Figment Original taking shape!

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FigmentOriginal
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Figment Original taking shape!

Post by FigmentOriginal »

Hello all ski builders!

Good things are happening here in CT! Give me one more post and one more day and I'll post the pics of my progress.

Going to be building alpine boards and Skwals!

Press is a monster and the cavity measures 12"x90"!!!
skidesmond
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Post by skidesmond »

Cool! Never heard of SKwals. Looked it up, interesting. looking forward to the pics.
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FigmentOriginal
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Post by FigmentOriginal »

So here goes...

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Long time lurker, I must have read close to every thread on this site and I still have questions about this whole process. I understand that this is a huge learning process, but I think I have put myself on the right path by absorbing all the info of this site that I could. That being said, I would like to thank all the pioneers that came before me to help show me the light and keep my project on the right track.

Lets first start off with what I ride and hope to build. I have been a long time snowboarder. In the past 5 years I have made the switch to alpine snowboarding and that led me into Skwals. They range from a Thias Easy Jungle 165cm, 8m sidecut, 12cm waist; to a Virus Executor 203cm, 15.3cm waist, ~40mm of camber! Truly a beast of a board. The second board in from the right is a board that I designed myself that Virus built for me. Here is a pic...

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So now that you know what I ride, you can probably guess what I am aiming to build. I am going to be sticking to the long and the narrow stuff, strictly alpine and Skwal type shapes. I aim to build a few POW specific shapes, but designed for the hardboot snowboarder that prefers to run the higher directional angles.

All that said, lets get on with the good stuff! The press!
This has truly been a labor of love. Lots of hours of work have gone into already, and its going to need a lot more before I turn out my first board. Here are some pics...

Scrap I-Beams laying around the industrial building we own, lets put them to work!

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Sitting on top of a stand I made from an old industrial storage rack.
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Fresh paint!
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All assembled. Rough dimensions of press interior are 12" x 90"!
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Basic shop setup.
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Fire hose and cat track. I am not sure if I made a mistake by going with a 1" x 1" for my track, I have since found out most people run 3/4" x 3/4". I also need some more track to fill out the cavity length. Did I make a big mistake going with the 1" x 1"? I also leveled out the inside of my press cavity with leveling cement.
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I bought used hose off Ebay, 4.5in layflat hose. Pressure test @ ~20psi.
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This is what you get when you buy USED stuff...F*$K!
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Brand new hose this time...I have to fix my bladder connections, very small air leak...
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Right now I am debating about heat blankets. I just(as I type) got my quote back from MEI and it looks like the blankets are going to be like $335 EACH! Ouch, I didn't expect that. I am really debating about doing my first batch of boards on a cold set press, but checking the entropy site and it looks like their room temp resin takes 7 days to cure! Compared to 30min with heat there is really no comparison...

Its also time to start making my first core. I have been debating about the right method. I have some poplar, aspen, and oak boards I plan on vertical laminating in 20mm strips. I'd also like to try the 333 Skiis method of using Baltic/Birch plywood for the core. Anyone try this method yet?

As far as planing, the planer crib method looks really nice, so does the bridge...hmmmmm. Does anyone have suggestions for the core profile? I have nightmares about making my first board way too soft or way too stiff. My first board will be all glass, then I will move into the carbon fiber arena, and hopefully titanal after that.

Time to start thinking about ordering board materials too. If anyone has any surplus they are looking to liquidate please let me know ASAP! I plan on calling all the suppliers tomorrow...

So thats it in a nutshell for now. I'll try my best to keep this up to date. Any suggestions will be a great help to me. I need some encouragement to get this thing moving! I desperately want to be riding my own boards by the time winter comes. Thanks in advance!
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skidesmond
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Post by skidesmond »

Looks like you did your home work. For the first board keep it simple. I press at room temp. I press skis for 10-12hrs then let them sit for 5-7 days for the epoxy to cure before removing the flashing. You don't have to press for 7 days if that's what you're thinking.

I don't think a 1inch cat track will cause any specific problems. As long as everything fits ok in the cavity.

