Super-Adjustable Roller Skate Plate v1

It's a super-adjustable plate designed around the Arius trucks/cushions!

Features

1. Adjustable Wheel Position
   You can adjust wheelbase in 8mm increments, and wheel positions without unmounting the plate from the shoe. For instance, if you wanted to try a "short-forward" mounting, you don't need to put more holes in the boot and push the plate forward. Incidentally, since the shoe-mounting hole pattern is a pattern, you can adjust the mounting location forward backwards without new holes in the shoes, if you wanted to try a really rearward wheel setup, for instance.

2. Adjustable Steering Angle
   You can also adjust the steering angle for each truck independently from 10-45* in 5* increments. This can also be done differently front and rear. Perhaps you want to try a slower steering rear wheel setup?

3. Independent Adjustments
   Both adjustments do not affect the other. Wheelbase change does not change the steering angle, and likewise, steering angle does not change wheelbase or wheel position.

4. Fault Tolerant
   While a slotted design with a continuum of lengths and angles would be more fine-tunable, if a bolt were loose, and the truck hanger slide, it could be potentially very dangerous. Landing a jump and suddenly the steering angle is not at all what you expect, for instance.
   The discrete hole design means that adjustments come in increments, a bolt that has loosened off a little would not be an immediate safety concern. Ideally, the rider notices a rattling/clicking sound and investigates a loose bolt. The tapped side would likely be damaged by riding a loose setup, but that’s much preferred to an injured rider.

Compromises

There are assuredly some compromises that these plates have however.

1. Relatively tall ride height
   This is driven by the size of the fasteners used, and the angle increments. The arc of holes in the truck hanger can only be so close to each other, and that arc can't pass through the sole of the shoe (though it does exactly touch the sole). This ride height is about the same as my Bont tracer plates though, so it's not insanely high, just not a low ride plate.

2. Narrow Rails on Forefoot
   The width of the rails is a little narrow up front. This is definitely something i can change pretty easily on a new rail. I didn't notice any flop feeling, since the sole on the Bont shoes are pretty stiff (fiberglass i think?). I'll make the front of the rails a little wider next time. Similarly, in making the rails symmetrical, there are lots of holes for the rear truck hanger than are unreasonable. Perhaps moving away from a symmetric rail is the next stop?

3. Heel/Toe clearance
   The arc part of the pivoting truck hangers shoots out the front and rear of the boot when in the steeper steering angles. This wasn't an issue in the 45* setting for toe-toe manuals for me, and i can get a higher boot angle than on my Falcon plates with a worn-out jam plug. Out back it's also got a bit of clearance for heel manuals, but would prevent certain extreme angles, like a super deep heel pivot. These are not something i personally do right now. Perhaps a version of the truck hanger with less adjustability would increase the clearance without limiting what angles you might want to realistically want.
   Additionally, since there needs to be an arc around the wheel center, and the arc needs to support the load, the rail must be quite a bit longer than the wheel axle location. This means the rail, as well as the arc extends quite a bit. This is not an issue on the front, but is a little more on the heel of the boot.

4. Difficult to adjust
   The hole pattern and correct adjustment locations are not that obvious. Which holes are supposed to line up for each setup? I considered attempting to engrave some setup marks on the pivoting truck hangers. I will think more on this and Sharpie on them to prototype what might help. So far it hasn’t been too hard to figure it out, and if you know the rules, it’s easier.
   Odd steering angles (45*, 35*, 25*, 15*) us the set of holes closest to the wheels, and the correct bolt locations have 5 hole between them.
   Even angles (40*, 30*, 20*, 10*) the holes closest to the boot are used, and there needs to be 6 holes between the correct bolt locations.
   For angle, count back from the 45deg position on the smallest arc, in 10 degree increments.

Future Changes

Mostly as notes to myself, these are the changes for future versions.

Mild Changes

These changes could occur without replacing all parts

1. More Rail Thread Depth
   Right now they are 1/8” wall. I think moving to 3/16 or even 1/4” would allow much more thread strength in the tapped rail. The tapped rail seems to be working, so leaning into that seems reasonable.

2. Wider Rail in Forefoot
   Would provide a little more stability, and when combined with width slots, allows mild plate to shoe angle adjustments.

3. Width slots on rails
   A different Rail to Boot mounting pattern with holes, lengthways and widthwise slots would allow some fine adjustment on plate angle without redrilling the shoe.
   Mounting methodology would be to use the width-ways or length-ways slots first, then when sure you have the correct position, drill at least one front and one rear hole, to lock that exact position into place, preventing slip.

4. Asymmetric rails
   There doesn’t seem to be as much need for rear wheel positioning as that for the front wheels. Similarly, there isn’t much mounting space on the heels of shoes, while there is plenty for the forefoot. We can make asymmetrical rails that allow more mounting spacer in the forefoot, and fewer mounting positions for the rear wheel.

Full Re-Design

These changes would likely need all parts to be remade

1. Shorter ride height
   It seems that there is plenty of meat on the pivoting truck hangers, so decreasing the distance between holes would allow a smaller arc. It might be reasonable to remove of the fine-adjustment in angle too, allowing only 10* increments, for instance to help reduce ride height. This lower angle increment would allow a single set of holes in the arc, which reduced ride height a lot, and would make the selection of holes simpler.
   If the rails still had vertically stacked, or stacked and staggered as they are now, then i could have some ride height adjustment as well and some linear axle location adjustment.

2. Less angle range
   in riding the V1 skates, it seems that i don’t need the 10, 15, or 20 degree options. By removing these, the front of the arc sticks out less, and that means lower weight, and better ground clearance. possibly even allowing spacer for a modular toe-stop block.

3. Shorter rails
   The rails stick out a bit from the front/rear of the shoe. This comes partly from wanting to experiment with much longer wheelbases than are “normal”, but also partly from the wide stance of the bolt pattern for each setup. The bolt center distance is ~1.75in. By lowering this a little, the truck hangers could get closer to the ends of the rails (with the same axle locations), allowing shorter rails. Another way to achieve this (at the expense of reduced arc diameter) would be to have two arc diameters, one for the inward bolt, and one for the outward bolt. If the outward bolt was on a smaller arc, then it could be more “underneath” the axle, while in the inward facing bolt could be much further out (on a longer arc, of course) that still provides a wide bolt center to center, for a strong, stiff attachment to the rails. A sketch would be more illustrative than words…

More images

In use

As pictured they're as long as i could adjust them. They aren't really much fun for me in that setup. Front wheels are just too damn far out there. I ended the first day adjusting them to a still-massive 195mm wheelbase (i usually ride ~170mm), with 45* front and 35* rear steering angle. That's by no means the final setup, just where i ended up enjoying them that first day. With the very soft cushions (77a durometer, for context I'm 6'3 and ~180lbs), they felt very stable, but still really maneuverable. This was an interesting contradiction. This long wheelbase with very soft cushions and steep-ish steering angle is specifically something I wanted to play around with. In feeling, it’s somewhere in between an inline and a quad skate in feel. Toe-toe manuals (which are a favorite of mine) felt really good, despite (or perhaps because of?) the front wheels being quite far forward.

I might polish them up, or might hard-anodize them for a little added thread durability. We'll see. Now that i've got the CAD and cnc-machining programming done, it should be pretty easy to make another set with some modifications from the V1.