Butter Fly DT: Final Design After a lot of testing, redesigning, and troubleshooting, I’ve finally finished the DT design. This ended up being a much bigger redesign than I originally expected, especially with the butterfly pod. Almost every part of the pod went through multiple iterations to solve packaging, efficiency, strength, and center-to-center issues. The butterfly pod went through some of the biggest changes in the entire DT. I originally experimented with a gear-based reduction and linkage system, but after testing it, I decided gears weren’t the right solution. They added unnecessary noise, were less efficient, and made packaging much harder. The final design now uses belts for both reductions, including the butterfly mechanism. This made the system quieter, more efficient, and much easier to fit into the limited space. I also completely redesigned the butterfly linkage. Instead of using a single-sided linkage, I designed a double-sided linkage system that supports the mechanism from both sides. This makes the pod much more rigid and robust while reducing unwanted movement. Another major change was the wheel system. I moved away from using a COTS wheel and instead designed the wheel around a custom silicone-molded tire. This gave me more control over the geometry and let me integrate the wheel much better with the rest of the pod.The hub and mounting system were also redesigned from the ground up. I designed my own dead-axle hubs and reworked the surrounding structure so everything could fit within the extremely tight packaging constraints. One of the biggest challenges was getting everything to fit within 56 mm of thickness on each side. This forced me to rethink the position and configuration of almost every component in the pod. I also moved several components lower toward the ground to improve the center of gravity and overall stability. Once I worked through all the issues with the master sketch, the rest of the design became a process of slowly building everything back up, part by part. Because of all the belt center-to-center issues, I ended up redesigning almost every part and subassembly configuration. The CAD and wiring are now fully finished, and I’ve also made several renders of the completed DT. Looking back at all the iterations, the butterfly pod has probably changed the most. It went from a much simpler gear-driven concept to a compact, belt-driven, double-sided system that is much more robust and better suited to the final packaging. Overall, the final DT is quieter, more compact, more robust, and much more refined than the original design.