Author Topic: TRYING to think outside the box  (Read 43554 times)

pdxmike

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #45 on: April 29, 2016, 09:43:00 AM »
the Zone brings an integrated view of stand up from physics to voodoo...
That's right up there with, "The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat".  Admin's probably already working it into the home page.

yugi

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #46 on: April 29, 2016, 11:07:43 AM »
... I am even more sad to let you know that I am selling my Unlimited board: the board I put more than 3500 kilometers on in 18 months, the one and ONLY: 17'6x23" Starboard Sprint. So please, PLEASE do not talk to me about Unlimited boards. This is a sad day.

...

You taking up racing?

photofr

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #47 on: April 29, 2016, 11:38:34 AM »
Yeah... but in all in good time.
I will be training pretty hard all summer, and if money allows, I will be racing the 200km race in Holland (11 City Tour coming up in Sept).

If I don't make it by then, I'll be aiming at the 2017 Race season. In the meantime, I'll wait and see what happens.
Nelo SUP - 14' x 23"
Nelo Surfski 560M - 18'4" x 17"

PonoBill

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #48 on: April 29, 2016, 01:13:36 PM »
People had epoxy boards a long time ago, but they were built just like polyester. The innovations in build came from windsurfing, which demanded a board that a 240 pound guy could blow a forward loop with and not continue straight through the board.

Most of the advanced construction methods require molds, which require a lot of time and effort to build for reasonable utility. You can't make a splash mold from a plug and expect to turn out hundreds of boards, they need to withstand error and handling without being destroyed. You can't do simple concrete molds like you can build for making blanks--the interior surface needs to be highly polished. Tweak the board design and you need a new mold, unless it happens to be something you can fudge, like shimming the mold to add volume. And those mods tend to be hard to manage.

No easy answers.

Composite engineering in the aircraft and motorsports world is decades ahead of surfboard stuff. Precise prepregs and fiber directions, laser cutting, precision molding, specialized fabrics, layers, cores, and other tech. the variation in weight and strength is less than a tenth of a percent. Some of the stuff could be applied, but boards would cost something like what a F1 nose costs: $160,000.
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

photofr

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #49 on: April 29, 2016, 01:29:30 PM »
Fair argument with mold constructions, but here's another way of looking at things:
- Surfskis are built from molds
- The latest are about 18 feet long, stiffer than SUP, only weigh about 25 pounds, and do not get scratched up when paddle strike.
- My Unlimited board is from 2014... it is still the fastest production board in the world in flat water... TODAY.
- Said surfski is 2500 euros with a rudder system, not 3700 euros without a rudder.

So, we could in fact have molds, and use "cheap labor" to make new ones every 3 to 4 years.
We could also have 20 to 25 pound boards, instead of 35 pounds.
The fact is, we could really benefit from molds.
Nelo SUP - 14' x 23"
Nelo Surfski 560M - 18'4" x 17"

Arany

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #50 on: April 29, 2016, 01:33:29 PM »
As someone  trying  to build  a sup and do not afraid  to make mistakes  as I made before  the question  of shapes  is problem that is hard to solve  when people  and conditions  and races are different

supuk

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #51 on: April 29, 2016, 01:48:37 PM »
the problem with the moulding process is it doesn't lend its self to mass production as you can only have one board on the go per mould and for high quality moulds that will last for large numbers your looking at 10's of thousands and with companies drastically changing designs to sell you all a new board every year the moulding process does not make any sense. With the conventional method they can have as many of the same board all on the go at any one time its just down to how fact they can cut or now mould the blanks which is a lot quicker.

PonoBill

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #52 on: April 29, 2016, 02:36:08 PM »
^^What he said. How many surfski manufacturers are there? I only know of Fenn and Epic. I'm sure there's more but those are all I've seen. If you order an OC1 from Kai Waa you can expect a six month wait, and they have a lot of molds compared to most boat builders. You have to wait for the mold to be empty, then wait for construction. It's not "wham, bam and here you are", it's hours and days of hand layup and building the sandwich. I doubt that it's really practical for the industry at this point. Certainly none of the molded boards are ruling the lineup. Even SIC, which is hollow molded board central, could only reach production levels by going to foam.
Foote 10'4X34", SIC 17.5 V1 hollow and an EPS one in Hood River. Foote 9'0" x 31", L41 8'8", 18' Speedboard, etc. etc.

photofr

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #53 on: April 29, 2016, 10:24:36 PM »
You guys may be comparing apples and oranges.
In Asia, they can build 100's of SUP a month (built traditionally), meanwhile, in the states, surfskis built from molds are made at the rate of 4 per week. However, also in Asia, Epic's factory can build 100's of surfskis per month - using, you guessed it: MOLDS.

For those interested in mass production, the continent on which you build something seems to have more effect.

As for "how many surfski companies"... epic, think, nelo, fenn, vajda, DD3, sipre, okrea, red7, huki... I mean: the list goes on for ever, and every one of them have the following common denominator:
Cheaper (completely rigged with a rudder)
Lasts longer
Stiffer
Lighter
Nelo SUP - 14' x 23"
Nelo Surfski 560M - 18'4" x 17"

UKRiverSurfers

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #54 on: April 30, 2016, 12:16:42 AM »
Yeah... but in all in good time.
I will be training pretty hard all summer, and if money allows, I will be racing the 200km race in Holland (11 City Tour coming up in Sept).

