Ski Builders Forum

finally we have some first pics documenting the progress on our cloth frame press.
but first off a huge thanks to montucky madman who will be supplying us with the cordura bags! thanks mate!!

now a couple of pics:







in the first two pics you can see me routering our top construction to get rid of any sharp edges that could rip the cordura (not that this stuff could be ripped easily). of course the pyramid is supported by the occasional cross bar beneath it.
third photo is me cleaning up the shop and in the back you can see part of our press. the lower part is mounted to the table with the wooden bar beneath it as a spacer. i'll get some more detailed pics of that soon.
we've covered the whole pressure distributors in a thick fleece to add some more insurance against ripping our cloth bags.

the rest of our press is pretty much ready to go as well. molds are nearly finished. we just need to get some sheet metal to make a cassete/heat spreader and do all the wiring for our super special awesome heat blankets (carbon heaters baby!).

unfortunately both of us are pretty busy with university atm, but we hope to have our first boards in early december.

i'll post updates whenever we make some progess worth the mention. stay tuned.
cheers!

Looks a lot lighter than ours. Nice work. Can't wait to see some skis. The cordura is amazing stuff. Huge props to Montucky for hooking people up.

Im really diggin the round organic shape your press is taking. All sorts of images came to mind but makes me think of smokin a huge fatty.

you guys aren't worried about the voids in the middle? seems like you would need some supports in the middle.

@kevy: they do have supports in the like every 20cm, just not on the farthest points outside...we figured we could save some weight without losing strength.

@biggy: it will be smokin once we have our heating blankets ready

ah. thats what i was wondering.
definitely best to keep the weight as well as the material cost down!

UPDATE:
of course we've been working on the press last weekend as well and it's nearing it's completion
finished the top and bottom molds and the bladders. nothing too fancy. we're doing some rockered boards similar to the capita flatkick shape. that means the boards will be flat underfoot and have a few millimeters of straight rocker till the tip/tail and then the straight tip/tail rise after a short curve.

here's a pic:


today the parts we needed to complete our heating blankets have arrived, so we hope we can show you some pics of our finished babies after next weekend if they work like we hope they do, then this will be the cheapest heating solution out there.

we'll have our templates and cores cnc-milled, so i went to the university of technology and they gave me instructions on what they need the cad-files to be like. took quite a bit of time to get used to the software they have, but i finally managed to get the shapes to what they need

i have a decision to make whether to run the woodcore full lenght or just cut it off at the beginning of the nose/tail bend and put some layers of vds and fibreglass in there as a spacer.
what are you guys experiences on this?

chrismp wrote:today the parts we needed to complete our heating blankets have arrived, so we hope we can show you some pics of our finished babies after next weekend if they work like we hope they do, then this will be the cheapest heating solution out there.

So you will post pics of your heating solution? That would definitely be appreciated by everyone I am sure. Can you please describe how they are made as well? (My apologies if you posted details somewhere else that I haven't seen.)

sure, i'll do an in depth write-up as soon as its finished and working!
unfortunately i'm sick atm so we won't be able to work on it this weekend.

what we're going to use are thin heating foils made by Frenzelit in germany called Hicotec TP: http://www.frenzelit.com/1473_HICOTECsupsupTP.html
they sent us free samples to use for our project (i was told the price for one unit thats 50cm wide and 225cm long would be about 15-30 EUR).
basically its a carbon foil that has copper strips attached to the sides with some cable connectors.
unfortunately our blankets don't have an insulation, so we bought some thin plastic foil used for heated vacuum molding (up to 225°C) and wrapped it around them.

for temperature adjustments we're using phase control dimmers (one per blanket) that are capable of handling up to 4000W at 230V.
they cost us about 60 EUR including shipping.
here's a pic:

the dimmers are needed to keep the blankets from overheating (>140°C) which would melt them down in seconds.

temp measurements are taken by a very simple industrial thermometer that reads up to 110°C (a PID would work as well, i guess).
with this combination we'll have to watch over the temp the whole time we're pressing, but that wont be too long since the sicomin epoxy we're going to use has a cure time of 30-10min at 70-100°C.

we've spent another 40 EUR for the rest of the parts including the thermometer, some potis, switches and other small parts.

when they're up and running i might be able to arrange a group order at Frenzelit for you guys since they have pretty high minimum orders...that'd be for fully insulated blankets then.

Hey Chrismp,

Any luck with your project? Did you manage to get the desired profile you wanted?

WAH-POW! haha what great marketing, love it!

Any luck with the heating project?

chrismp wrote:i have a decision to make whether to run the woodcore full lenght or just cut it off at the beginning of the nose/tail bend and put some layers of vds and fibreglass in there as a spacer.
what are you guys experiences on this?

I would run at least a couple cm of rounded narrower nose/tail part in the tips. Why? if you just cut off the core and butt up square tip fill to it, you have that seam going straight across the board at a point where a lot of flex and vibrational stress can occur during nose/tail presses, or bumps, etc. Having a nice rounded seam will give the board more meat across the board there during longitudinal flex.

@idris: the heaters are working great...last time we pressed it was about 0°C in our shop and we got the press up to 80°C in about 15 minutes.

@knightsofnii: thanks man. we settled on using a full length woodcore with approx. 2cm wide tipspacers made of polyurethane d44.
the polyurethane works great out of the box and the next step will be pouring our own sidewalls/spacers.
we still didn't get the chance to cover our process with photos since we were always in a hurry to build a new board right before leaving for our next holiday to do some testing. but i'm pretty confident that we'll have a detailed write-up by the middle of march.