Ski Builders Forum

has any one uesd heat gun or hair dryers to heat there press?
im thunking of driling holes in my buttom mold and runing ductworking to my cat tracks and and runing hair dryers or heat guns to make my press heated.

Although hair driers and heat guns may be cheap to buy, its a pretty inefficient way to heat it and so the cost of running them long enough to heat the entire mold may end up costing much more, and no way to control the exact temperature (which depending on your epoxy may or may not be critical).

Heat blankets are expensive to buy, but PID controllers are cheap, and then you get very accurate heat control, to as high a temperature as you want (within reason)

if the blankets i'm getting samples of are working as a press heating, they would be a cheap alternative to the silicone blankets at approx. 15eur / m at 50cm width.
i'll make a post on them as soon as i have them up and running!

cheap option for moderate heat that is semi controlled is seedlig heat mats with a thermostat. see my set up at: http://www.flicker.com/photos/rfa2009
i was able to get and maintain 105deg F for the entire pressing.
heat guns & hair dryers w/ ducting will be a pain, wont heat evenly, and be noisy as hell

thefreshpimpofbigair wrote:...
i was able to get and maintain 105deg F for the entire pressing.
heat guns & hair dryers w/ ducting will be a pain, wont heat evenly, and be noisy as hell

Agree that using hot air is just wrong.
I also think that 105F is practically useless. Read question #1 in the Ski
Builders article:
http://www.skibuilders.com/articles/epoxy.shtml

With so much invested in ski press tooling and materials, what's a couple hundy more for an MEI heater blanket? Using high temperatures to cure and post-cure bake your skis will make all the difference in their durability. I cure at 190F and my skis keep their camber and maintain great "pop" energy, even after 40 days on the mountains, Wasatch of course!

-S

agreed....
had read thru the Q & A but obviously did not retain it all. my thoughts were to simply speed the cure of my room-temp epoxy. someday i'll get some real blankets. donations can be sent to....

my new carbon heating blankets have arrived today! (the cheap and energy saving ones )
i'm in a lot of stress right now due to some upcoming exams, but i should be able to have them up and running till the end of may.
will post a writeup on them asap.

look forward to the set-up. I think it was plywood? that had been using some carbon heating.

ahh... exams something I don't miss about school.

yeah, that was him...but he built it himself "ghetto style"
mine is a standard product used in industrial heating applications.
width is about 59cm, it's supposed to reach 90°C at 100V (at least thats what the letter that came with it says) and the max. temp is 130°C.
only downer is that we have to wrap it in plastic ourselves since it's not isolated...shouldn't be a big problem though.
as i said, first tests will be held in may.

if they're successful i might be able to place a group order...i guess there's a couple of people here and at grafsnowboards that would love to have a less cost intensive alternative to their silicone blankets.

can you provide some more info on your heaters?

take a look at my last post in our journal: http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2044

i'll do an in depth description as soon as i find the time to do so...one thing i can tell you already is: they work! tested them on a ski and they heated the press to 180F in no time.

Hi
I want to talk about profesional heating group in ski,snow,kite industry.
I can see on this youtubes videos that the wire go to the aluminium plate in one side and out in another side. I think that is hot water vapor or something like that.Quastion is how looks like this plate and how this hot vapor moves in that thin aluminium plate. Maybe someone see on reality this item.