A few hours later, I ended up with a nearly done chassis. The only parts missing were the mounting holes for the motor, rear, caddy and fork.

Those horizontal dropouts <3

Motor mounting involved machining a set of standoffs, which were then drilled and tapped. The outer surface of the chassis was also countersunk for that extra hardcore effect.

Note: I had to mill off the top and bottom of the motor mount, leaving the motor secured by only two points. I have no idea how well this will fare in vehicular duty. There's still room for an extra standoff running from the opposite wall of the chassis, however, if need be.

In lieu of time, the aluminum rear caddy was ditched for some blue acrylic lying around at miters.

Notice the sad tip of one of the panels: this is in no way a permanent solution.

I finished up mounting all the holes and ended up with the shiny version of melonscooter's ass.

Horizontal dropout tensioners were added to prevent the chain from sagging too much and falling off. The fact that there's about 2mm of clearance between the frame and chain make this a vital addition.

Bored with the fact that I hadn't made much obvious progress, I took it upon myself to mount the fork, which made bluescooter look more like a scooter than a sad wheelbarrow.

I ended up using the same mounting hardware that came off of the razor A4 in order to avoid tapping the metric screws and machining a new mounting plate. I might end up having to mill off the sides of the plate that stick into the body cavity for space reasons, but for the meantime, it makes for a simple solution.

There was also the task of mounting the bottom cover, which would eventually play some part in keeping the batteries and motor controller from falling out.