Printing Templates

[melvs]

I thought I had a genious idea last night. I realized oyu could just buy a roll of fax paper (50 feet long) and then just tell the printer to printer to a set length for templates. Hell, I'd done it before when printing to a PDF, so it would work right? WRONG.

The bastards who make printers limit you to a length of 17" when printing. Now, it's a simple solution, but one I cana't figure out how to do... you need to edit the printer driver.

SO basically, anyone know of a cheap printer that doesn't limit the length you can print, or how to change the driver so you can print at custom lengths?

[littleKam]

hey pat,

I know that epson makes a few printers that accept continuous rolls of paper. But I'm not very experienced in this area. I don't know what Big Kam and Kelvin are using but they have managed to use rolls of paper into their printer as well.

[kelvin]

Try downloading the printer driver from the manufacturer and don't use the drivers that come with windows. On my hp 932, I couldn't print banners until I used the HP drivers. I also have a cheap dell printer, which prints banners.

I'm also using banner paper from office depot. It's not a roll, but looks like the paper from old dot matrix printers without the holes on the side.

-kelvin

[melvs]

I've been trying to download the drivers from teh HP website, but it won't let me (files are not online or something).

I will keep working at it.

[melvs]

YAY... got it now. And now... the press **should** be finished soon. School has stopped nay progress on it, but I need to finish it, and have a friend who is gonna make molds now that I can print a template.

[windsurfer]

@melvs: How did you do it? I also had that idea three months ago. I wanted to through away our old fax and I found a roll of old fax paper. my printers only print about 40 cm long paper.
I want print the form of the ski and now i pasted a lot of smaller papers, but im not satisfied with that solution.

[melvs]

I just set it to print to 'banner' paper. It didn't work at first, but after some playing around with it I got it to work perfectly.

[Bay Road Skis]

I am new to this site, but it is definitely very useful. Thanks Kam(s) and everyone else that participates.

On to my question....

I have just started thinking about designing some skis, after making some parts on Solidworks, I realized that it will not print to scale. I remember reading a post earlier regarding this inability. I have contacted the powers to be at solidsworks (they have yet to reply) but I was wondering if anyone has solved this issue.

One more cad question, with the templates online I see the tip, waist, and midpoint widths, are you simply determining the sidecut by making a three point arc between these endpoints?

Thanks
Dave

[littleKam]

Thanks for visiting the site Dave!

So far I haven't found a solution for Solidworks. According to the tech guys at my cousin's engineering work place it's very difficult to print full-scale documents with this particular program. I'm not sure why but I'll take their word for it.

You guessed right for determining the sidecut radii. Of course this is just one of the methods to draw up your ski. Another method is to choose the center point and radius of your sidecut as well.

[melvs]

is there any set formula as to what the dimensions should be for a ski? I have seen some around before, but I don't know if they are legit or not. I'm gonna be designing my first skis soon though!

[Bay Road Skis]

Thanks Little Kam,

I figured as much about the solidworks... However, if their tech dept has any ingenious ideas, I'll post them here.

So, my best bet is to try the turbocad or the cadstd then?

[melvs]

ya, just try another solid modeling software package.

[littleKam]

is there any set formula as to what the dimensions should be for a ski? I have seen some around before, but I don't know if they are legit or not. I'm gonna be designing my first skis soon though!

you know i'm sure there is and i bet every "expert" out there will vouch for his/her formulas as being the golden ones. just go with your instinct. i'm actually very unscientific about building my skis. it's probably due to my burn out of engineering. you'll be surprised to see that building a ski doesn't necessarily require all the analysis and perfection that you think it does.

for your first pair i suggest designing skis that are similar to something you've ridden before. this way you can test if you're building process is right. for my first few pairs i based the designs off of the motherships - a ski i rode the previous season.

[melvs]

that's what I as planning on doing, just wanted to see if there was anything else to take into considerations.

[hose-man]

melves this thread is suffering a little drift, but I know exactly what you are going through. In fact, I was so consumed by the assumption that there was a standard formula for shaping a ski that I charted about 100 ski's dimension into an excell spread sheet so I could try to make heads or tails of it. I figured that there would be a common ratio of tip to tail taper, decreas of sidecut with increased waist width, increase of taper with increased waist width. None of these are standards that the existing skis in production this year follow. The ski ratios are all over the map. Little Kam is right on the money in recomending to build a familiar dimension of ski. My first boards will match the dimensions of my Pocket Rockets. After that I will probably mimic the BroModels from PM gear. Then some inverse sidecut skis. Then who knows.....

PM me your email address if you[d like me to send you the spread sheet I made. It's sort of helpfull to see all those skis by the numbers side bu side.