As part of a six week build challenge for our Human Powered Vehicles Team, we decided to build a monowheel. The monowheel consisted of a smaller frame, on which the rider would sit, inside a larger wheel. The larger wheel was made out of carbon fiber sheets laid over laser cut sections of foam. The inner section was sanded to form a track that the smaller spring loaded wheels on the carriage could interface with.
Already having done a lot of work with composites, I decided to work on the inner carriage since I wanted to get more experience with designing and metalworking. My roles included frame geometry design, machining parts, and brazing the frame. The biggest challenges that we faced were spring tensioning the frame inside the large wheel, and proper weight balancing. The monowheel turned out fairly well, though it is rideable, it is still fairly hard to balance within it!
While this bike build challenge was going on, I was also able to work with the other team, which was building a leaning trike, to help them braze the frame of their vehicle. It is still in progress, but we hope to have riders testing it out soon.