Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 7:02 am
Cool man - good luck
J
J
Site dedicated to DYI ski building
http://skibuilders.com/phpBB2/
I was looking at your building frame and it looks like a nice job, I see a dangerous weak point though which will limit your pressure or cause failure. It might be that I was looking at an incomplete picture but I saw 8 bolts joining the upper and lower sections together. If you have 10*72" of clamping surface with a pressure at 60psi then the tension in each of those 8 bolts is 10800 lbs. I don't know the size of the bolts but if they are 1/2" bolts you would need 32 bolts joining each of the halves together to safely pressurize the frame. You could also work at lower pressure but your frame overall is quite strong so you probably want to work at higher pressures. email me if you want some recommendationsmelvs wrote:All done with the frame!!!!!
Now onto the molds.
check out the pictures here:
http://community.webshots.com/album/416708061YxYdoH
Right now I would not go over 10psi until you add more bolts. The two halves will blow apart, they are not likely to go anywhere but if you have a pair of skiis in there you are going to have to do some mighty fast bolting. The clamps might help but the stresses on the clamps are difficult to predict so the more direct route of bolting has more predictable results.melvs wrote:how serious of a problem do you forsee this being? are we talking the press blowing apart?
I was thinking about adding some clamps of some sort on it while testing it, do you think that would be a good solution to the problem as well?
Nothing wrong with wood at all its just a matter of using the materials in an effective manner. The comment on the bolts is just pointing out the weak link in the steel assembly, since the total forces on these presses is in the range of 20 to 40 tons the 8 small bolts will yield at about 18 tons so they are substantially undersized. Normally you don't want the bolts being stressed more than 1/2 their strength which is why I suggested that the number of bolts be increased to 32 whish is exactly how many bolts join the longitudinal sections to the transverse section. Have you got a picture of your wood frame, that is what I'm making.*ARMADA* wrote:By the way, our press is wooden, and we have made 4 skis so far without any issues in that regaurd.
Pat that sounds good, I made the assumption that you were using 1/2"bolts when we last talked and 32 of those are perfect for all the pressures that you are talking about. If they are 3/8" bolts reduce the pressure a bit say aabout 35-40 max so you don't run into the situation that Endre described in the previous post. Like he says better safe than dead although I'd still test it with no ski inside and cover the whole thing with a blanket in case a bolt lets go. These are big loads we are dealing with.melvs wrote:origanally I had more bolts in the design, and all the holes are drilled for them, but I loose 3 inches of ski length if I do it, making the max length of the skis around a 178 or so. I guess that's fine and it will make the total bolts around 16 on each side ( a couple of the bolts can't go through because of how to steel is bent), so maybe that would be the best thing to do?