- ALLWINTER
The DIY-Series!
Updated: Dec 18, 2018
Happy 2018!
If you have been following us a long time you may have already read these posts, however as the website got a little makeover I thought I would give myself sometime to refine these posts and update them a little too!
Welcome to the DIY-Series - these are a whole load of blog posts that will give you insight into everything about DIY-ing snowboard to building your own pneumatic press. We started from nothing and have learned a lot along the way and thought that we would give you some "heads-ups" that we wished we had.
The next blog post is going to be all about building/sourcing materials to build your own snowboard press and we thought we'd just go over some of the reasons why you need to have those things.
The pneumatic press is made up of lots of different parts, which are all integral to pressing boards: The frame
Apart from being an enclosure to all the parts, the frame has been meticulously designed to withstand a lot of pressure
Top and Bottom Mould
This gives your board it’s shape
You control the camber, tip and tale dimensions
It has to be extremely smooth as any bumps or dips will be transferred to the shape of your board when pressing
Heat blankets
These are simply to heat your layup to set and cure the resin
Aluminium sheets are sandwiched on the outside of the heat blanket to protect them from damage and spread the heat out evenly.
Air Bladder
This builds up the pressure in your press
Cat Track
This is to disperse the pressure of the air bladder evenly across the width of your board
Due to the design of the air bladder the cat track is necessary to avoid warpage in your board
Steel Top and Bottom sheets
This is to avoid damaging your mould under the pressure
As the frame is very ‘skeletal’ there are gaps that unless are covered, could warp the shape of your moulds
Steel gives you the strength whilst maintaining a low thickness
Stay tuned for the next one where we finally start talking about how we built our own press! Peace, Alice
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