My ski profiles are generally 3-10-3 or 3-12-3. Hard to say how
those dims will be on a board as wide as yours. I'd say pretty stiff.
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chrismp
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Post by chrismp »

if you or a friend have some basic electrician skills it's pretty easy to build the heat blankets yourself. http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2690
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FigmentOriginal
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Post by FigmentOriginal »

Damn Chris, why did you have to go and show me that?!? You know that I am going to have to try it now! Hahaha.

It looks pretty straight forward. The only part I get lost at is where the math comes in. I bet if sit down and really take a look at it I can figure it out though...

One of my thoughts was to run the leads down the length of the blanket, one lead on each side. Then you run the wire ACROSS the blanket rather than up and down it. This way you don't overlap your lead wires. Just a thought...

Did you end up just covering your fiberglass with silicone resin smooth it out and let it cure? How were the results? Or do you need to laminate it between silicone sheets?
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Richuk
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Post by Richuk »

1 inch is not a bad option. 3/4 tends to get a little hot and if it's right next to the fire hose, this is not a good thing right. If you insulate the heater from the track, so you don't waste time heating it up, you should find your track stay cooler and so your hose should last longer or at least be a safer set-up.

No disrespect to the fine work pioneered by Chrisp, but is it might just be worth coating these in RTV: http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3096 - perhaps a quicker route?
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FigmentOriginal
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Post by FigmentOriginal »

Rough calculations....

28 gauge Nichrome wire (.0126 dia in.) 4.25 ohms per foot.

Blankets will be 12"x90" so lets say 6 wires running 15'(7.5x2) spaced 1" apart.

4.25x15= 63.75 ohm per wire.

Total resistance ( http://www.1728.org/resistrs.htm (calculated here)) is 10.65 ohms.

I will be running off household US power so I used the formula P = E 2 / R where P is watts, E is Volts and R is Resistance. That gives me a total of 1355.29412 watts!

Does this seem/sound correct???

Math is very much a part of the Axis of Evil!
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n.marshall
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Post by n.marshall »

The core profile that I use for skis is usually about 2-10-2, with the 10 mm section being about 45 cm long in the middle of the core. For splitboards, its about 2-7.5-2, with the 7.5 mm stretching for about 70 cm. They all have 20 oz glass above and below the core, and some of them have a strip of uni carbon fiber too. They have a good round flex in the tips and tails, and are pretty stout underfoot. It all takes practice, my first pair of skis came out ridiculously stiff.
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MontuckyMadman
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Post by MontuckyMadman »

if you build your blankets on 110 like I did with high temp rtv and glass and silicon rubber they will run you 220usd each. Is the $100 worth the savings? dunno. Works for me. Took me many hours to get there however.
Follow the directions that Chris gives in this post: Follow the links they are in german but it removes all the math required pretty much. FYI im an idiot.

for the rubber I didn't really need to do anything to get it smooth. i just worked it into the fiberglass like epoxy, so it's just as thick as the fiberglass.
hardness is 50A.
to answer the question in your mail, montucky:
when connecting wires in parallel you basically just take the same ends of each wire and connect it to one wire on your plug and do the same with the other ends on another wire on your plug.

the wire is nichrome wire, but any resistance wire will do. to get the desired amount of ohms you need to do some calculating.
I'll use our wires as an example.

We have wire with 15.6 ohms/meter. We figured we want to keep the connections easy so we had to choose the length of each wire in increments of 4m (our blankets are 2m long and you want the ends of the wire to end up on the same side of the blanket).
Another given factor was that we wanted our blankets to be approx. 45cm wide with a little free space on the sides and that we wanted our wires to be spaced about 2cm from each other. So for this blanket width we figured we needed five of the 8m long wires which would give us twenty wires running the length of the blanket with the desired spacing.
An 8m piece of wire has about 125 ohm (15.6x8=124.Cool.
I'll spare you with the formula to calculate the total resistance of a parallel circiut and give you this link instead (just scroll down to "input: a lot of parallel resistors" and enter your calculated resistance for one wire times the number of wires you have): http://translate.google.com/translate?j ... tm&act=url
In my case I entered 125 in five of the boxes (because we use five of the 8m long wires which have a resistance of 125) and the result was a total resistance for all the wires of 25 ohms.
Now we can calculate the power (=wattage) we will get with our chosen wire length and number using Ohm's Law..
Again, here's a calculator (use the third one listed under Calculate for Power): http://www.the12volt.com/ohm/page2.asp
In my case I enter 230V for voltage and our previously calculated value of 25 ohms which gives me 2116 watts of total power for my blanket. That's a good number for one blanket I guessed.

