One thing we haven't really done is an electric skateboard.
It just so happens that our new co-op Jeff is an avid off-road skateboarder.
Let's pimp it out.
This monster had so much power to give.
James loves electric vehicles.
He goes practically everywhere on his One Wheel.
We built an electric half-scale cyber truck
and he's even tackled the seas as a silver surfer, with an electric surfboard.
On top of that we featured all sorts of vehicles on this channel.
We also like pushing those vehicles beyond their shall we say normal purposes.
Like the time we militarized our cyber truck with a giant air cannon and futuristic laser module.
Or when James hacked his One Wheel to accept the charge from any EV charging station.
Then of course there's the jet engine.
Ian attached it to his canoe and I souped up my snowboard with it.
One thing we haven't really done is an electric skateboard.
Sure we made a self kick-flipping skateboard that impressed Tony Hawk himself,
but I'm talking about a powerful electric skateboard.
Specifically one that can be taken off-road.
So when we saw this all-terrain board online
we had to pick it up as a surprise for James...after we soup it up of course.
It just so happens that our new co-op Jeff is an avid off-road skateboarder.
Um avid is a strong word.
Anyway, Jeff is a mechanical engineer from the University of Waterloo
so you should be able to soup this thing up for us right?
I think so.
Awesome. Let's see what you can come up with.
The obvious place to start is with the motors.
They're located in the four corners of the skateboard.
Each motor is rated for 2.5 kilowatts of power
and all four motors combined they add up to 10 kilowatts.
Each motor is responsible for powering one wheel and having all four motor
makes it a four wheel drive.
For an upgrade I went ahead and ordered this guy from MGM.
You can see right away it's a lot beefier than the stock.
The theoretical power of this motor is 22 kilowatts.
To put that into perspective the three motors in the cyber
truck have a combined power of only 19 kilowatts.
Even better we're gonna use two!
I'm not sure it's smart but we're doing it.
Now the issue is these motors can take a lot more than this speed controller can supply.
So MGM has hooked us up with this monster.
The speed controller relegates the energy from the battery to the motor and signals them to move.
Lastly let's upgrade the tires.
I picked up these from Trampa.
They have a much wider contact patch giving it more grip when going off-road.
They're also a lot thicker which makes for a much more comfortable ride.
By upgrading these components I'll more than double the power of this board.
In order to attach the components I need to make some mounts.
Let's start with the speed controller.
Now the problem with using such a powerful speed controller is that it generates a lot of heat.
Normally I would attach a fan to the heatsink to deal with it.
Unfortunately I don't have the space to fit the fan within the chassis.
That's why I built these speed controller mounts out of aluminum.
Aluminum is a great heat conductor making it suitable for this application.
On top of that the chassis of the skateboard is also metal
which further helps with dissipating the heat.
With those done I can cut the motor mounts
New wheels mean new mounts. Let's go machine them.
Earlier I mentioned that the stock board has four of these motors.
Each motor is responsible for powering each wheel.
This is a pulley. The motor turns the pulley and the pulley turns the wheel.
The problem is that although we are increasing the overall power of the motors,
we are actually subtracting two of them at the same time.
That's how powerful these motors from MGM controllers are.
So I need to figure out a way how to make each of these motors power two pulleys.
I made this. It's a hardened steel shaft that is designed to go through the motor.
The motor mount the chassis and out to the other side.
This will allow one motor to spin two pulleys, which will then spin the wheels.
All-in-all two pulleys, one motor.
So now that I have all the mounts built and have solved the all-wheel drive issue,
all that is left is to assemble it.
To start off let's go with the speed controller.
Boom it's done at last.
It's looking a little bit bland though.
Let's pimp it out.
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Let's do it.
There's a lot going on the skateboard and to control it
I need a PCB or a printed circuit board.
This is actually the first PCB I've designed so I was a little nervous,
but Altium designer was very intuitive and simplified the process.
Altium makes designing a PCB so much easier than it seems.
After finishing the design all I had to do was to upload it to JLC PCB
and after a couple clicks I was ready to place my order.
I was surprised by how affordable it was.
Let's go ahead and install it in the board.
Thanks to the PCB I can control the entire board with the remote.
Got these programmable RGB's.
Let's stick them on.
I made this custom chain link that'll act as a hitch.
And finally our custom Hacksmith emblem.
