DPX Systems seems to deal exclusively in devices powered by handheld drills. In addition to the mini bike in the video above, they’ve made systems for wheelchairs, toolboxes, and hoists. The device costs $630, but we know most of you just need prompting that something is possible to be well on your way to building your own version. We’re still more fond of weed whacker machines.
[via Toolmonger]
wow. that is awesome! I have a few drills sitting around, i might have to make use of them right now!
two things, first – patents availabel? for WHAT? for a chain drive or a drill holder? … thats just stupid
another thing, the controller in the drill is cooking in this thing, it will die after one day of usage
@2
Doubt that, those drills are designed for joe sixpack handyman and are way overbuilt, well the namebrand ones are, not the knockoffs.
I wonder how well a drill or two mounted to a mountain bike would work… goes off to tinker.
i would hate to think what that is doing to the drill, but damned if that isn’t cool
drill’s probably overheating, though. (motor, most likely; with controller and or battery a distant second)
Hmmm, a small vehicle with two of them would provide handgrips and trigger throttles.
Neat stuff!!!!
Very kewl, but I totally agree with everyone else.. there’s no way that drill will hold up.
Hmm, I have a heavy duty masonry drill I might suddenly have a new use for, besides boring through concrete and making my teeth rattle.
If those are the heavy-duty DeWalt drill motors, they should easily stand up to this usage. FIRST (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST) gave these motors out a couple years ago for teams to use on their robots. I have personally seen 120-130lb robots powered by the DeWalt motors on low gear-ratios.
You all would be surprised that most drills when you are using them you are technically ‘overusing them’ because of cheap drill bits and using the wrong drill bits for what you are doing.
Plus, this thing looks to increase the drill’s already high-torque specifications to push you around.
In my senior undergraduate mechanical engineering class, we worked with Black & Decker to design improvements to some of their products. Black & Decker and DeWalt are owned by the same company, but B&D is meant for home use and DeWalt is for serious construction workers and contractors. As I recall, B&D drills were designed for about 30 hours of use, with DeWalt being much, much more than that – in the hundreds of hours of drill time, so the drill ought to last a while.
My First Robotics team (588) used drills to power one of our better bots, but the thing is we just used the gear box and motor with a normal motor controller. I’d imagine this thing will put your battery pack and (if it’s lithium) controller through hell. On any industrial drills I wouldn’t imagine the motor or gearing would be the weak link.
i’ve been using an old dewalt 12v cordless to power various rc and autonomous bots. the motor does heat up quite a bit, but it seems to be able to outlast the battery pack charge in a continuous run without trouble.
I’ve used the same old B&D drill for 6 years with my construction business, some of those things last a loooong time. Unless their Craftsman.
Thank you everyone for the very cool and interesting comments. We are the inventors and concept developers of DPX Systems. I recently found out that we have been listed on Hackaday, as I have never heard of this site, which I find very exciting. To sum things up, all of the Dewalt drills we have used as the power source for the DPX Drive Systems are the originall, un-altered versions (18-36 volt). They have been used for over 5 years without fault or burnout. To this day they continue to be extremely reliable and bulletproof. You would be quite surprised with the torque that these bikes have. The DPX Drive Units can be used for just about anything you can imagine that you would like to place into linear or rotational motion. Please give us a call with any questions you may have, we will be happy to answer your questions. Thank everyone, great site!
Anthony Mattio
DPX Systems
(702)525-1248
very interested in talking to you about your dpx drive system
greetings I am looking to buy a unit to use for my toolbox but cant find anything than facebook for your company could you tell me if I am able to buy just the gearbox and what the price would be
5 years? did anyone ever followup with this guy and ask about actual usage hours. Calendar years of survival means nothing… you need X hours of operation lifetime data. very retarded.
whoa!!! amazing! no need to pedal, huh! again, this one’s amazing, indeed!
great post !!
I read a few of your other entires.
Thank you for sharing.
Like your site some very useful information for this tool and your post looks very interesting for me. Keep up the good work.
Am I the only person who recognises the song? It’s the demo song from the REAPER audio program, called ‘Making me nervous’ by Brad Sucks.
Wasn’t credited in the video.
thankSs :=)
Amazing! I must say this is very innovative stuff here. Thanks for sharing, loved watching the video. Keep up on doing crazu stuff, you’ll get famous someday.
Now if somebody find a way to hack a drill on a real bike than I’d may give it a try!
Not a bad web site at all. I found this after carrying out a few searches on Bing and it’s helped me to understand things a little better – thank you.