power wheels – Milwaukee Makerspace https://milwaukeemakerspace.org Conceive, Collaborate, Create Sat, 20 Jul 2019 20:58:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.4 From Kansas City to Motor City https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2019/07/from-kc-to-motor-city/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2019/07/from-kc-to-motor-city/#respond Sat, 20 Jul 2019 20:58:42 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=10178

Once again the Milwaukee Makerspace Racing Team made it to Maker Faire Kansas City to race, hang out with people from other spaces, break things, and have some fun. We’ve been attending Maker Faire KC for about six years now, and it’s always a blast (even when it rains.)

We managed to fit four people and two race cars into a rented pickup truck, which worked well enough with a little creative Tetris inspired packing. The team consisted of Pete, Mat, and Andy for this outing, and we picked up Marshall from the Bodgery in Madison along the way. (And boy, it’s a good thing we did!)

Marshall didn’t bring his Mystery Machine, so we made sure he’d get a chance to drive one of our cars, which he did, but he also spent some time replacing the controller that failed on the Wienermobile Saturday morning before the first race. (And yes, Marshall just happened to bring a spare controller with him!)

Mat’s Unicorn Kart is just a year old, but it’s seen half a dozen races already, and it’s proving to be a fairly fast and reliable car, which is the combination you typically want on the track. He also debuted a new Unicorn front-end which looked amazing (and held up pretty well, despite losing hooves during the races.)

Andy was only there on Saturday, so he did a bit of racing on the Wienermobile, and yes, he drove it backwards for a bit in preparation for the “Backwards Race” (don’t ask.) We didn’t bring Andy’s Dead Bug because he’s been rebuilding it and it just wasn’t ready in time, and well, we didn’t have room.

And yeah, that’s actually Pete standing at the finish line with a medal because he won a sprint race. Typically he’s behind the camera or otherwise helping run the races, but with a smaller team this year he was more than happy to finally get a chance to drive again. (Don’t ask how long his legs hurt after the race weekend.)

Sunday’s endurance was quite a race! We let the other team from Milwaukee (Murray and Ethan) drive the Wienermobile a bit since their car spent more time in the pits than on the track during the weekend. In the end, Unicorn Kart got first in the Endurance, with the Wienermobile coming in second, and we won a bunch of other medals for Moxie and other things, etc.

But that’s not all! We’re headed to Detroit this week for more madness. Detroit has twice as many cars, and three times as many crazy people, so we’ll see how it goes. We may not go the fastest, but if we have fun, we’re all winners!

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Wienermobile and Wienermobile https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2017/09/wienermobile-and-wienermobile/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2017/09/wienermobile-and-wienermobile/#respond Sun, 03 Sep 2017 00:53:33 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=9540

If you joined us at Maker Faire Kansas City maybe you got to see the debut of the little Wienermobile we built for the Power Racing Series. Besides being well received from the crowd, it did pretty good in the race! Due to Moxie points (which get awarded for being awesome) we won the overall race weekend. We came home, wrote a blog post about it, and started getting ready for Maker Faire Detroit…

Detroit was a blast, and well, a few things broke, but meanwhile the folks at Oscar Mayer noticed what we did, and sent us an email asking if the BIG Wienermobile could come visit the LITTLE Wienermobile. We responded with an enthusiastic “YES!!!”

And that’s how the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile came to visit Milwaukee Makerspace on September 1st, 2017. You may notice the two Wienermobiles look quite a bit different. Well, there have been many different Wienermobiles over the years. Due to some confusion about which model we based ours on, we looked at the fact that the vehicle was designed by Carl G. Mayer in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1952 and received its patent in 1954. So we split the difference and chose number 1953. Good Enough!

Honey Mustard and Sammie Jo (yes, the “Hotdoggers” get cool nicknames) loved our little version of the Wienermobile, and we gave them a quick tour of the space, explaining what a makerspace is, and how it works, and showing off Willie’s boat for the very last time.

Since the Wienermobile was there at 9am on a Friday, a lot of our members were at work, or sleeping, or building Daleks. We had a good group of members though, many who helped with the construction of the Wienermobile in some way. (Not picture: Kathy and Kyle, the primary builders! Unfortunately they were out at Burning Man showing off some of their other crazy projects!)

Mat (pictured sitting on the Wiener) served as our driver, providing a demo of the capabilities of the Wienermobile at full throttle. (Reminder: we really need to fix the brakes before driving it again at full throttle!)

Besides all the awesome members who showed up to meet the giant Wiener, we should have a shout-out for Rick, who was busy grilling up Oscar Mayer wieners for us! We all had an early lunch that day, and everybody got to grab a wiener.

Oh yeah, when the Wienermobile is parked outside your makerspace, there’s a good chance the neighbors will notice. A bunch of people who live near the space stopped by, got whistles and stickers, and then got to go inside the Wienermobile. I heard at least three different kids describe it as “COOL!!” and “AWESOME!!”

