Unwheeldy

Buscycle farewell party 11/15

2008-11-13T23:08:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, Unwheeldy should be at the Buscycle farewell kickoff party.
More info: http://bikeroute.com/BusycleFarewell/

How did you get that there?

2008-05-15T22:02:00.000-07:00

People often ask how we got Unwheeldy to wherever we are.
The preferred way is human powered transportation--after all, that's part of the point of it all. Simplest of course is riding it. But since the max speed is about 4-5 mph, a slightly faster way is better. For a while, we used a quadricycle which goes around 7-9 mph pretty easily when towing, plus it's clearly heavier than unwheeldy. But we've decided to go for even more speed and use a normal bicycle:

Fewer people makes it a little harder to tow, but not much--we just do it relay style and switch off when tired.

So far, the bicycle is the fastest way yet. If you look back at the pictures in the archives of this blog, you'll also find out how it can be moved by motor vehicle.

Maker Faire report

2008-05-07T23:13:00.000-07:00

The Maker Faire was lots of fun. Hundreds of people got to ride Unwheeldy, and unfortunately hundreds more who wanted to didn't get the chance. We were interviewed and photographed by lots of news agencies, including several international ones.

Only a few minor headaches... like the "bottom bracket" holding the gear assembly on the right hand side splayed out, leading to lots of slop in the drive shaft and making the thing unusuable. A few hours later we had it up and running again. Particular thanks to other makers: our neighbors Cyclecide for lending us tools and being helpful, the Techshop for making a part (the dark square with a dot in the middle at the bottom of photo in the previous post is actually a very important part of the chain tensioning mechanism: it's where the adjustment bolt hits the top piece; due to some other issues, there's nothing really there for it to ride on so we had techshop mill a small rectangular piece with a hole.), and Dan Das Mann's crew for welding on a reinforcing bead.

A few pictures and articles:
Jon helped out for the whole weekend and has a good series of pictures.
Wired had a short series about the fair online, including an article about Unwheeldy.
And lots more.

(Contact note: You can find Dave or myself online pretty easily, or send email to info@this site and I should get it.)

2008-05-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

Just in time for the Maker Faire: a new paint job!

Maker Faire

2008-03-27T23:15:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Maker Faire is coming up in about a month... and I'm looking forward to it!

Unwheeldy is scheduled to be there--stop by and say hello. Now we just need to fix up the accrued wear from the last months of usage.

It's at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, May 3 and 4.

Palo Alto event Saturday 2/16

2008-02-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

Update: I'm changing this from an announcement to a short recap.

Unwheldy was part of the pre-prologue-of-Amgen Tour of California events in Palo Alto on 2/16. I brought it to Mitchell Park a bit before 9:30, let lots of people ride around. Sometime after 10, everyone left... leaving us and the buscycle behind. We decided to stick with the buscycle, with only a few people rotating around, and got to downtown a bit before noon, after many of the morning riders had gone home. But none the less, lots more people got to ride around the parking lot for an hour or so, then we (Rich Willits, his son, and me) rode back to Mitchell Park where a bunch more people got to ride.

I'm sure hundreds of pictures were taken today, but none by me. If you have some, leave a note in the comments!

--Matthew

Original:
As part of the events surrounding the Amgen Tour of California, Unwheeldy will be participating in the Palo Alto Community Bike Ride along with the Buscycle and some other fun vehicles.

From the event calendar:

February 16 - Community Bike Ride from Mitchell Park to Downtown Palo Alto
9:30 AM, Mitchell Park Bowl, 3800 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto, CA [Note: I'm quite sure it won't leave right on time.]
Join Council Members and other Palo Altans on this fun ride! Ride down East Meadow to Bryant Street (the Ellen Fletcher Bike Boulevard). Ride ends at Lytton Plaza in downtown Palo Alto. Ride the entire route OR join in anywhere along the route!

