RISD sustainable ski exploration

[RISDski]

Hey guys new to posting old to the forum. All the information here is extremely helpful thank you all.

We are two students in the Industrial Design department at Rhode Island School of Design and recently started an independent study on sustainable ski manufacturing. Our goal is to make a sustainable ski that still reflects the quality of a typical production ski. We have finished our first run of skis and hope our advancements are just the tip of the iceberg. We would love as much feed back as possible on both sustainable ideas and methods to improve our ski quality as well as general comments. We based this first pair off of the K2 Pontoons which have the following dimensions 179 long 160-130-120, rockered tip and tail with reverse side cut and flat camber underfoot with regular side cut.
Materials:
4001 base material - Hope to find an alternative
Standard edges
p-tex tip spacer
basalt fiber - Want to go even more sustainable (hemp fibers?)
end grain balsa core with maple side walls - Looking into paulownia
natural wood veneer top sheet
West Systems epoxy- Need other options
finished with 100% Tung Oil

[RISDski]

We have now started making a positive to our mold and a fire hose style press. We were unhappy with the pressure achieved in the bag.
We struggled with the final edge cleanup. Used a router with a 25 degree chamfer and ended up cutting into the side of the practice ski. We ended up making an angle jig for the horizontal sander. It worked fine but would like a more accurate system. How do you guys clean up the bases?

[RISDski]

We will post pictures as soon as we are allowed

[RISDski]

So here is a overview of our process



5 Cores Being glued up. 1 practice ski, 2 pairs. End grain balsa core with maple side walls. Balsa is one of the fastest grown plantation plants and has an extremely high compression resistance for its weight.


Detail shot


CNC;d the cores. Wont be doing that again! We hope to make a planer jig.
It was incredibly time consuming with lack luster results.


Finish Cut Detail


Bases were CNC'd as well, but in the future we will use a router template.


Cutting individual cores.


Because the Balsa has no pull out strength we had to rout out an area to place basalt fiber for the bindings to screw into.


Basalt binding insert




Core with Basalt insert




Start of the mold


Mold Glued Up


This is how not to clean up the edges


Lay up




In the Bag


They flex pretty well


Cleaning up the skis


First Glimpse


Zebra wood and Maple top sheets


After clean up and Tung Oil application

[Brazen]

Use carrots and ginseng. They are SO good and firm.

and beets for graphics.


You guys are killin' it! Keep up the good work!

[Misha]

Such laminate woodcore can lead to breakdown.
Skis very sweet)

[ben_mtl]

For the epoxy resin you could go with Entropy... from what I heard it's the best "eco-friendly/good mechanical properties" ratio around here... but I never had a chance to try it myself so maybe I'm wrong...

[chrismp]

you could get rid of the tipspacers and use full woodcores and for the resin go with http://www.entropyresins.com/products like ben just recommended.

[skidesmond]

Nice work guys. Wondering, what is the dimensions of the wood core? Ski looks very flexible. Also you could replace the P-tex base w/ a wood veneer. I happen to be working on a project to do that. http://www.skibuilders.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2845 if you're interested. I just ordered 1/16in veneer for my base and laminates from www.certainlywoods.com. People here have also used hemp.

[RISDski]

Will definitely check out that epoxy. The cores are 3mm at the tip and tail and 11mm underfoot. We are looking into using recycled plastic bags that have been heat pressed for base material.

[skidesmond]

Will definitely check out that epoxy. The cores are 3mm at the tip and tail and 11mm underfoot. We are looking into using recycled plastic bags that have been heat pressed for base material.

That s/b interesting. Let us know how it works out.

[twizzstyle]

Very nice! Curious where you're getting your basalt fiber and how's the price compared to fiberglass?

What happened to the base on the middle ski in this photo (the ripples)?



I'm really liking this whole end grain balsa thing, somebody else mentioned using that recently. I might give that a shot.

[Richuk]

GReat job guys ... sustainability is a difficult one. Go local is the easiest option for most. Minimising waste is another easy way to maintain the sustainability credential.

Looking forward to more photo's and a trip report - those first turns are memorable

[RISDski]

The center base was our practice ski and in order to meet a deadline we pressed it on our mold before we were able to smooth the mold. Other skis were after the fact.

The end grain balsa is nice for weight and compression but it comes with downfalls. CNCing the balsa core was very tough even with extremely small passes, some tear out occurred . Glueing up is tricky as we had to fill each crack and that stuff just sucks epoxy right through it. Overall an interesting core exploration.

Basalt fiber was similar to the price of glass but still a little more. Hard to come by.

[RISDski]

The center base was our practice ski and in order to meet a deadline we pressed it on our mold before we were able to smooth the mold. Other skis were after the fact.

The end grain balsa is nice for weight and compression but it comes with downfalls. CNCing the balsa core was very tough even with extremely small passes, some tear out occurred . Glueing up is tricky as we had to fill each crack and that stuff just sucks epoxy right through it. Overall an interesting core exploration.

Basalt fiber was similar to the price of glass but still a little more. Hard to come by.