The essential motion component is the axiiio nano Motion Pancake, with the nano motor slide locked onto it, and it needs to be anchored to the skateboard somehow. I already had a mounting clamp designed: the Keyhole Clamp, and a prototype 3D printed. The clamp is mounted to the underside of the skateboard and the pancake is clamped onto that.
I needed to plane the underside of the skateboard down a little bit because it's curved. The keyhole clamp is a circular clamp with a hole in the centre through which you can run cables and such. The base of the clamp is mounted to the skate board using four small M3 screws. This clamp makes it really simple to install and remove motion pancakes from any rig you build. I've posted a seperate project for the clamp and included the STL files if you want to print your own.
I also attached a ball head to the skateboard to make it nice and easy to mount a camera to the dolly
I’m using a capstan style of motion pancake to make this dolly, so we need to set up a string line that it can pull itself along on. A couple of blocks of wood, a few screws and some string worked nicely. I just used a couple of G clamps to hold these scrap bits of wood on the desk and put a screw in them being very careful not to damage the bench. The trickiest part of this was getting the string onto the capstan in the pancake! The string line needs to be taut for smooth motion.
Here';s the project video: