My buddy and I are about to build one of these. He might be able to get 3 PID controllers from his brother, and I wouldn't be surprised if they each have multiple channels. If that doesn't work, I have an arduino (http://www.arduino.cc/) that I should be able to program to support a handful of tempe...

Good point. I guess that depends on your rigging (i.e, whether or not your cable has curvature). Climbing webbing is very thin so I didn't have to consider that. I suppose it would be smart to make the safety factor even higher when working with steel.

I had a similar idea, but to use climbing webbing instead of steel cable. I haven't done it yet, but here's what you do: figure out the area of your air bladder that will be exerting force on your ski press. Width of press x length of press is probably a little liberal, but that number is fine. deci...

i really like the graphics of the first ones you did, with the christmas trees and the girl. how'd you do it? opaque cut-out over colored cloth?

yes, most of the skis here are like that. there's two reasons: first off, only a few people here actually have the fancy and expensive CNC machines used to machine out a lumpy core like that. so we just make regular flat cores. secondly, in order to press those skis, you need some kind of fancy-schm...

so this one's an idea/question for all you people out there. i've been doing a lot of research lately trying to figure out how to calculate longitudinal stiffness curves, "tip/tail spring constants," etc. i'm not the first person to do this. it's good to do because then we can make skis wi...

actually west system makes an epoxy additive (they call it "filler") called 403 Microfibers. they say it improves bonding to wood, and still is good for wet-out... and in light of what you've just said it sounds pretty interesting. i bet the fibers would work in any other brand epoxy, too.

so i guess the term "natural frequency" specifically refers to the undamped natural frequency? didn't know that.

i just went back to my old differential equations textbook, and damping does change the natural frequency. they use the undamped natural frequency as a parameter to calculate the damped natural frequency, which is what you might be thinking of. anyway, for the underdamped case, omega = sqrt(4km-c^2)...

so i found this rusty I-beam in my backyard yesterday... it's narrower than regular a I-beam (the top/bottom surface is maybe 4 in. wide), and probably 20 ft. long. i was thinking of cutting it in half and doubling it up (so it'd be about 8 inches wide) for a one-ski-at-a-time press. My question is,...

There is a ton of confusion on this site as to what damping actually is and what it does. It's a complicated topic. Lind and Sanders describe it as something that lowers the frequencies of vibrations of skis, lowers the amplitudes and causes the amplitudes to decrease with time. To understand it, it...

What I'm about to write is not guaranteed to be correct! I hope some engineers have some comments here. I'm just a geologist, so this elasticity stuff is a little foreign to me. (When rocks bend, they stay that way for millions of years!) As I understand it (and I could be totally wrong here...) a s...

So I've been scouring this site for months -- reading, learning, expanding my understanding of ski construction and design. I want to thank Kelvin, Kam and Kam and everyone who has contributed to this site. The wealth of knowledge we have here is truly amazing! That said, I have come to realize that...

it's been done before. read here:

http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewt ... =honeycomb

btw, couldn't you just do some fancy linear algebra and model it as a projection taking points in the plane of the ski to points in the plane of the ground, along a vector normal to the plane of the ski??