Gear Assembly for a KickScooter with Auxiliary Drive Wheels

Last crawled date: 2 years ago

The object of this proposal is a 3D Printable Gear Assembly for a KickScooter with Auxiliary Drive Wheels. It requires four gears in order to transform the impulse of the user on any of the Auxiliary Drive Wheels into a forward movement of the KickScooter.

The Gear Assembly would be attached to the rear of the KickScooter body at the shop, once 3D Printed to fit the specifications of the individual user, while the body itself would be supplied from a centralized manufacturing plant. The original KickScooter with Auxiliary Drive Wheel design has been modified for this challenge, which it has been downsized so its Gear Assembly could fit into the limits of 3D Printing, and now it is designed as a KickScooter for Kids, with their lower size and strength.

To improve its strength and simplify its printing, the Gear Assembly would be produced with only four parts:
The structure of the Gear Assembly
The Rear Wheel, which would include the two attached gears and the axis, it would also include the wheel tire, made in a more flexible material.
The two Auxiliary Wheels, that would include the attached gear and the axis linking them through the structure.

It would require two 3D Printing materials, one for structure the Gears, the axis and wheel bodies, and the second for the wheel tires; the requirements of the tires of the Auxiliary Wheels, in contact with the Kid´s shoes, are different from the ones of the rear Wheel, in contact with the surface of the ground, but to simplify the design for 3D Printing we propose using the same material, with the differences in the design of the tire treads making up for the different requirements, being more flexible tires the ones of the Auxiliary Wheels.

3D Printing would offer three main advantages to the concept of a KickScooter with Auxiliary Drive Wheels.
The first one is a great simplification of the design and a great increase of the strength of the Gear Assembly, as it could be made of only four parts.
The second one is that allows to 3D Print in-shop an almost unlimited range of Gear multiplications and Wheel designs, to fit the exact requirements of every Kid and every location; the main body of the KickScooter, which doesn't require so many modifications, would be produced at central plants to get economies of scale.
The third one is that, as the Kid grows and gets stronger, he can replace the Gear Assembly with one with greater wheel diameters and Gear Multiplications, while keeping the main body of the KickScooter, which is more flexible to the changes in size and strength of the kids.

Kids love KickScooters, and any kid tries to drive a KickScooter when having one closer. As they grow and get stronger, they usually move up to bicycles as they can move faster without getting tired, but in the sitting position of the bicycles they lose freedom of movements compared with the standing position of the scooters, where they can move their whole body to turn faster, and also can hop on and off with ease. They also lose in freedom because there are many places where a group of kids cannot enter with their bikes, as buses, restaurants, houses, elevators, etc.

The main problem with the standard KickScooter is that kid have to hobble in order to kick the ground to be able propel the scooter, moving his body Up and Down the platform: he also have to kick the ground at the speed he wants to move; these two requirements make the use of a KickScooter more tiresome that a bike where there is no Up and Down movement of the body, and the chain system generates a multiplication of the speed so its legs do not have to move at the speed he wants to travel. The proposed solution is to attach a pair of Auxiliary Drive Wheels at the back of the KickScooter, each one linked to the rear wheel by a Gear System, that will generate the desired multiplication of the speed; the Kid would kick the Auxiliary Drive wheel instead the ground, so he doesn´t have to hobble and doesn´t have to kick and the same speed as he wants to move. It gets the advantages of the bicycles while keeping all the benefits of the standard KickScooters.

This project is an adaptation of the main project of “https://grabcad.com/library/kick-and-go-scooter-with-auxiliary-drive-wheel-update-1” by https://grabcad.com/raul.juanatey, looking to adapt it Kids and to 3D Printing. This project recently won the 2013 Altran Foundation Spain Awards, so I will have six months of technical assistance by Altran for its development into a real product. https://grabcad.com/carlos.perez-3 provides to this project his experience on the development of his own https://grabcad.com/library/electric-motorbike-chasis-1, his CAD skills and his rendering talent.
More information about Altran Awards at http://www.altran-foundation.org/2013-award/overview-of-the-2013-award.html