Hey all, I am in the process of building a pneumatic press so I dont need my vac stuff any more. The press is a VM-900 that I bought from lindsay at snowboardmaterials.com a little over a year ago. http://www.snowboardmaterials.com/pages/VM_1000_vacuum_mold.htm It was $549 new (should have built one...

hmm are you saying the cat track is too big to fit inside the your tip/tail radius? Are the corners of the cat track making contact but not the whole face of the square tube?

Just from the photo it looks like extending your top mold might help but its hard to tell.

good luck.

Just thought I'd show you guys the design we came up with. Its a rip off of kublai (and others)(def the best way to do it, thanks guys). This is W8X31 wide flange I beam for the top and bottom. The channel is C6X13. When we did the FEA on it we could only get a 1.3 factor of safety out of it. We thi...

hmm...well i havent quite finished my press yet so maybe im not an expret in this but but i'll try. It would seem to me the most likely cause of that happening is that your bottom mold has enough camber to make up the difference in the middle but when it drops down at the tip/tail the space is too m...

yea and if possible i'd love to see how you get your sidewalls looking so clean. We do it with a hand router right now and its pretty shady, we thought a router table would help but wondering if you have some other ideas. Thanks

wow those look sick, congrats man.

I havent tried any spray on coatings yet on our boards. Did you have to get a special PU that can withstand the bending or does it not crack at all?

Yea Ive read enough posts on here about breaking presses to know to over design. Right now modeled at 70psi across the entire bottom surface of the beams (which is a worst case load area) Im getting 1.2 factor of safety. My goal is to keep beefing up the beams until I get atleast a FOS = 3. I'm also...

I'm trying to do an FEA analysis so we can properly select the beams for our press frame. the problem is I dont really know what the ideal pressure to press at is. I am using two 4" fire hoses that lay flat at about 6.5" each. Ive been modeling it at 70psi but is that too much? I tried sea...

I quoted a few companies. Michaels, Hi-Heat, and Conrad for a 14" X 70". Michaels was the cheapest by over $100. The other two were about the same. i havent received the blanket yet but I hear good things about em on the forums.

Is anyone using any other top sheets other than like Isosport or thin durasurf. basically other than things meant for top sheet. I tried using HDPE that I abraided and flame treated, it worked ok but will peel eventually, that was in a vacuum mold, maybe once my press is done it will be better but n...

no its impossible because no matter what you do the only area subject to the ambient air pressure (1 bar or 14.7psi) is the area where the ski materials are. Any other are will have air above it and below it, cancelling each other out.

I dont think its possible but feel free to have at it.

wait a second. I thought about this more...

If you had plates that overhung over the sides of the mold wouldnt the air pressure pushing up from under the overhanging area cancel out the area on top. So youd really only get the pressure from the mold area?

yea def incorporate it into the top mold that would be the most sensible way to tranfer the force.

I mean in principle it shoudl work if you can effectively get it into a bag and pull a vac. - edit see below
cant wait to see pics if you do it.

Through the hole in the end? :-) B. hardy har. Isnt that gonna be a pretty heavy set of plates and a huge bag? Its hard enough to get my mold into a vacuum bag without moving the materials and i dont have any huge plates. To get the entire force applied downward onto the ski you'd need to have the ...

aaaah i guess that would work but but how are you gonna get that huge assembly in a vacuum bag?