Quote from SargoDarya

@Goos: Exactly that's why I thought it would be good to have a single page for that. I don't know how many scribbles and really good ideas are going lost in this now 75 page thread but we all throw ideas in here that get lost over the time. It looks like you're using blender for design, maybe I can help you on that one, currently working on a material library and manager for blender. I can model a rough framework for this.

To everyone: What do we need on the page? Like I said there is going to be an IRC Chat, blueprint gallery a board and a google map. What more?

That's great!

Other than what you mentioned, possibly a classic FAQ or information about the project. Something like a wiki or a Work-in-progress information database on the current progress (would have to be organized, and not open for everyone who registers to edit) so one could quickly be brought up to speed.
Other than that, most things can be done with the forum board, such as useful links, suggestions etc..
I'm not sure if I missed it, but did you have the website up already?

But again; organizing it is probably the most important thing with such a website, since you'd want to filter out the suggestions that aren't plausible, and put the actual progress somewhere specific.

However, I'm not really familiar with blender, I'm currently using autodesk inventor 2010. I had a brief course with it in school last year, and I managed to 'acquire' it during dreamhack, the biggest filesharing haven in the world, a few weeks ago : p
But I'm sure there's people more proficient with 3D-modeling than me to take care of these things!

Ive been looking up the web for the closest thing to AT's made, and so far beside the obvious gas-motor skates was the iShoes v2.0.

[url]http://gadgets.boingboing.net/gimages/ishoesprod.jpg[/url]

Of course there are obvious conflicts to AT's these seem like a step in the right direction.

@ Goos, i wasnt disagreeing with you on the generator subject, which is why i brought up the in-wheel generator again. I still think it's too early to even be thinking about this stuff. However if you all want to continue with theory and such, i got a few for you all. First off, a shock absorber would not work, the space we have available on the skate is too small to be able to make something sufficient to actually help with our jumps and tricks, think about it. A bicycle has 6 inch shocks on the front tire that get bottomed out as soon as you pop a wheely, on the skate you'll be lucky to have a 6cm clearance for the shocks. Sorry to say but there is no possibility that magnets that small will produce enough force to stop from smacking each other on a landing if the floating distance is only 6cm. The good news is that shocks really are not needed, a humans legs are strong enough to land a ten foot jump without breaking as long as your not stupid about your landing. The best shocks you'll ever find are the joints in your knees, ancles and your hips. As for the in-wheel generator, your energy refund from it would probably be less than 5% since it would be very small. I'm not saying this to shoot down your ideas, i just don't think they are very practical. 😐

As for the motor subject, the torque of the silencer series motors is high enough, as we've said several times, the torque isn't the thing we have to worry about, it's the speed that we need. You see the torque on the le wheel motor is something like 750W i believe, and they use that motor to propel them from a stand still, if we had half that, we would have power to spare. You see the higher your speed, the less torque you need to increase your speed. So as long as we don't start from a stand still, we have the torque we need, and the faster we go before we engage the motor, the less torque necessary.

Now as a treat, i found a rollerblading video you all might like, here is the link if you are interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J5fr-T-mVs&feature=channel_page

I don't know about you guys but i don't think they are using any shock absorbers lol 😀

I'll shoulder the burden and carry you all up to the sky

Point taken Tokuin. But me myself I'm waiting for a few factors before I get the "physical" part of the project started. As much as I would love making a prototype, I would also love having the funds to buy the components required on a student-salary : p
But as soon as the local inventor's workshop, in lack of better terms, opens up I'll try to see if I can get some project funds (after all, I live in Sweden. The government gives charitable funds if you have anything that closely resembles an idea) and perhaps combine two motors onto a standard rollerblade for a makeshift prototype.
But until then, I'd rather plan ahead : >

And for the shock absorber, the idea isn't as much about absorbing the 3 meter drops fully, as much as it's about giving that sense of "flying" as they so commonly refer to, by removing the feeling of rolling over small pebbles and cracked asphalt. And that should be achievable with such a contraption. After all, with the info I've got about halbach arrays and the neodymium rare-earth magnets, those arrays at the size of 5x20108mm magnets repelling each other could provide a lift of 120kg's, or ~1200N. And that's per foot. Of course that is at zero distance, so it would probably be around 400N per foot at a slight distance, and a distance would obviously be required since it's supposed to keep a gap of air between.
Now the size, that's another issue. But the height of the one on the image is about 4cm including the gap, and about 30cm long. That length isn't required, but I made it that way to demonstrate that it could store other necessary parts inbetween to save space.

On the subject of motors, I know that less torque is required at higher speeds, but what you also know is that the higher torque you have, the lower the RPM. So in order to get more speed out of it, it would be more effective letting two motors add up to the needed torque while supplying twice the speed, than having one motor supplying all the necessary torque alone, but being slower.
And I don't know about you, but I thought quick acceleration from a standstill was the "essence" of the air trek : p

i think this may help, but idk its the two-stroke engine
http://library.thinkquest.org/C006011/english/sites/2_taktmotor.php3?v=2

[img]http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/ss249/Ozzy12323/204ni8-1.png[/img]

i'm sorry maybe i missed something, but I thought we'd settled that petrol motors just wern't gonna cut it. they too big and run too hot.
I thought we'd settled that the motor needed to be electric.
I could be mistaken though.

Quote from Death_Sabre

i'm sorry maybe i missed something, but I thought we'd settled that petrol motors just wern't gonna cut it. they too big and run too hot.
I thought we'd settled that the motor needed to be electric.
I could be mistaken though.

As far as I'm concerned, that's the plan.

oh sorry, forgot, i just was looking for electric motors then i got sidetracked lol.