Los Altos High Science and Technology Week

2008-01-17T21:10:00.000-08:00

Unwheeldy was featured as part of an event at the Los Altos High School Science and Technology Week, along with some other "bicycle" technology. Martin Kreig did the organizing and much of the presenting, talking a bit about the history of bicycles, the buscycle, and his high wheeler. Bob Schneeveis demonstrated his amazing solar chariot, and I got to ramble a bit about Unwheeldy and Kinetic Sculpture racing. I hope some of the students there will build cool things, or perhaps even enter one of the races.

Gettting there was an adventure... You can in fact get from midtown Palo Alto to Los Altos on small streets (approx. route)--the only multi-lane street is a 100' zig-zag at San Antonio road. But there is a price to pay for this route: the crossing of Adobe Creek is on a bike path. The bridge is 8 feet wide... which is conveniently enough the exact same width as Unwheeldy. However, the width isn't really maintained to a full height, so there was a bit of parting-of-the trees involved

One of the fun things of towing with the quad is watching the reactions from others. A few people are oblivious. Almost none irritated. Lots of smiles. At least one actual jaw-drop. And when passing a playground, a swarm of children headed towards the fence as we rode by.

Particular thanks to the sophomore who volunteered to help me ride it back, I wouldn't have made it without him.

Where'd you get those tires?

2007-12-16T22:42:00.000-08:00

The most common question people ask when seeing Unwheeldy is, "Where did you get tires for that?"

Well, from a bicycle shop (the late BikeSpring) of course. Alright, they don't really carry 339x2.5 tires, but then again the rim we're working with here is itself a tube, so it's not like a normal clincher tire will work. Or will it? Why yes, with a little surgery. The solution is to take normal mountain bike tires, cut them open, cut the bead off, and straighten them out so they have a larger diameter curve. The tire's response is sometimes to twist itself into a spiral, but with a little force it'll stay reasonably straight.

The idea was to glue on the tires; the first pass was done with Goop adhesives, but it's a bit hard to work with in volume so we stopped and used zip-ties... which don't prevent twisting much at all. More recently, we used neoprene contact cement, easy to work with as you can see in this short video of Jon and I gluing on the tires for one wheel, 4.5 tires per tire.

Recent events

2007-10-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

Unwheeldy has been to Burning Man and several local events in Palo Alto. In a few cases we joined up with the buscycle, such as the finale of the Palo Alto Walks and Rolls week and a store's Harvest Fest. There's sure to be various pictures of these events on the internet, some of mine are mixed in my related collection of pictures.

There are some more pictures from Jean-Luc Brouillet and Jon Perkins who helped tow the vehicle to these events on the quad bike constructed by and on loan from Jay Bain.

Building Unwheeldy

2007-10-14T19:08:00.001-07:00

Dave Hershberger built the original Unwheeldy for as a Kinetic Sculpture Racing vehicle. In 2007 he decided to revisit the design and make something more direct. With direct drive. At some point along the way, I started helping him (along with a few other of his friends) and took some pictures, which assembled nicely into a movie:

(1:13)

Fundamentally, the wheel is a bicycle wheel. A five-cross sixty-spoke nine-foot diameter bicycle wheel wheel. The rims are aluminum tubing, bent (it takes about 1 1/2 pieces of 20' tubing for each wheel). The spokes are spoke wire, with a peened head and the other ended threaded to 56 tpi. Threading them was perhaps the riskiest part of the project, with the final solution coming into place pretty late: find a local bike shop with a Phil Wood spoke machine, having them form 1cm of thread, then using a Hozan thread chaser to form another few centimeters of threads--the small tool could not reliably start threading. Then it was a matter of building it with the previous hubs.

Frame building was more straightforward, done with a judicious combination of careful pre-planning and improvisation.

Unwheeldy

2007-10-13T18:00:00.001-07:00

Unwheedly Two is a giant dicycle created by Dave Hershberger and Matthew Blain.

Riding it is an exercise in cooperation... and a lot of fun.