Ski Builders Forum

Hi,

we recently visited the Völkl factory. One thing that struck me was (if I got it right) that they bend the skis to the precise rocker/camber profil after the ski is finished. They said that the molds are only to get the profile roughly right. They manually bend with some big leverage and check with laserprecision against a template. I ve never seen anything like that in any factory videos. They also told me that it is a standard procedure in the industry. Have any of you more information on that? Do you know if that is also common for building snowboards?

Cheers,
Hannes

Give it a go and take some photos.
Do some tests of your own.

after they get it right do they set the final profile and camber with IR or some other way?
or is the timing such that there is a window of time with a slight amount of play that after they get it right they just let it cure in that position?
It seems like a great method for quality control.

@gav wa: sure, I can and will do some tests but that was not what I was asking. As I said the guy there told me that this method is absolute standard. So I was curious if anyone has heared about it or is even doing it too because I surely never have heared of that before.

@jono: I'm not sure how long the skis sit before they do this. I forgot to ask. They said it is comparable to bending metal. If you bend it hard enough it keeps some deformation.
After the ski is otherwise finished it goes to a workbench where someone measures the exact profile with lasers. If they find some deviation they clamp it at three close spots, use the length of the ski as leverage and bend it hard. Then measuring again and so on until they get it right within their tolerance(which I don't know). It takes quite some time for the guy doing it to get it dialed-in, they said

So, has anyone seen or heared something similar with the other big or semi- big guys?

I thinm I saw this in a nordica video at one point.

Sounds similar to the Burton Infinite Ride thing.

infinite ride is totally different. They flex the board back and forth a heap to break in the board so what you get is the same board you will have months later.

Does this technique not make everyone that reads this cringe? Like... name one material in a cured ski that you want to deform permanently? Sounds like they're breaking the damn thing. I must be missing something...

I have it from a source that the infinite ride thing was developed as a lifetime tester that the marketing group decided to repurpose it. It just sits there and bends the thing back and forth.

This is what i meant. Still not sure how it works.

Seems its not fully cured. Otherwise imagine what happens if you ski trough a hole, its a similar bending....

I'm thinking they did more of this back in the earlier days before they really jumped on the reverse camber train. I don't think they were very accurate at getting consistent camber profiles. I remember checking the camber profiles of the second generation Katana skis and I found different cambers within the same rack! Some were reverse, slightly reverse, some were flat.

Speaking of camber profiles, has anyone done accurate measurements of their skis at different temperatures? Mine get much more camber going from room temperature to on snow temperature. I wonder if the manufacturers take this into consideration especially with some asymmetric layups.

Less tip rise the colder it gets.