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orcuScooter - Recycleable scooter + Fab Factory

Open source kick scooter that reinvents the wheel - designed for cycles. 3D printed/lasercut/CNC’d, all parts locally recycleable/reusable

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The orcuScooter is a kick scooter that reinvents the wheel - designed for cycles.

All components can be recycled as many times as needed into new parts - all within one city.
Recyclable plastic parts from the laser cutter, 3D printer and CNC mill. Versatile and reusable aluminum parts.

Clear build and repair instructions and all-bolted construction ensure easy assembly, disassembly, easy repairability and therefore longevity.
Different color and pattern variations and customizable modules make it a long-term companion for young and old, also for schools, companies and clubs.

The scooter is the starting product for a new design concept and the template for many other future products based on this system. The associated production and recycling system is to be realized in a "Fab Factory", a local microfactory with machines for digital manufacturing, in the middle of the city.

Read more on: https://www.orcular.org/orcuscooter-en

💡 Same text with images here: https://www.orcular.org/orcuscooter-en

🇺🇸🇬🇧 An automated software has been used for translatinig the text (German to English) with a few corrections afterwards. I speak English, but I am no native speaker. Please excuse if there are some strange wordings or the like.)

Why a kick scooter?


Admittedly, a kick scooter is not a new invention. However, I was initially interested in creating a product standard and first finding a product in which you find as many different manufacturing processes, materials and design principles as possible combined in one product.

A kick scooter is particularly well suited for this, since it:

  • consists of different types of materials
  • is manufactured using different fab lab equipment/production processes
  • draws attention to the microplastic problem caused by abrasion of tires and brake pads on vehicles and thus offers potential for proposed solutions

Most importantly, a kick scooter is a popular product that numerous children and adults in cities enjoy using for daily transportation. Replacing the many conventionally manufactured kick scooters with sustainable alternatives offers potential for big impact and lots of visibility.

In a nutshell: the problem with today's products

With the orcuScooter project, I want to draw attention to several (environmental) problems and offer solutions.

Many of today's products have the following problems:

  • break quickly
  • are difficult to repair
  • glued and fused parts of different materials (which makes recycling impossible)
  • spare parts are often limited or impossible to get

Thus, many products end up in the garbage incinerator or in a landfill abroad and are simply replaced by newly purchased products.
Manufacturing often takes place in faraway countries with questionable environmental and working conditions.

Precious Plastic - why we need to rethink plastic

Plastic has a bad reputation - mostly rightly so. However, plastic is only harmful when it ends up in the ocean or forest, for example. We should also rethink plastic production of new parts from petroleum, because there is already enough of it.

But recycling plastic that already exists, endlessly, into new products over and over again, and preferably larger, fixed components that can't simply end up in the environment - that makes sense. Plastic is precious.

That's why the "Precious Plastic" project (https://preciousplastic.com/), founded in 2013, has developed several open-source machines for plastic recycling, which are also used in the orcuScooter:

In the shredder, old parts, e.g. broken plastic parts of the orcuScooter, are shredded into small pieces. In the sheet press they are pressed into sheets. New parts for the scooters can be cut out by laser cutting or CNC milling. 3D-printed parts made of plastic are also used in the orcuScooter and can be recycled later.

Aluminum parts - Recycle, or better yet: reuse

Some parts should not be made of plastic, as they need higher strength, e.g. the handlebar or reinforcing profiles on the underside of the deck. Several CNC-milled aluminum parts are used, such as connector plates or angles. The steering rod parts are built from square profiles that are cut and drilled to size.

Aluminum is easily recyclable, but the energy required to recycle aluminum is much higher than for plastic. For this reason, aluminum parts of the orcuScooter are initially designed for "reuse", i.e. the parts are designed to be as versatile and reusable as possible - e.g. in new kick scooters or also in cargo bikes from the "Cargo-XYZ" project, from which the design is inspired. The more products that use aluminum square profiles (and there are already many of them), the greater the potential for parts that can be used again and again.

In addition, some aluminum brackets from the "Unipro-Kit" of the Open Source Ecology Germany association are deliberately used. The Unipro-Kit is an open source parts library...

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  • Materials ordered + building prototype

    Oskar10/09/2022 at 13:45 0 comments

    A few days ago, I have created a temporary bill of materials (BOM), right now it is more a shopping list for my first prototypes and it contains materials for more than one unit as well as some extra material for discarded parts, redesigns, testing, improvements etc.

    Once I figured out the exact right materials and amounts, I will edit the shopping list / BOM and publish it here on hackaday.

    Also, I am planning to release my design as an open source hardware project. Right now I am still figuring out, which git-platform and open source license type suits best for my project, I am in touch with some experts on these topics. I have designed the scooter in FreeCAD, what makes it perfect for sharing via open source, in an editable format.

    Finally, I have ordered all materials and parts from my shopping list, most parts already have been delivered, I am expecting the last delivery within the next couple of days.

    Next steps:
    - receive last delivery package
    - build a prototype
    - decide on the best git-platform and open source license
    - upload all files to git & hackaday

  • Support from local institutions

    Oskar10/09/2022 at 13:43 0 comments

    After submitting my orcuScooter design to a local innovation contest (Hamburg Maker Challenge) in my home city (Hamburg, Germany) in May 2022, I have been informed by the organizing institution that my project will be supported! :)

    Due to my membership in the organizing NGO (I am a founding member of the Fab City Hamburg association / NGO) I was participating outside the award competition, which means that members were not allowed to win a prize/award, but were friendly invited to submit their designs anyway and apply for a funding.

    And that is what happened, I've got confirmed that I will receive financial funding for ordering materials and building at least one prototype (probably several ones) and present them on the "Hamburg Maker Expo" in March 2023, a large event with lots of publicity from newspapers and local politicians.

    Next steps:
    - Write a bill of material / shopping list
    - order materials
    - build prototype

    Last but not least: I am submitting my project to the Hackaday Prize 2022 / Safe the World Wildcard :)

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