[img]http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/ss249/Ozzy12323/204ni8-1.png[/img]

Well goos its fine that you want a smooth ride, but as soon as you hit a jump, the magnets will most likely shatter from smacking together on the landing, so the problem i see is durability. Also, as I have said before, it's impossible for us to amount to the idea of air trek in the anime. We just aren't equipped for it. Though it would be fun to do burnouts and such, its better if we just go with the essentials, we can still have the sensations of flight without leaving skid marks on the road behind us. Last i checked, birds don't do burnouts lol.

I'll shoulder the burden and carry you all up to the sky

Hello. Im new to this forum. I found this topic via Google search. I haven't read all the replies (as there's 76 pages of text which includes lots of spam about how impossible this is...) but I really like the idea. Also I've seen people posting about the problems, like how dangerous it would be at high speeds you're trying to achieve. My opinion is human stupidity to achieve such speed as beginner would be the only danger. It's the very same problem with cars, motorcycles... I think you know what I mean.

I would like to ask have you been thinking of wide wheels or motors on both sides on the inside of the wheel (which would make them bit wider) also for safety they have these airbag jackets which seems effective. Also ABS brakes could work through the same handle as the speeding. Squeeze you go, let go you slow down.

Im not engineer or scientist.. Im a machinist in college, so I have no resources to try it myself either

Also I would like to ask do you guys have any other place where you talk about this project of yours ? Im eager for updates

I wish you guys finish this one. 😀

[img]http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/53/snovy.png[/img]

I just joined this forum because of this. I thought of trying to make my own ATs one year, but I have no resources, plus I didn't learn physics until this year.You guys have thought of ideas that I have come up with too and I am enjoying this. Here is another though that I haven't seen. What if you make the skates a whole new engine so the wheels are actually the electromagnet? And if I had money I would happily fund this.

Just a theory again but,
this is just to go float just a little,
its like a AC, ( airconditioner )
it sucks the air in and lets it out from another end,
if it sucks enough air, and lets it out from the bottom or some sort it can make us float a little, hopefully i explained Detailed enough,>.> ima make the picture or something like it so i can actually describe it.
or it can be used to go faster to, since it always talks about the wind in the series.

[img]http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/ss249/Ozzy12323/204ni8-1.png[/img]

Quote from tokuin

Well goos its fine that you want a smooth ride, but as soon as you hit a jump, the magnets will most likely shatter from smacking together on the landing, so the problem i see is durability. Also, as I have said before, it's impossible for us to amount to the idea of air trek in the anime. We just aren't equipped for it. Though it would be fun to do burnouts and such, its better if we just go with the essentials, we can still have the sensations of flight without leaving skid marks on the road behind us. Last i checked, birds don't do burnouts lol.

Obviously it would be possible that it could break on impact unless properly protected. But that goes for everything. Even if the flimsy sketch I did in 10 minutes would be used, it would still have some sort of protective flexible material between the magnets to prevent just that.

However I can't see why you're still arguing about that when I've agreed with you that the first models will be just that, a pair of rollerblades with an electric motor strapped on them. If that's what you want for the final product, it's not really any different from what already exists.

@Snovman: There's work in progress on a different place to discuss it on.

@Whatis123and456: Thinking outside the box is fun, but exactly how were you visualizing it; With permanent magnets in a half-circle on the boot that it attracts to? As far as I know, electric motors are usually made in complete circular shapes, and I'm not sure how it would work otherwise. Perhaps it's because I'm rather inexperienced when it comes to the subject, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

@Sceneav: I thought of something similar, like that if the wheels had fan-shaped air-intakes (which collides with in-wheel motors/generators obviously) or something, but I found that the lift achieved by such a contraption would probably be insufficient to make an impact. The thing is; to push the air in a manner that would achieve enough lift we would have to use even more of the battery's power to that.
Not to mention that the surface area [boot] is incredibly small in comparison to the height of you as a person when compared to conventional floating devices such as the sort of vehicle people use at "marsh-areas". These also use a special effect where they build a cushion with the fabric which keeps the air directed downwards and not seeping away outside.

Things like speakers and hard drives have engines or electromagnets. Can't remember exactly, but what I am imagining is a push pull system on the wheels. Magnets will be on the wheels and the boot will push the wheels forwards and/or backwards. The problem I found with this though is how would speed be controlled.

@Sargodarya: How far are you on the website?

And mailing around a little, I got this reply from a company making pancake motors, among other things;

[Below: That's what she said! ..Sorry..]

Anyway: your problem is the size. I don't know how deep you did get into electric motor technology but the size (=installation space) of the motor determins the torque and the power of the motor.
Every motor has losses which must be dissipated via the surface of the motor - the surface is a function of your volume/size.
So no matter which motor technology you use, the motor with a defined volume has a defined power, thats physics ;-)

The servo disc motors have the biggest power density of all motors, if you compare it with eg a small brushless Faulhaber motor (Type 2250 BX4) with 50 mm lenth (U06FNC = 29 mm) they are talking about a ridiculous torque of 23 mNm (U06FNC = 11 Ncm = 110 mNm!)

That's more ot less the same what PML told you - your space is just too small to get enough power out of it.
Sorry for no better news. :-(

I got that after he showed the U06FNC motor which I said would probably be too big, as it was 29mm thick, and about 80mm in diameter. But he also claims that servo disk (=pancake?) motors provide the highest power-density, meaning they are the strongest of their size/weight. So obviously this is a bit daunting. Do you think it would be plausible to go with >100mm wheels to be able to fit an 80mm engine on it?