What can we say? We like big buns and we cannot lie! If you haven’t seen the little Wienermobile in action yet, make sure you visit us at Maker Faire Milwaukee on September 23rd & 24th, 2017 at the Expo Center at State Fair Park. We’ll be racing it against 15 other similarly weird and wild vehicles in the Power Racing Series.

And who knows? Maybe the big Wienermobile will show up again!

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Spindles of Wood https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2017/06/spindles-of-wood/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2017/06/spindles-of-wood/#respond Sun, 04 Jun 2017 14:00:05 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=9459

“Spindles of Wood” is not the name of the latest album from some obscure Icelandic emo band! Instead they are actually the front wheel spindles for our No-weld PPPRS vehicle. (You probably remember the frame from last time.)

While most teams in the Power Racing Series just buy pre-made spindles and weld them in place, our “No-weld” spindles were built using wood, glue some staples/screws, and use some 5/8″ bolts to attach to the car, and for the wheels to attach to.

We’ve still got to get the whole steering thing worked out, but we’re on our way! (Things are moving a bit slower than we had hoped, so we might debut this thing at Detroit in July instead of Kansas City in June, but we’ll see how it goes.)

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No welding? No PPPRoblemS! https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2017/03/no-welding-no-ppproblems/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2017/03/no-welding-no-ppproblems/#respond Sat, 25 Mar 2017 18:57:40 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=9397

If you’re not familiar with the Power Racing Series, it’s a challenge to build and race an electric vehicle. You start with a Power Wheels car and transform it into a powerful machine that can transport a human, and oh yeah, you have a budget of only $500. (Pictured above is a car made by some 15 year old kids a few years ago for Maker Faire Detroit!)

You can find super-cheap (and even free) used Power Wheels cars on craigslist, and usually the batteries are dead and there’s no charger, which doesn’t matter, because we replace all that with more powerful motors, batteries, motor controllers, brakes, etc.

One of the goals of the series has been to get high school age kids involved, but some of the skills needed to build a car may be out of reach of your local high school, such as working with metal. Welding equipment may not be available, and mentors may not have metalworking skills, so we wanted to develop a reference vehicle that uses no welding. We chose to mainly work with wood for our build, but check out the “no-weld car” wiki page for some other builds…

Here’s the start of our frame. It’s all wood, glue, and screws. We’ve utilized a torsion box design for strength. So far we’ve only used a saw, drill, and some clamps. No specialty tools that are out of the reach of your common workshop. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re going to try to make this car super-cheap, and easy to build, so that many teams (of kids and/or adults) could easily build it. As members of a makerspace, we may tend to forget that not everyone has access to the tools and skills we do.

We’re also working on front wheel spindles build using wood and bolts. Yes, you can buy metal spindles for cheap, but a lot of what we are doing is experimenting with materials and geometry, which should provide some valuable lessons along the way, and it should be cheap/easy to modify things, try-test-try again, and see what the outcome is.

You can check out more about this project on the Milwaukee Makerspace wiki. We’ll do our best to add updates as we go. Hopefully this thing will be ready to race in June at Maker Faire Kansas City!

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Power Wheels Racing https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2016/08/power-wheels-racing/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2016/08/power-wheels-racing/#comments Sat, 20 Aug 2016 12:00:20 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=9114 Race HeadLast month the Milwaukee Makerspace Racing Team packed up the cars and road tripped to2 images vertical Maker Faire Detroit.  After long nights working at the space until 4am for the week before the drive Ed, Kathy, Pete, Andy, Vishal, and too many others to mention got 3 cars race ready.  The Bluth Stair Car, Super Tux Kart, and Hippie Rose made the journey to Detroit without damage are and were a blast to drive.

 

Our 3 cars raced with 34 others in the biggest Power Racing Series event to date on the biggest track ever made.  It was great to see all the hard work paying off as the builders of the cars became the happy drivers of the cars. Both days of races were streamed live by our friends at Make Magazine to Twitch.tv where they can still be watched. Be sure to check out the race at Maker Faire Milwaukee September 24th-25th.

 

Check out the race from day one at the link below:

https://player.twitch.tv/?volume=1&video=v80805800&time=04h50m54s

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PPPRS in KC at MF https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2016/07/ppprs-in-kc-at-mf/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2016/07/ppprs-in-kc-at-mf/#respond Sun, 10 Jul 2016 23:03:03 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=9079 Harbor Freight

We went crazy a few days before Maker Faire Kansas City and rebuilt a vehicle for The Power Racing Series. The boat that was a basket turned into a duck…

Of course no PPPRS trip is complete without a stop at Harbor Fright. We bought all the pink tires they had. You know the pink tires, the ones that destroy themselves? Yeah, those pink tires…

Duck Car

Duallies again! Brings back memories of Red Lotus, doesn’t it? But this time we did not destroy any pink tires. We destroyed other things, but we fixed most of them.

Duck Car

Ed was our primary mechanic and handled all of the electrical system stuff and most of the other difficult things. Ed has a lot of experience building cars and other things…

Duck Car

Lori (aka “The Lorry”, aka “The Truck”) has raced before in Kansas City, and it was good to have her back behind the wheel, er, well, handle bars… Unless you count the main drive wheel when we say wheel. Yeah, let’s talk about that bicycle hub motor that runs at 24 volts, and not 36 volts.