With this example you should be able to calculate the power you'll get for a certain length of wire with a certain resistance. Just input your own numbers.

As for controlling such a blanket you'd have to use dimmers to keep the power running through the wires low since they'll get way too hot and would melt the silicone.
We use two of these: http://www.kemo-electronic.de/en/Light- ... 000-VA.php one for each blanket.

If you want to use the regular PID/SSR method I'd recommend using a much higher resistance wire since they don't get that hot and just use a lot longer wires to get the desired amount of power (watts). (that's why the big manufacturers use wires wound onto a fiberglass core to get longer wires into their blankets)
I have also included all my suppliers and materiasl that I used in that thread. My blankets draw about 11 amps each on a 120v run. 220 would be better and more efficient. I get only around 1300 watts from my calcs. Its better to get closer to 2000 watts for long 2 meter blankets for making skis and you could use themn to sublimate at that point. It take about 40 min for me to get top and bottom to 175 F under 50psi.

FYI my calc at 6 loops at over 4 meters each loop at 13.94 amps/meter you will get a 20 amp blanket at 110V and 2200 watts. That will be bad IMO.
Perhaps I am not understanding your design.
sammer wrote: I'm still a tang on top guy.
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FigmentOriginal
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Post by FigmentOriginal »

I followed that thread and used it for my calculations. I used a different site for the total resistance of a parallel circuit as the german one was not working for me. Sounds like I should use a different wire to get the power up around 1500watts. I am really curious to see how Chris' blanket turned out and if you need the silicone sheet or if the RTV cures well enough on its own.


My first board is going to be a twin decambered tip 175cm. Nose 18cm, waist 12cm, tail 17.5cm, sidecut ~11m, 15mm camber. 4x4 insert pack spaced 40cm apart centered on board. Profile I was thinking 3-7(all the way throughout the binding area)-3, glass, not sure what weight yet. Thoughts?

Oh ya, its basically like the board in the picture of of the four boards lined up. It would be a copy of the 2nd board from the right.
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chrismp
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Post by chrismp »

Rich, using these carbon wire heaters sir.orange uses works well with 220v but they provide too little power at 120v.

Figment, your calcs are spot on! You could add one more piece of wire and get about 1600w ;)
I'm only using silicone resin to wet out the fiberglass mats (320g/m²), no silicone sheets.

Montucky, i still don't get why your material costs are that high. i just built two new blankets with 19" x 6.5' heated area and the material cost for both is at around 100 EUR (~140 USD). i've used 1.25 kg of silicone for each blanket.
here's a resin kit that would last for two blankets that size http://www.ebay.com/itm/HIGH-TEMP-RTV-S ... 4cf8ff0fdd
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MontuckyMadman
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Post by MontuckyMadman »

Guess my calcs are off dont know what I did wrong. Guess I should be working rather than posting.

1 Blanket-
high temp rtv-$65
silicon sheet-$65
Nicrome-$20
Glass-$20
guess its more like $170, thought it was higher. weird. thats with shipping.
sammer wrote: I'm still a tang on top guy.
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chrismp
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Post by chrismp »

ooh, so you're using one premade silicone sheet? i don't do that.
i just wet out the sheet that has no wires attached first and then i put the sheet with the wires on top of it and wet that out as well. after everything has cured i flip the whole assembly over and cover the underside with resin as well (usually not the whole fiberglass sheet is covered just be the resin seeping through).
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MontuckyMadman
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Post by MontuckyMadman »

i make a laminate. Super thin silicon sheet top and bottom and glass and wire inside and then press it. Comes out super smooth and really thin.
sammer wrote: I'm still a tang on top guy.
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