we spent the beginning of the summer checking all our machines and gathering what we still needed to complete our woodshop. these tools included: bandsaw, plainer, tablesaw, and an awesome router table for sidewalls. we also invested in a CNC router so that we can start cutting molds, cassettes, cores, bases, signs, whatever we need! we drove out to LA to pick up the machine and i think we got a great deal on it. it is an older model shopbot (prt), 48x96in travel with somewhere around 6in ztravel. it came with a 5hp spindle and a 15hp vac hold down, so some high powered options. we have spent the better part of a month setting up the machine, wiring, learning quirks, but now we are moving forward and cutting more technical pieces.
nightmarebot by strangesnowboarding, on Flickr
i am uing rhino3d to create the digital snowboard model and exporting it to the shopbot control software through MADcam. i arrived at this decision for various reasons, but mostly because i could get an awesome deal on the programs. i encourage anyone out there to stay in school, or know someone in school so that they can get to the discounts! i also worked with rhino in school so i already had some knowledge about the programs operating system.
our dyesub press is functioning, however we are still trying to dial in temps and times to get the best results and the most consistent color. still thinking about that giant order from iso-sport but we have been dealing with higher prices at the moment.
at the end of last season we felt that we had arrived at a good design of snowboard for two sizes. this summer we have been doing miniproduction of these two "models" in order to stock up snowboards for the coming season. i found that working on snowboards all night and riding snowboards all day made for low levels of sleep and in the end, some pretty poorly made snowboards. instead this season we will just focus on riding the decks we have already made and improving on them through one to two week prototyping cycles. one offs in winter and production in summer.
you can see a few of this year's graphics that have been pressed already on our blog: http://heavyshred.blogspot.com/2011/08/ ... tshit.html
on the business side we are not yet selling boards (just tshirts, haha) this season but hope to be there in the next year. we will begin to pay product liability insurance this winter so that we can legally start selling the "demo" snowboards that we are pressing this summer. i will keep you guys posted on how that venture goes. with that comes a website (not yet functional) and a lot of other loose ends that a lot of us have been dealing with.
thats all i can think of for now, but its a good start to the journal process.
thanks!
tom
nightmare
some shameless web linkage
www.strangesnowboarding.com
http://heavyshred.blogspot.com
EDIT
http://vimeo.com/channels/nightmaredev
