cordless drill powered tracked vehicle idea

[Meathead316]

Hi

I now have a son (almost a year old) and the wife has been looking at getting him one of them ride on battery powered "cars" for like £150!!! They look so lame and I think i can build better.

My idea is to build a tracked vehicle, like a mini tank, so two motors one for each track.

Now building the framework for it i will do out of wood, the tracks will most liekly be made from sheet plastic riveted to some sort of flexible material (rubber perhaps)

as for the motors i want to keep this project as simple as possible, so i was thinking a 12v cordless drill powering each drive wheel.

should be a farly simple project and i cant foresee any areas i think i will strugle with as its basically making a buggy, adding tracks, then sticking a couple of drills to each axel.

my only queries are:

- is it really this simple? (mayb ive over looked something)
- and most impotantly, will my two 12v cordless drills have the power to have the tank move along at a reasonable speed?
-one more quick one, could the whole thing be scaled up? Say 24v cordless drills maybe over volted to 36v and if need be two drive wheels per track (so four drills) to make an adult size tracked cart (father and son tanks FTW!)

There is no rush to complete this project and its just in the planning stages at the momeent and i will start building in the spring with the intention of it being ready late summer when my boy will be a bit older.

Tanks a lot (cheeky little pun there )

 

[DCProductions]

I would not use cordless drills. Those motors are very susceptible to burning up under extreme loads, and they would be underpowered. I think you would be better off buying one larger motor (300-500 watt maybe larger) and working with that.

Also, wood has never been a very good friend to go karts. If the kart stays lower than 5mph, then it should work fine. Consider using metal, but if you have no means to work with it, keep the speed and power down.

Personally I've never seen anyone try an electric tracked vehicle (mostly because of power limitations) so good luck to you! This will be a very interesting kart.

 

[Meathead316]

thanks fo the reply, are you suggesting 300-500w for a child sized kart? how many watts does ya average 12v drill produce? (just to put it into perspective)

the reason i thought of drills is because they are cheap and they have a chuck, so can easilly be fitted to the drive axel. also most drills have a sensitive enough trigger so that if u partially squeeze it u get half power, thn a full squeeze gives you full power, so was gonna opt for a cable controlled lever that just uses the drills own way of turning on/off

as with previous projects ive undertaken in the past, im a firm believe of simpler is better, as there is far less to go wrong, and if stuff does go wrong, its usually easier to fix. not to mention simpler also means cheaper!

also i dont have the means to work with metal, and metal is very very expensive, but as its just a kids toy and not gonna be going fast i think wood will do fine.

the main reason im going for a tracked vehicle is because we have a very large garden, but 99% of it is grass, and some parts uneven, so a normal gokart wouldnt work, second reason is a tank is awesome!

 

[wingnut]

I think that's an awesome idea. I got my daughter one of those plastic electric ride-on toys and the motor on it is about the size of a drill motor so that's not a problem. The trick is gearing it down low enough that the little motor can deliver enough torque to the wheel. I'd suggest starting with one of those hammer drills with a two speed gearbox like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Tooluxe-Cordl...PXQK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325863505&sr=8-1

Set to the low speed setting, the drill is turning 400 RPM. That would still be too fast for a normal cart but this is where I think your track idea would be an advantage. With a tracked vehicle, the drive wheels can be really small. At 400 RPM a 4 inch wheel would give you around 5mph. I think the biggest challenge would be making the track...

 

[wingnut]

BTW. If you have an doubts about a drill having a enough power, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcvOn_-bVw8

 

[frankysfree]

My suggestions would be to get a couple of those little electric push skateboard things, the ones that have the tiny skateboard or rubber wheels and come in either electric or have the little weedeater engines. You can pick them up super cheap around here(like $20 used) and it will already have an electric motor, battery(ies), electronic control box, charger, etc. You WILL need a controller regardless of what you use so for less than the cost of the parts you can get complete bikes!!

 

[Meathead316]

electric push skateboard things??? you have a link please. I do like the idea of buying something with all the parts and then taking what i need, that method has saved me money and time on past projects.

just watched that vid on youtube, which is good as it proves my idea will work. and even with a adult driver. I dont like their setup though, but mine will be pretty similar in that it will be two drills one for each side. Im sure their one would accelerate faster if the wheels were smaller, but then would have a slower overall top speed. The video didnt say what voltage the drills are, anyone happen to know just by looking at them?

the tracks i think will take the most time as they will have to be pretty near perfect to work properly. from what ive read online the tracks need teeth on the inside that run though the guide wheels on the bottom of the tank. then the rear big wheel is essentially a giant sprocket while the front wheel just has the track roll over it.

 

[frankysfree]

http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/mcy/2786178527.html

Heres a link to one for sale on the local craigslist. This one is obviously priced alot higher than most of them but you get the idea. The electric ones are powerful enough to propel someone to like 15mph or so, so two of the motors, etc should easily power the vehicle you are talking about making for your kid.

