Fin and Sean's Excellent Adventure in Long Beach, CA

[fin]

So Sean (Donek) and I decided we needed to learn more about the composites world. Sean has technically been working with composites for years now (a snowboard is a composite product) and Bomber is now making carbon fiber plate systems, but we both agreed, we needed to catch up on the latest and greatest. This industry is moving forward at a furious pace and I know that I needed to see what was going on and how it can apply to my products.

So a little over a week ago we both made the trip out to Long Beach, CA and attended the SAMPE (Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering) show. All I can say is WOW! The things they are doing with composite material is amazing. Both Sean and I agreed that we had a lot to learn and the trip to the show was worth it. Not only was I able to visit some of my current vendors but i was able to see some very cool technology that may apply to future Bomber products.

So being as it was Sean and I's first time to the show we where like kids at a toy convention, every booth was amazing and intriguing. You could almost see that the salesman would roll their eyes and say to themselves "oh boy, first year at the show guys"

So here are a few pics fro the show:

1) Sean at the airport in Salk Lake. Nice pink bag Sean.
2) Go figure, our own Dustin T. (LCI crew) was at the show with the company he works for. The only guy there who knew what I was carrying!
3) Carbon fiber nose cones for a car. One good, one not good.

[fin]

More....

4) very well machined honeycomb core material. Hmmm, what could I use that for....
5) An autoclave you could live in
6) Sean and I with who we thought would win the bridge contest. They have a contest every year with several universities across the country to see who can make the strongest model bridge from composites materials under certain guidelines. Then they put in a machine at the show and bust them. (picture below)

[fin]

More....

7) The machine that busts the bridges. They fix the displacement (I think it was an inch) and measure the force. So for example, at an inch of displacement you get the highest force reading, you win. But if the bridge busts before the 1" displacement, the force would drop and you loose. Of course you could make a noodle for a bridge and it won't bust at 1", but the force applied would be low.

8) I love robots.

[BlueB]

Rock-n-roll!

Sooo.... Are we going to see some better cores then archaic wood, infusion molded laminates, torsion boxes in borads, any time soon?

[Miltie]

Yo Fin, Glad you and Sean had a fun time in the LBC. Looks like an interesting adventure. Find any cool stuff to add to the BBP?

Hope you had some time to enjoy the scenery and bars/restaurants in that area.

I owe you an email but up to my eyeballs with moving back to LA and HR forms to fill out.

Take care, Tom

[fin]

Tom,

New stuff for the BBP? Two words: moon rock. I'll leave it at that.

Hope the move goes well and you settle in to being an American again soon

[Donek]

Rock-n-roll!

Sooo.... Are we going to see some better cores then archaic wood, infusion molded laminates, torsion boxes in borads, any time soon?

Whenever you make a material change, it's best to have a goal in mind. I'd ask what properties does wood have that are so bad. I see tons of pros to wood and only a few cons. Maybe you can supply me with more so I can understand this request better.

Pros:
extremely resilient
very flexible / large strain to failure
predictable consistent properties
it's production converts CO2 to O2

Cons:
Must be machined (can't be molded)

[Donek]

I had a great time at SAMPE. I've been tempted to go for years, but going with Fin was great. I got a chance to visit with some of my suppliers and see some of the more high tech aerospace composite materials. Many of these materials are incompatible with the typical snowboard materials (the resins are cured well above the melting point of base material). I found some very interesting tooling materials and finally learned how honeycomb is machined. There is a good chance that what I learned will translate to some future projects, but it will take some time to assimilate everything I was exposed to.

[Gecko]

what about a honeycomb and aspen core?

[Gcarve]

I look forward to seeing what you come up with Sean.

[BlueB]

Whenever you make a material change, it's best to have a goal in mind. I'd ask what properties does wood have that are so bad. I see tons of pros to wood and only a few cons. Maybe you can supply me with more so I can understand this request better.

Pros:
extremely resilient
very flexible / large strain to failure
predictable consistent properties
it's production converts CO2 to O2

Cons:
Must be machined (can't be molded)

Pros:
Cheap
Relativelly easy to work with
Affects the flex, so qty of laminate can be reduced
Positive notions consumers have about it

Cons:
Unpredictable, inconsistent properties - even 2 planks from the same log can be very different, not even to mention different batch
Affects the flex - see above
Heavy
Absorbs moisture
Less damp then some synthetic alternatives
By using it we terminate it's main function - CO2 to O2...

[lowrider]

Wood natures perfect laminate, chose wisely and it can do wonders. Honeycomb might be better left for helmets. and airframes.

[Donek]

Pros:
Cheap
Relativelly easy to work with
Affects the flex, so qty of laminate can be reduced
Positive notions consumers have about it

Cons:
Unpredictable, inconsistent properties - even 2 planks from the same log can be very different, not even to mention different batch

Sounds like a supply issue to me. We use to have a supplier that delivered material like this, but these days, I'd say the material may vary in density by 10%. Vertically laminating the core averages this out and book matching it makes it consistent edge to edge.

Affects the flex - see above

That's sort of the beauty of it. each species of lumber can provide a different feel to the board. Select the right combination of laminates and you can engineer certain properties. It's great stuff.

Heavy

Foams capable of sustaining similar loads are usually as dense yet incapable of handling large impacts.

Absorbs moisture

That's potentially a problem if you manufacture boards in a region with large fluctuations in humidity. Luckily I'm not in that situation.

Less damp then some synthetic alternatives

perhaps, but do we really want a board that's damper than current metals.

By using it we terminate it's main function - CO2 to O2...