If I don't make it by then, I'll be aiming at the 2017 Race season. In the meantime, I'll wait and see what happens.

Couple of friends did the last one - both non stop!

They absolutely loved it 😎
SIC Bullet 17v2 Custom
Richmond Custom Carbon 16'
Starboard Point 14'8
Starboard K15
Starboard Astro Touring 14
Starboad Big Easy
Redpaddle Ride 10'6
Badfish Rivershred
Jackson SUPercharger
Badfish MVP 9'o
Badfish IRS 7'2
Pack OC1 12'

UKRiverSurfers

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #55 on: April 30, 2016, 12:19:16 AM »
Fair argument with mold constructions, but here's another way of looking at things:
- Surfskis are built from molds
- The latest are about 18 feet long, stiffer than SUP, only weigh about 25 pounds, and do not get scratched up when paddle strike.
- My Unlimited board is from 2014... it is still the fastest production board in the world in flat water... TODAY.
- Said surfski is 2500 euros with a rudder system, not 3700 euros without a rudder.

So, we could in fact have molds, and use "cheap labor" to make new ones every 3 to 4 years.
We could also have 20 to 25 pound boards, instead of 35 pounds.
The fact is, we could really benefit from molds.

If we did then in the UK the other timeserved high level paddlers - Olympic oc1 etc etc, will start to see SUP as anything more than a beach toy.

My Bullet is as you describe - hollow like a proper boat. Bloody strong too!

Cost 5k though :(
SIC Bullet 17v2 Custom
Richmond Custom Carbon 16'
Starboard Point 14'8
Starboard K15
Starboard Astro Touring 14
Starboad Big Easy
Redpaddle Ride 10'6
Badfish Rivershred
Jackson SUPercharger
Badfish MVP 9'o
Badfish IRS 7'2
Pack OC1 12'

UKRiverSurfers

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #56 on: April 30, 2016, 12:20:34 AM »
Surely a mould is more suited to mass production???
SIC Bullet 17v2 Custom
Richmond Custom Carbon 16'
Starboard Point 14'8
Starboard K15
Starboard Astro Touring 14
Starboad Big Easy
Redpaddle Ride 10'6
Badfish Rivershred
Jackson SUPercharger
Badfish MVP 9'o
Badfish IRS 7'2
Pack OC1 12'

supuk

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #57 on: April 30, 2016, 01:45:45 AM »
You guys may be comparing apples and oranges.
In Asia, they can build 100's of SUP a month (built traditionally), meanwhile, in the states, surfskis built from molds are made at the rate of 4 per week. However, also in Asia, Epic's factory can build 100's of surfskis per month - using, you guessed it: MOLDS.

For those interested in mass production, the continent on which you build something seems to have more effect.

As for "how many surfski companies"... epic, think, nelo, fenn, vajda, DD3, sipre, okrea, red7, huki... I mean: the list goes on for ever, and every one of them have the following common denominator:
Cheaper (completely rigged with a rudder)
Lasts longer
Stiffer
Lighter

it is posable to do it from moulds but not when you are changing the design radically every year as it would not be viable. Do the surfski manufactures change there designs every year? Each mould if properly done would cost around $20,000 and may last for 100-200 boards ( there are various other options in-between) so to produce any more that maybe 3-4 boards per week at very max running 24-7 would require a second mould. You get quality but its at a price and when that mould is redundant after less than a year very hard to make it pay. With foam witch with out question a lower quality method of producing boards they can nock them out as fast as they can cut them so maybe around 4-6 per day for a race boar and the one machine can even cut more than one board at a time. So to scale up manufacturing if a brand suddenly requires 100 more boards within a few mounths of any one design only mean employing more low payed labour and not $10,000's worth of investment which will be lost at the end of the year.

 The foam method works very well for the way there style of business with boards changing shape and design so often and with relatively low setup cost which is why there are so many factories now in china.

For it to change i think people will need to wake up a little bit and see how in reality if the board they buy do not fall apart so quick then perhaps people could keep the same board for a good number of years like you do most other sporting equipment of similar value. The foam process is great for prototyping and while the sport has been developing it was probably the right way to do it but now boards are only changing shape for the sake of it and with very small increases in performance then perhaps things will totally chance however unfortunately until things like 3d printing speed up a lot then i can't see the big companies changing there construction methods to much until they totally change there business model.

UKRiverSurfers

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #58 on: April 30, 2016, 01:51:33 AM »
Good point on changing design - ultimately it shows SUP as not having a clue what we are doing??

SIC Bullet 17v2 Custom
Richmond Custom Carbon 16'
Starboard Point 14'8
Starboard K15
Starboard Astro Touring 14
Starboad Big Easy
Redpaddle Ride 10'6
Badfish Rivershred
Jackson SUPercharger
Badfish MVP 9'o
Badfish IRS 7'2
Pack OC1 12'

UKRiverSurfers

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Re: TRYING to think outside the box
« Reply #59 on: April 30, 2016, 01:52:35 AM »
Like children fumbling in the dark, not wanting to stand on the shoulders of other time served paddle disciplines??
SIC Bullet 17v2 Custom
Richmond Custom Carbon 16'
Starboard Point 14'8
Starboard K15
Starboard Astro Touring 14
Starboad Big Easy
Redpaddle Ride 10'6
Badfish Rivershred
Jackson SUPercharger
Badfish MVP 9'o
Badfish IRS 7'2
Pack OC1 12'

 


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