Une voiturette a pedales

Look what Cedric Doutriaux send me. Two seater, rear wheel steering, front wheel drive, 40 kg, wood and paper. From the inter bellum I think.

Velomobile Seminar 2012

It was an interesting seminar. I liked best the work of Harald Meckenburg, Pieter Hollebrandse and Miles Kingsbury. I was very happy to meet people that have experience with sustainable alternatives for epoxy and hope I can soon put links to their work on this blog (Please send me your info!).

Patrick Hagemann showed me a wooden rim that was glued with a caseine based adhesive that you can make yourself. This movie shows how Patrick makes a wooden rim:



The chairman of the Dutch HPV association (Kees van Malsen) mentioned that he would try to organize a seminar in a few years from now. The proceedings will be available from the velomobile seminar website. 

Erik Marynissen

Erik Marynissen has milled the part for the wheel cover with his gigantic homebuilt router. Thank you Erik!

I have tacked the parts to a curved (~R 600 mm) piece of wood and glued them together with PU construction glue (Pattex PU construct).

one segment

tack and glue

the wheel cover is almost a sphere segment

sorry for the terrible photo

Csiro electric motor

This in wheel motor is reported to have an efficiency of 98%. I would love to have one for my velomobile...
 

 

The stationary coil

seminar presentation

On Friday September 7 I will present the plywood velomobile at the 7th velomobile seminar  2012 in Dronten, the Netherlands. I will bring the prototype and, within reason, it is possible to make a test ride (The condition is that everything that you break you fix too). I have prepared a power point presentation and am open to your suggestions. Come to Dronten!

down load the power point to see it !

Jig saw puzzle connection !

paper model

I think have found a new way to make (or approximate) compound curved shapes with flat sheet. Plywood material is flexible and can be deformed to a compound curvature. On my computer I have modelled a spherical wheel cover consisting of 7 pieces. They will be connected with jig saw puzzle joints. I have deformed the piece on the computer to a flat plate. The picture shows a paper model. I hope to present a model in plywood soon. The jig saw puzzle joint can be produced easily with laser cutting machines and I expect the assembling with some glue is easy too.

Easy connecting with the jig saw puzzle connection. The curved sides will deform the flat plate into a sphere segment.

Summerlab was OK

I presented the plywood velomobile to on the Summerlab in Nantes. Watch the video. We tested the machine. The seat, the front suspension, the soft top and the chain guidance were failed or considered inadequate and than repaired and improved. Thank you guys!

We have thought about how the plywood sheets can be attached. Below you see a sample.

provisionally attached with staples...

glued with wood construction glue (foaming PU)

will we ever get these staples out again?

To get experience we tried to make a hard top too.

The chain is guided by four toothed chain wheels to reduce the losses up to the max. But it would easily derail from the rear sprocket because it could not be tensioned properly.

Jacques and ? (sorry I forgot your name) are adapting the wheel mount so the chain can be tensioned properly

Joris wanted to make a one wheeled trailer (remorque). I showed him my plywood design. Building a simple trailer was a fine way to learn (developing the sheet, bending the alu tube... )

Joris has made a mock-up to evaluate the shape and generate the development of the sheet

unwrapping the sheet

The edge at the top of the trailer will be reinforced with a tube. Bending it is not so easy. Because we did noty compensate for the elastic relaxation the tube did not get its definitive form directly...

bending aluminium tube Dxt 18x1

for the last turn we fix at a new position the tube so we can release the first par

oops ! We should have filled it with sand...

But not only details were studied. Scale models and a 1:1 mock-up was made too:

 

On the wiki you will find some more !

The summerlab was a very pleasant gathering of interesting people and thoughts. Although not presented at the summerlab and already written in 2004 to me the most intriguing was the philosophy on cyborgs of Natasha Roussel.

S Eco Marathon

Today I visited the S Eco Marathon in Rotterdan. 3000 students united in 200 teams trying to get as far as they can on one liter gasoline...  It was a great pleasure to discover that the winner of the 2003 competition was a wooden monocoque. It was a team of the St Joseph La Joliverie from Nantes, France. They reached 3103 km. Come to Nantes this summer

The 2003 winner LPTI St Joseph La Joliverie

The 2003 winner LPTI St Joseph La Joliverie

detail of the wooden body