Have a secret desire to ride a hoverboard? Those videos of celebrities and people riding hoverboards give you goosebumps? Terribly wanna own one for yourself? Then here’s your solution!
In this article, you’ll get to know about everything about how to make a homemade hoverboard right in your home! Yes, that’s right! You do can make a hoverboard at your home by your own!
Feeling enthusiastic? Can’t wait to make and ride your hoverboard? Here we go with the steps!
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Make Your Own Hoverboard!
Homemade hoverboard or diy self-balance scooter can be made at home by using and assembling some simple equipment together. Making a hoverboard is not as tough as it sounds like.
Below are the steps and process of how to make hoverboards at your home. But before starting, let me remind you that you should have a thorough knowledge of assembling electrical things to make this kind of electrical gadgets, otherwise your effort could be a total waste of time.
In order to make your own hoverboard, you’ll need some equipment. Those are –
• Two 24 volt scooter motors (120 Watts)
• One 12 volt, 12 amp battery
• One 2 feet by 2 feet wooden piece
• One ¼ inch sheet of plywood
• One ½ inch sheet of plywood
• Wood glue
• Screw
• Epoxy
• Small rubber wheels (of 1 inch diameter)
• One children’s bike of 12 inch wheels
• Elastic bands
• One rotating wheel
N.B. – Specs don’t need to be exactly accurate. Nearly close measures will do fine for you.
Now let’s focus on the steps!
Step 1 – Take out the wheels
Remove wheels of the children’s bicycle. After that, remove all the bolts from the axle that aren’t used for holding the bearings in. You’ll need the maximum usable space on the axle.
Step 2 – Cut the frame properly
Cut 2 pieces from the thinner plywood and 1 piece from the thicker plywood. You should have a total number of 3 pieces of plywood. Do take care of the size of the sheets. All pieces should be of same size.
You can give it any shape as the shape really doesn’t matter. All you need is space in order to fit your feet along with a battery.
Step 3 – Make a slot for the battery
Take one thinner piece of the plywood you cut before and cut a square out of it to make space for the battery to fit in.
Step 4 – Make holes for the wheels
Cut the 2 feet by 2 feet wood to the same length of the frame’s width. Then drill holes at the two ends of the wood, slightly bigger in size than the wheels’ axle.
Step 5 – Fit the wheels in
Fit the wheels into the wood using epoxy. First, mix the epoxy inside the holes for at least 1 minute. This will provide the wood strength. Then insert the axle of the wheels and screw them into both the sides.
Allow it to be harden for 1 day.
Step 6 – Start assembling
Attach the wheel and axle assembled wood onto the thinner piece of plywood in which you made a cut for the battery to fit in. Cut the 2 feet by 2 feet wood again and make support with those to the thinner piece of plywood using glue and screws.
Step 7 – Build up the frame
Next, you have to build up the bottom part which will hold the battery for you.
Put the battery in the middle of the other thinner piece of plywood. Fit the previously set plywood assembly properly with the battery. Adjust it for better position of the battery. Set the frame up using glue and screws. Give support to the upper part of the frame using wood, glue, and screws.
Now your frame is ready! Let’s jump onto the next part!
Step 8 – Attach the balancing wheels
You may attach a rotating wheel at the bottom of the frame. This will give more balance to your hoverboard of.
Step 9 – Prepare the motors
This hoverboard will be driven using the friction drive method. That is, the motors will spin against the wheels.
You have to attach something of high friction to the motor’s axle. Solid rubber wheels will do fine job in that case, by the way.
Drill holes through the rubber wheel and through the black belt gear of the motor’s axle. Apply epoxy to the wheel and fit it to the motor’s axle. To make it a strong fit, you can use metal clothes hanger. Fit the metal cloth hanger through the holes in the wheels to the holes of the belt gear. Wrap the motor’s belt gear up with electrical tape so that it wouldn’t come off.
Apply the same method with the other motor too.
Step 10 – Build the brackets
You’ll need to build mounting motor brackets for your hoverboard motors. Motor brackets will help to hold the motors against the wheels. Make sure that these brackets are long enough to hold the axle of a motor against the wheel and you have to build it in a way so that its back end can be used as a pivot point. Attach the brackets with one bolt so that the motor brackets can rotate freely.
Step 11 – Attach the motors
Attach the motors to the motor brackets with duct tape. Make sure the small wheels of the motors are lined up with the hoverboard’s wheel.
Step 12 – Wire the assembly
Wire the battery to the motors in parallel. Add a house switch in between in order to control each motor separately.
Step 13 – Put the top of the board on
After finishing with wiring, put the thicker piece of plywood on the top of the hoverboard. Apply screw to fit it properly.