Duck Car

Kathy went full-on duck, but can you blame her? About that hub motor… It’s built for 24 volts, but after the controller malfunctioned we switched it out for a 36 volt controller, which would only work with 36 volts attached to it, so we added a third battery and went crazy. Things worked until they didn’t and the motor burned up, even though we kept pouring water all over it. Drat!

Duck Car

Well, that’s the way it goes in the PPPRS, you either taste victory or you smell things burning. We did manage to get within the top five during the Endurance Race, and maybe even hit second place at one point. It’s all a blur really, and honestly we care more about having fun than we do about winning.

See you in Detroit!

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Baby Burrito… Gone! https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/10/baby-burrito-gone/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/10/baby-burrito-gone/#comments Sun, 05 Oct 2014 15:43:51 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=7786 Baby Burrito Gone!

There’s no denying we had fun at Maker Faire Milwaukee, but we did have one sour note during the weekend… Our oldest still functional Power Racing Series car disappeared!

We hauled Baby Burrito to the fairgrounds to tool around on during the event, and race it if needed. Tom managed to get a flat tire (!?) and left it somewhere (!?) and the next day when he went back to get it, it was gone. (!?!?!)

Baby Burrito Gone!

Be on the lookout for this slow moving vehicle. Also, it has no brakes, though you can “fire the retro-rockets” to stop it, which involves hitting the reverse button quickly to stop the forward motion.

Baby Burrito Gone!

If you know the whereabouts of Baby Burrito, please let us know. We aren’t out to prosecute anyone, we just want our silly car back.

You may remember it from such events as the South Shore Frolics 2014 parade. (Though you won’t see it in the video, because I was driving it and had the camera on my helmet!)

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Powered Up for Maker Faire! https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/07/powered-up-for-maker-faire/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/07/powered-up-for-maker-faire/#respond Thu, 31 Jul 2014 18:55:05 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=7604 Lotusaurus Wrecks

Whew! We had quite a weekend! Somehow we managed to cram both Lotusaurus Wrecks and Iron Rose into the back of a minivan and haul them to Maker Faire Detroit. Luckily a second car followed us with all the tools and batteries.

It was a wonderful weekend of racing tiny electric cars. What’s that? You don’t know about the Power Racing Series? We take those Power Wheels cars that you buy for your kids, get them for free or super-cheap from craigslist, and then rebuild them as electric race cars for adults… for less that $500. Yes, it’s a little ridiculous, but it’s also a lot of real engineering. Some of these cars will impress the crap out of you!

So how did we do? Well, the cars held up, even through a few crashes, so that’s good. Audrey drove Lotusaurus Wrecks to victory in one race, and Iron Rose proved a dedicated mid-fielder throughout the weekend. All in all, it was pretty awesome.

Iron Rose

Note: We know you want to see this crazy racing yourself… well, you’re in luck! We’ll be holding a race at Maker Faire Milwaukee happening September 27th & 28th, 2014. Join us for the madness!

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South Shore Frolics Parade 2014 https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/07/frolics-parade-2014/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/07/frolics-parade-2014/#respond Sun, 20 Jul 2014 14:26:18 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=7576 2014 South Shore Frolics Parade

Why yes, we did take part in the South Shore Frolics Parade this year, though we had a small crew, our small crew is quite dedicated… to having fun!

We managed to build a float to promote Maker Faire Milwaukee, and put Karen on a phone book so she could see where she was going, and we also convinced Chris to put the Makerspace flag on his bike and ride really fast so it would wave in the wind.

Shane let them know who we are this year by carrying the Makerspace banner, with what appeared to be great stoicism. And of course, there were some tiny electric vehicles from the Power Racing Series. Audrey on Lotusaurus Wrecks, Tiffany on Iron Rose, and I piloted the oldest still-running car we have, Baby Burrito. (Tom also tagged along and did some driving, some walking, and organized a few drag races!)

Thanks to the GoPro camera mounted on my head, we were able to capture some of the action during the parade. So enjoy the view from the top of my noggin!

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KC Maker Faire, here we come! https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/06/kc-maker-faire-here-we-come/ https://milwaukeemakerspace.org/2014/06/kc-maker-faire-here-we-come/#respond Thu, 26 Jun 2014 18:13:25 +0000 http://milwaukeemakerspace.org/?p=7529 Lotusaurus Wrecks

Audrey has been working her butt off on Lotusaurus Wrecks, with help along the way from Tom, Ed, Tiffany, and other members, to get ready for the Power Racing Series event happening at Maker Faire KC this weekend.

But wait, that’s not all! There’s still a good chance Tiffany’s car “Iron Rose” will be ready to roll at the races as well. I mean, it’s not done right now, but as of typing this we still have nearly 24 hours to finish the build. I guess we can test it during qualifying. ;)

So yeah, if you’re in Kansas City for Maker Faire this weekend, stop by the pits and say “Hi” to us, and wish us luck, and award us some Moxie points… We always need more Moxie points!

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