Once the drive assembly and enclosures have been designed, the next step is to fabricate them. I chose to machine the mount-block out of aluminum to ensure strength and rigidity under the stresses of driving the skateboard around. Taking into account different scenarios such as impacts with small objects on the road, I used a CNC mill to shape the part out of a piece of stock aluminum bar.
If you do not have access to a CNC mill try to gain one through a local makerspace or public workshop! Organizations such as the TechShop allow members to use their machining facilities after some basic training on operating the machines safely. A CNC mill is the best option for fabricating this aluminum part because of its complicated 3-dimensional features which a machine such as a plasma or water-jet cutter would not be able to create.
Finally, to create the custom enclosures and pulleys that you design or download, you will need to use a 3D printer. Any desktop 3D-printer will serve the purposes of this project—I used a Flashforge Creator Pro and ABS filament to print all the plastic components that I designed.
These are examples of printing setups in the ReplicatorG environment:
I’ve recently switched to Slic3r (as my print-setup/slicing software) because of the larger variety of print features it offers and the increased amount of control it gives users over specific print settings.