Adding a carrier to my new E-Bike

Bill of Materials

1. Bike Carrier
2. 1m of aluminium tube (outer Ø10mm, inner Ø8mm)
3. Block of aluminium

Finished product

It does look okay, if you are standing far away. But for your trained "metal-worker-eye" it is hideous. But im treating it as an early prototype, meaning i´ll drive it for a couple of weeks and will adapt the new design to its current flaws. Let´s get to the build process.

Build process

I had the raw stock material laying around in my workshop. The carrier was bought from a local bike shop. It is an Cube ACID 29". One could ask: "why not use the included mounting option?". Easy answer: Because it does not fit with my 61mm (2.6") wide tyres.

Planning phase

The idea is as always: KISS.
Fortunately the aluminium tube had the exact diameter as the bought carrier, so no work had to be done there. Except cutting it to length.

Manufacturing

The stock had to be squared and brought to dimensions. After that they need to be drilled three times for all the mounting points.

Because one part should yield two finished parts, I had to saw them apart. (No pictures, because the manual sawing sucks).
Fit check looked good, but there was one unaccounted problem.

The aluminium tube did end way too high for the forward facing mounting points.

So I had to manufacture an angled adapter, which did fail horrible. As you can see on the last picture I used a drill bit as a spacer. It worked wondeful for the first part, and failed spectacular on the second part. (No pictures because I threw a small rage fit). I was not in the mood to mill the parts again, because they took way too long on my small hobby mill, and they were way too over engineered.

New plan: make the parts simpler.

Pro:

• can manufacture parts way faster.

Contra:

• aluminum bar is bent a little bit in final mounting position

Because I dont have a lathe I had to mount my tool in the vice, and my part in the spindle. Dont judge me. It worked.

Assemble time.
For a prototype it looks good, but im not happy with it. Im waiting for my mudguards to see how they fit my my carrier. Maybe I have to rethink the whole mounting options. But thats a problem for another time.

Last step was painting, which did not work really well. It was windy and I wanted to finish the project. Thats why I rushed the paint job.Its a prototype.

Finished assembly:

A new month, a new small restauration

The old part

I got my hands on this old “Röhm” three-jaw chuck for free. But it was in a really bad shape. The internal scroll plate was gunked up to a point where it was impossible to turn it.

Time to disassemble

Firsts step was the removal of the back cover plate.

Each pinion has a small stud bolt which helds it in place. Easily for me, they could be unscrewed without any problems.
The removal of each pinion was not as easy. I had to break out the hammer and some piece of delron to gently tap them out of the body. The interior is not as dirty as I thought.

The cleaning

All the parts where cleaned with generic brake cleaner and Loctite SF 7063.

I left them to soak for some minutes and got to work scrubbing all the parts with some coarse scotch brite.

While waiting for the parts to dry I went ahead and greased the scroll plate and the pinions with “chuck grease”.

Before assembling the chuck, I reworked the cover plate screws with some light filing and whetstones.

The new part

The restored chuck still looks a bit worn and old but works as a new one.

My first small restauration - a small paint job, 3D printing and a mechanical repair

List of defects

1. Volt gauge won´t go lower than 2.5 Volt
2. Old paint peeled off

Improvements

• 3D printed dust covers

Disassembly
The modelnumber is blacked off, so my best guess for the build date is somewhere in the 80s. But i could be completly off. After taking of the top cover, one could really see its age - dirty but still impressive.

Repair
I tried to remove the gauges from the back, but after a quick glance it seemed that its way too much work.
So after some sweaty minutes of fiddeling with the front cover I had success and could remove the pointer assembly. Sadly I dont have any pictures of it. Turning on the powersupply shows that my repair worked. The analog pointer showed the exact reading as the digital one.

Painting
Second to last step was a fresh coat of paint, but first the old flaky had to be removed. I applied a thick coat of paint stripper and let it soak for a couple of hours. After the time had passed I could simply scratch of the old paint with a plastic scraper.
A quick sanding, degreasing and painting session later the powersupply looked 20 years younger.

Finishing
Now it was time to apply the 3D printed dust covers. Some small dabs of superglue did the trick. A quick assembly later and the powersupply looked like a new one.