 

[porsche930dude]

BTW. If you have an doubts about a drill having a enough power, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcvOn_-bVw8

wow! that was absolutely pathetic. I can beleive they got recognition and praise for that? Anyhow. the drills can work but they wont be very good. Its a cool thought but youll definatly be tinkering with that alot longer than youll be driving it. Id recommend finding an old broken power wheels. Iv gotten quite a few of them from the trash over the years. Maby ask on craigslist . You can run them on a car battery. Pull out the drive axle and wiring harness and build whatever you want.

 

[frankysfree]

wow! that was absolutely pathetic. I can beleive they got recognition and praise for that? Anyhow. the drills can work but they wont be very good. Its a cool thought but youll definatly be tinkering with that alot longer than youll be driving it. Id recommend finding an old broken power wheels. Iv gotten quite a few of them from the trash over the years. Maby ask on craigslist . You can run them on a car battery. Pull out the drive axle and wiring harness and build whatever you want.

Thats a good idea as well. Ive seen them with bad or no battery at yard sales for $10-$20. Heck my kid is getting old enough i was looking at them at wally world the other day for like $120 new. Ive heard if you hook the car battery to them that they are WAY more powerful also.

 

[crazzywolfie]

i guess depends on the voltage that is required. i dropped my spare truck battery in my nephew 12v jeep and it worked just fine. the only problem was the battery was just a bit too big to sit properly. a tractor battery worked perfect though.

 

[porsche930dude]

yup the one i got last summer i drove around till i got boored with a 12v jump pack hooked up. im 160lbs and it pulled me up hills and everything. Then i pulled the good parts out and put the rest on the curb it was a jeep body. some guy grabbed it and was as excited about it as i was. Ill probrobly build something with the motors someday. Iv got bigger plans for the jeep grille i got off it

 

[crazzywolfie]

that must have been one good quality jeep. my brother-in-laws drunk friend killed 1st gear on my nephews jeep and i would guess he weighed about 160lbs. now my nephew has to drive it in 2nd gear. this summer i am hoping to see about fixing it or build something bigger and better.

 

[jamilcobra]

Might not be relevant, but when my son got his first power wheel a few years back it wouldn't run across wet grass without spinning tires and getting stuck. I put a handful of sheetmetal srews in the rear tires (plastic wheels) with the heads to the outside. Problem solved. I thought it may tear up a gear or something turning, but no problems yet and its made it through two boys.

 

[porsche930dude]

Might not be relevant, but when my son got his first power wheel a few years back it wouldn't run across wet grass without spinning tires and getting stuck. I put a handful of sheetmetal srews in the rear tires (plastic wheels) with the heads to the outside. Problem solved. I thought it may tear up a gear or something turning, but no problems yet and its made it through two boys.

LOL if we had done that as kids we would be pin cussions! We usto drive over each other all the time

 

[crazzywolfie]

lol. my nephew tries driving overs everything including the neighbors kids who seem to break everything. my nephews jeep has rubber band like things that go around the center of the tire. seems to work good.

 

[DustinWolfe]

wow! that was absolutely pathetic. I can beleive they got recognition and praise for that? Anyhow. the drills can work but they wont be very good. Its a cool thought but youll definatly be tinkering with that alot longer than youll be driving it. Id recommend finding an old broken power wheels. Iv gotten quite a few of them from the trash over the years. Maby ask on craigslist . You can run them on a car battery. Pull out the drive axle and wiring harness and build whatever you want.

this made me laugh i wasn't gonna watch until i read that

 

[Meathead316]

them scooter thingies are pretty expensive new, and probelm with buying used is as i need two of everything i would need two identical motors etc or one side of the vehicle may perform differently to the other.

as for the tracks ive got them all figured out with the exception of what flexible material to use for the core. it need to be:

- flexible (well duh) but not stretchy otherwise the vehicle may shed track when turning.
- cheap
- fairly easy to work with
- preferably availabale at a good hardware store (b&q, wickes, homebase are all in my local area)

so any ideas? i will either contrust the track as one long section of material for each (doubtful) or make lots of individual sections then bolt them together (most likely as the material may one come in small sections, say for example if i used old leather belts (not wide enough but u get my jist))

as for controllers, couldnt i get a couple of old bicycle brakes, and have the brake trigger activate them and have the brak squeeze the triggers on the drills? sounds good in theory...

on the subject of drills, anyone know if they would work with the battery insertes with the polarity reversed? i know a normal motor would just spin the other way, but i need to know if a drill as is will let me do it, if you can it will make a reverse gear a lot simpler.

 

[crazzywolfie]

most cordless drills have a switch that lets you run them in forward or reverse. the only problem with the design in that videos's design is that they use bike back tire with the free wheeling gears. if you where to weld the right parts on it you could have driven it in reverse but it might have been hard on the drills if it has that almost instant stop type feature.

 

[Meathead316]

im not going anywhere near bike wheels for this project, may include chains and sprockets if need be, but if i can get away without then i will.

I realize that most drils have a switch (usually on or near the trigger) which flips it into reverse. problem is the drills will be hidden so i was going to install a swith that reverses the polarity of the power supple and thus reversing the direction the drills spin, but this will only work if you can just put the batteries in the drill in backwards. i would test it out but i only own a corded drill...