But by using most synthetics we release a lot of nasty polutants into the atmosphere or ground water during their fabrication. Converting CO2 to O2 is far preferable in my opinion. If sustainably harvested lumber is used (most of ours is) the impact on CO2 to O2 conversion is minimized.

I think there is a definite application for synthetics in plate systems where deflections are small, but wood has consistently proven itself in snowboards and skis where synthetics have consistently shown their inadequacies.

[Gcarve]

^^^ Great post Sean, and a very interesting discussion going on in this thread.

[nigelc]

Even though wood cores were mostly replaced by nomex or aluminim honeycomb
for leading edge racing sail boats some years ago, it is still not appropriate in any areas where there is high compressive stress or raised local stress. This would be where anything is bolted through a sandwich panel and the synthetic core is still sometimes replaced with a wood core. This could be similar to the inserts on a snowboard. If you look at the size of the areas where the core is replaced - much larger than the area of the fastenings, then it can't leave much room for synthetic core in the width of an alpine snowboard. Then there are the impact and core outgass corebond failure issues which are more prevalent in a foam core. I guess that some of the very high density PVC cores may be suitable but there is unlikely to be a weight advantage.
Many planing powerboats still use timber cores in the bow and bottom areas due to core bond and or core failure with repeated impacts. I have cut the skin off a few powerboats to reveal a loose collection of small pvc particles where the foam used to be. This cant be too far away from a snowboard in bumps. If I recall isn't this why everyone steers away from the boards Rossignol made in the nineties with the PVC foam cores?

[Donek]

Something I thought to add after the other post is that most consumers are unaware of the number of companies that have tried and failed at using synthetic cores. As a board manufacturer it is something I've watched carefully over the years. Unfortunately, these companies either discontinue the line or go out of business so fast that they aren't really heard of. Morrow tried for years, but ultimately failed at it. They wound up adding their stiffening ribs along the edges as a synthetic core flex modifier laminated to the top of a traditional wood construction board. It winds up being a lot of extra work for a dubious result. I think the only long running synthetic core is the Burton Vapor. It's light, but I hear mixed feedback on it's durability.

[Gecko]

It winds up being a lot of extra work for a dubious result.

This is in my opinion why a lot of the board sports stick with variations on a theme rather than revolutionary.....too often people use a material for the sake of using it and don't design/engineer the final product with a goal in mind and use materials to achieve that goal

[Donek]

This is in my opinion why a lot of the board sports stick with variations on a theme rather than revolutionary.....too often people use a material for the sake of using it and don't design/engineer the final product with a goal in mind and use materials to achieve that goal

Agreed. There has to be a reason to do something other than simply because we like the sound of that material and it makes good marketing sense.

My biggest problem has been sticking with my old bag of tricks and pulling them out when I need this or that. The last 3 years of development have been great as they've really pulled me away from this and made me try things I never dreamed of trying or flat out refused to try. This means all sorts of new tricks to put in the bag. While we've used the race boards over the last two years as a means to develop the freecarve line, this year it has become so different that it will exist in it's own category. Some of the new tricks that have been developed over the last few years have been implemented to spawn a new line we'll call Proteus that was born of a need for greater variation in the line. The new race line (unnamed) and Proteus were developed out of specific needs for defining traits as apposed to sticking some new material in there.

[WinterGold]

If I remember correctly even Burton pulled out of the Alumafly cores (Vapor, etc.). For next season they call their top core Ultrafly which seems to be wood based.

[Jack Michaud]

Sooo.... Are we going to see some better cores then archaic wood, infusion molded laminates, torsion boxes in borads, any time soon?

Fin, sounds like another order for The Decapitator !!!1!

"Do they use wood in airplanes? I don't think so."

[Gcarve]

Fin, sounds like another order for The Decapitator !!!1!

They're only $2,995!!

[Donek]

"Do they use wood in airplanes? I don't think so."

Can you bend an airplane into the shape of a U without it breaking? 3% strain to failure does not allow for that.

[Jack Michaud]

Can you bend an airplane into the shape of a U without it breaking? 3% strain to failure does not allow for that.

I was being sarcastic.

Look under the feet of world-cup ski racers. Oh look, wood core sandwich construction!

[nekdut]

Can you bend an airplane into the shape of a U without it breaking? 3% strain to failure does not allow for that.

Actually.......

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/03...ing-flex-test/

[kipstar]

For sailing boats, it is still mighty hard to go past the value for money strip plank light weight timber construction method common in NZ for mid tech racing boats. Many Kiwi designs built this way will clean out much higher technology boats of similar size.

It is a big step up price wise to get a lighter, stiffer result from there. And anyhow, for the most part the core material is mostly there to keep the two skins apart and bonded together, rather than to control the strength directly; for instance the keel on my boat is a full carbon skin with only 180kg / m3 epoxy expanding foam inside it (cedar is about 500kg / m3); the foam is only really there to keep the two skins from collapsing into eachother in many ways.

For windsurfers, supposedly wood is still a better material as part of the skin laminate; not only from price but also due to the dampening and flexing properties as well as impact resistance.

My own surprise is how snowboards for the most part don't go to a wider profile to move the two skins apart particularly running up the centre line; the core material does perform some function in flex, but it would be possible to get quite clever with rib type beams on the decks to stiffen things up, but i must admit to not knowing exactly how to control the flex with such a system as the entire system needs to both bend and be stiff - perhaps such a structure would allow lighter weight but at a tradeoff of longevity. It's an interesting and fun area....that's for sure.

All up, the construction of the boards we see today is pretty cool...for me I think a decent wood is more than good enough, as the amount of core in the board isn't so great weight wise anyhow, and it isn't like a boat with a big premium on weight.