Before I give it to James let's take it for a spin.
Whoo!
Oh yeah!
Wow!
Wow that was absolutely insane!
This monster had so much power to give.
Fun fact though I software eliminated this board's power by 20%
so it's using only a fifth of its entire potential.
I'm never doing 100% with this thing.
Let's get it ready to give it to James.
What the heck is this??
Bogdan said you're working on something.
Oh it's gonna blow your mind.
Okay.
Is that an off-road skateboard?
Oh yeah it is.
I've never even seen one of these.
It's not the conventional skateboard you know but look at that motor.
It's an 8100 motor, hella beefy.
That's like what 20 or 30 kilowatts?
22 kilowatts each 44 all in all.
So this thing's more powerful than our cyber track?
Yeah.
Why?
And and here's the thing, the cyber truck has three motors this one has two
and it still outpowers the cyber truck.
That's ridiculous.
Alright tell me about it.
What else did you upgrade?
Well let's start from the outside.
So the obvious things are the wheels.
So here are the stock wheels
and if you compare it with the with the new ones, the new ones are way beefier
so they have a wider contact patch so it'll you have way more grip off-road.
Also you see how thick it is?
Yeah.
It'll give a much more comfortable ride when you're actually on it.
Are these custom machined aluminum hubs?
Oh yeah they are.
Speaking of off-road I also got bindings for the off-road usage.
So obviously you'll be able to steer better, balance better, and here are the lights.
I have the headlight, taillight, RGB lights on this side
so at night it's gonna look awesome. And here's the best thing...
The control for the lights are entered in the remote, so if you want to turn them on,
you don't need to bend down just press the power button three times and they light up.
That's awesome.
And lastly there's the chain link I made.
So it's a tiny chain link it kind of acts like a hitch.
You want to be dragged by this thing?
Ahh I don't know about that part.
Alright what's underneath the hood?
Oh yeah.
So we spoke about the motors right?
Yeah.
So in order to power those motors we have some beefy beefy speed controllers from MGM controllers.
Nice.
So I have two of them, one controlling each one of them.
Yeah.
And then they are supplied by some amazing Tattoo batteries,
so this is a hot swappable pack I made.
Awesome.
So if you ever run out of battery on the go you can just swap it out.
Swap it out and put it in.
That's sweet.
The thing about the batteries is that capacity-wise it's a bit less than the original,
but they have way more output current so these just utilize that max torque. Exactly.
Damn.
So we will be able to actually drop 44 kilowatts at full load potentially.
Potentially.
I wouldn't do it.
Yeah.
I can't even go like 10 kilowatts.
It's already far overkill. Yeah.
Like fun thing about the speed controller is that it's programmable
so if you ever think the torque is too much well you can just increase the ramp up time.
If you want to brake more harshly well you can also adjust that on the software.
I reduced the torque by 60%.
Okay.
And I still can't pull full throttle on this no like I can't it just throws me off.
I'd say...uh good job that's a Hacksmith way make it uh stupidly overpowered.
Yep and in case of a failure which might happen I made this fail-safe feature so
I put temperature sensors in the battery pack.
And on the motors.
That might be a first for Hacksmith actually.
Safety first.
So can we try it?
Oh yeah!
Alright let's uh oh my this is so heavy!
Oh yeah.
So not to break the fourth wall or anything but did you know our
videos actually take months and months to produce?
And sometimes we shoot things out of order
so while I plan to test out this creation something else happened.
In our MLB video I broke my hand, and as we know this is way too powerful
for what what it is and I'm just...
I don't want to like tempt fate and break my hand any further.
So unfortunately I'm not actually going to be able
to test this but as you saw when Jeff tried it out it is quite the machine.
Anyway once this hand is healed I'm definitely taking this for rip!
And I'm looking forward to it.
Now we're gonna pass over to the outro where I pretend I just got back from riding it.
This thing is um scary powerful.
I think we might need to reprogram it just a little bit because
I don't think anyone has any business with 44 kilowatts of power at their feet.
Like this is absolutely insane!
So for that, good job man.
Like, this is what makes it a Hacksmith project.
So on behalf of Hacksmith industries I want to present you with a Hacksmith Internship Certificate.
So yeah, open it up and best of luck with the rest of your studies.
You'll be an engineer in no time making more ridiculous...ah!