Category Archives: Electric motor

DIY Electric Beach Luge is a Thrill

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[John Dingley] describes his Electric Beach Luge Project as an exciting mashup between “a downhill luge board, a kite surf buggy, a go-kart, and a Star Wars Land Speeder” and it’s fresh from a successful test run. What’s not to like? The DIY experimental vehicle was made to run on long, flat, firm stretches of sand while keeping the rider as close to the ground as possible. The Beach Luge is mainly intended to be ridden while lying on one’s back, luge-style, but it’s also possible to lay prone in the “Superman” position.

The whole unit was built from the …read more

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Unconventional Homopolar Motor

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As a hacker, chances are that you have built a homopolar motor, as you only need three things: a battery, a magnet and some copper wire. There are zillions of videos on YouTube. This time we want to show you [Electric Experiments Roobert33]´s version. Definitely a fresh twist on the ubiquitous design that you see everywhere. His design is a bit more complicated, but the result makes the effort worthwhile.

The homopolar motor was the first electric motor ever built. Created  Michael Faraday in 1821, it works because of the Lorentz force. This force acts on any current-carrying conductor that …read more

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Light Rider: A Lightweight 3D Printed Electric Motorcycle!

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It sounds like the name of a vehicle in some sci-fi tale, but that fiction is only a short leap from reality. Light Rider is, in fact, an electric motorcycle with a 3D printed frame that resembles an organic structure more than a machine.

Designed by the Airbus subsidiary [APWorks], the largely hollow frame was devised to minimize weight while maintaining its integrity and facilitating the integration of cables within the structure. The frame is printed by melting a sea aluminium alloy particles together into thousands of layers 30 microns thick. Overall, Light Rider’s frame weighs 30% less than similar …read more

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Snowed-In in the City? The Snow Bike Will Get You Where You Need To Go

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If have ever gone snowmobiling, you may have thought about how to revive that thrill in the more confined atmosphere of an urban environment — to say nothing of their utility. In anticipation of heavy snowfall  over the winter in his hometown, [Ben] stripped the essence of the snowmobile down as an emergency vehicle and reshaped it into the Snow Bike.

This compact, winter transportation solution uses an e-bike controller, a chopped up ski, and a heavy snowblower track and a large RC plane motor for power all strapped onto a modified mountain bike frame. The motor mount is machined …read more

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All-terrain Hoverboard Junk Pile Build

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If you’re anything like us, chances are pretty good you’ve got at least one underused piece of fitness gear cluttering up your place. Rather than admit defeat on that New Year’s Resolution purchase, why not harvest the guts and build an all-terrain hoverboard for a little outdoor fun?

The fitness machine in question for [MakeItExtreme]’s build was a discarded Crazy Fit vibration platform. We’re not sure we see the fitness benefits of the original machine, but there’s no doubt it yielded plenty of goodies. The motor and drive belt look stout, and the control board eventually made it into the …read more

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SATA Cable Replaces DC Motor Brushes as Macgyver Looks On

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[dmalhar] was digging around in his bins for motors and found one with missing brushes. Being resourceful (and not able to find another motor), he managed to tear apart a SATA cable and form the pins into brushes with just the right amount of spring. Yes, this looks like a cheap motor, but in the moment of necessity availability wins, and this hack is truly commendable. If he had used a paperclip, MacGyver would have been proud, but the SATA cable pins make us proud.

Normally the brushes of DC motors are made with a graphite or some other material …read more

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