Step 14 – Add elastic bands
Add some elastic bands with the hoverboard wheels axle and the motor brackets so that the motors remain pressed against the wheels. Remember, if the rubber wheels are not touched with the hoverboard’s wheels, the friction drive method would not work and the hoverboard won’t move.
Voila! Your homemade hoverboard is ready to use! Get a ride now!
Customize Your Own Hoverboard – Do It in Style
It’s great to have a hoverboard made of your own to ride! And it’s greater to customize it yourself! I mean, whoever else can exactly meet your desires rather than you?
If you’ve made a hoverboard, and if you think it looks dull, just don’t worry. There are several steps you can follow to make your hoverboard look like a dashing one!
Here I’m sharing with you some awesome tips using which you can give your hoverboard an outstanding look.
Decorate it with themes –
Decorating a hoverboard with interesting themes is always a good idea to customize your hoverboard. It will show your taste and age too!
1. If you’re designing it for your kids, try to make some interesting animation characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Tom & Jerry, Scooby-Doo, or other famous cartoon characters on the board to make it happen to your kids.
2. Teenage boys have different tastes. So the decoration also will be different. A hoverboard for boys can be decorated with adventure heroes like Iron Man, Spider-Man, Super Man, Batman, etc. You can design it with sports icons, or sports symbols too.
3. If you’re decorating your hoverboard for your little teenage girl, you should try on fairy characters like Snow White, Cinderella, etc. You have to keep in mind the fact that is, from this time, girls start to see the world with a new vision. They develop new interests in beauty and flowers. So you can design your hoverboard with images of decorative flowers, and lots of famine color.
The stuff you need in the decoration
Obviously, you’ll need some stuff in order to decorate the hoverboard. Those are –
1. Knife
2. Stickers
3. Duct Tape
4. Spray Colors
• Using the knife you can cut the stickers into shape, and cut the duct tape properly.
• You can paste the amazing stickers to look your hoverboard attractive. There are many kind of stickers available in the market. Those are specially categorized for boys, girls, and kids too.
• You can use duct tape to wrap over items on your hoverboard. And if you are creative enough, you can invent your own signature style of design using duct tape wraps.
Sounds interesting, huh?
• And last but not least, if your painting skills are good, you can try to spray colors to give your hoverboard some stunning look which will definitely distinguish your board from others.
Don’t wait too long to make the best homemade hoverboard.
FAQs
1. Is it safe to make a hoverboard at home?
Though it is recommended to use hoverboards made only by people with specialized skills, or reputed companies; you can give it a try by making your own hoverboard at your home. It is safe until you make some big mistake and some unwanted misery happens.
2. Is it legal to make a hoverboard at my home?
Yes of course! Though every technology comes under a certain patent owned by some company, unless you are trying to make business by making and selling hoverboards, it shouldn’t cause any legal trouble for you.
3. Can I practice stunts on hoverboards?
Though there are some popular stunts of hoverboards like The Butterfly Stunt, Simple and Swaggy Stork, etc. practicing stunts on hoverboards can be dangerous as they are accident-prone stunts, and are illegal in some countries.
4. Can I use ready-made skins to customize my hoverboard?
Yes, of course, you can! In fact, there are some popular ready-made skins specially designed for customizing purpose of your hover sboard like MightySkins Skin, Kglobal Silicone Cove, etc. MightySkin Skin is quite popular among girls as the best ready-made skin for a hoverboard.
5. Is it possible to make flying hoverboard?
It might sound like a fairy tale, but yes, it is possible to make a flying hoverboard. A flying hoverboard contains 36 electric motors that supply power to 36 separate fans. There are Guinness World Records too of flying a hoverboard for 2,252.4 meters by an inventor Franky Zapata.
6. How much a real-life hoverboard costs?
A real hoverboard will cost you around $5,000 to $30,000; depending on the board you want to buy.
7. Does hoverboards without wheels exist?
Yes. There are hoverboards that run without wheels. It requires magnetic fields to move. The motors of these boards produce an opposite magnetic field to levitate and lift the board from the ground. These boards are self-propelled. That’s why you need to push it forward in order to move it. Some people call it flying hoverboards.
8. How do balance work in hoverboards?
Self-balanced boards have pivot-centered frames. Inside each wheel, there are electric motors and sensors which detect the speed and the tilt angle. Gyroscopes used for receiving data from the tilt sensors located in the wheels, and then transfer it to the logic board. This helps in keeping the board upright, all the time.
Happy boarding, but be alert!
So now you can make your own homemade hoverboard at your home, customize your own hoverboard by following the process I told you in the article, but make sure that your safety should be your first priority.
You might try to make your own hoverboard by the process I mentioned above, but I would like to suggest you not to do anything with that hoverboard that can harm your or your loved ones’ health. Hoverboard riding always needs extra concentration and specialized training. So do not forget about taking care of your health while having fun with your homemade hoverboard.
Happy boarding! All the best
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