Disclaimer. The moon is not my model, I got it from moononournation over at Thingiverse. The rest of the project is all made by me.

Bill of Materials

1. 1 m of white sleeved cable
2. 12 mm 230V latch button
3. 220lm LED 230V - warm white
4. E27 socket
5. EU style plug
6. "Lüsterklemmen" - insulating screw joints

The hard Part
I bought a 150x150x150mm (LxBxH). For the moon lamp I just needed a 55 mm high wood stock - I don't have a bandsaw or something comparable, so I had to break out the japanese handsaw. The saw is very flexible, which caused the cut to become kinda uneven.

Milling

1. Facing the top: My small hobby mill was not large enough, so I had to mount the stock in a way which allowed me to face off the first half and flip it around 180° and repeat the facing operation.

2. Center hole:
   The first cut was with a two flute 20 mm end mill, which had to be enlarged with a custom-made boring bar with an HSS insert.

Once I reached the correct diameter to fit the E27 socket, a quick fitment check was made, and I flipped the part around to machine the underside.

2. Underside:
   The underside had some requirements which needed to be fulfilled - host the power button, and route the cables.
   After some testing, I knew how to place the cables and button, so I milled the channels and pockets.

Electronics

1. Preparing the cable and plug:
   The sleeved cable started to fray on the end. To prevent further fraying some heat was necessary followed by wrapping the end in electric tape.
   The plug was just 3 screws, so nothing too difficult. My amateur wiring skills passed the check, so I continued to finish the wood base with some radii.

Wood stain
I got just some generic stain which I found in my local hardware store and gave the wood base 3 coats with a thick soft brush. After 24 hours, I finished the base off with 3 coats of clear coat.
Don't get irritated by the spotty stain, this picture is with only one coat of wood stain.

Finishing
The last step was to implement some sort of cable strain relieve, which I drew in my CAD of choice - Fusion360, and printed on my FDM Printer.

Money shot
The white balance is a bit off. The moon is much more yellow than it seems.

Credit where credit is due. I got the basic design and the wiring diagram from Donny Terek over at Instructables. You can find the wiring diagram with the needed BOM lower down in this post. This is no "how to" post, rather more a build log.

Bill of Materials

1. TPA3116 Bluetooth Amplifier
2. Tang Bang W5-1138SMF 5-1/4" Subwoofer
3. Fountek FE85 3" Speaker (2EA)
4. 5.5 mm x 2.1 mm DC Input Jack
5. 16 mm Push Button
6. 6S Battery Capacity Indicator
7. 6S BMS Board
8. 18650 Cells (6EA)
9. Green 3 mm LED
10. 3.5 mm AUX Input Jack (additional info down below [*])
11. 3 Ohm 10W Resistor (2EA)
12. 12uF 100V Capacitor (2EA)
13. 100 uF 100V Capacitor (2EA)
14. 0.50 mH Inductor Coil (2EA)

Woodworking Part
I assembled the outer shell/box from 12 mm MDF Wood. Before gluing everything together, I went ahead and layouted every side of the speaker box.

1. Front Side:
   Hosts all three speakers - the subwoofer ind the middle, and the two toners in either corner of the panel.

   

2. Right Side:
   fits the sub pipe, nothing more

   

3. Top Side:
   has a cutout for the volume, treble, bass etc. knobs. They all sit in a custom made brass plate with laser etching

   

4. Back Side:
   Contains the voltmeter, power switch, DC jack, AUX jack and the toggle button for the voltmeter. Those also sit in a custom made brass plate.

   

Assembly and modification of the Wood parts

I'll approach this part alá "a picture is worth a thousand words"

Electric/Battery

Yes, I know you shouldn't solder batteries, but it was my only choice, as I don't own a spot welder. I used the six 18650 batteries, the BMS board and a lot of kapton tape to assemble my 24V rechargeable battery.

Speaker test

Leather wrapping

I bought some fake leather to use on my speaker which I glued with wood glue to the MDF

3D CAD and printing The Subpipe the speaker grills and the "top seam cover" was designed in Fusion360 and printed on my Prusa 3D printer. The parts got the usual finish e.g: sanding, putty, primer, painting.

Finished product