3-D printers. What effect will they have on the surfboard industry ?

General Discussion
1

With these machines you can build anything from a broken car light lens to a new kids toy or a unique sculpture but also a leg rope plug, maybe sets of fins or replace a missing fin, replace a broken item on a legrope, nose guards, build a new GoPro fitting, wax combs, build a new fin system or copy an existing one.

Theres scope here to bring new ideas to surfboard construction, certainly to affect the retail industry not just in surfing, and to enable DIY  manufacturing to sprout from suburban kitchens.

 It also circumvents the usual manufacturers of an item and their employees as well as the taxes usually paid on a retail item so there’s different sides to their impact.

www.makerbot.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o6pcbhylmQ

2

3-D printing is going to as transformational as computers were.  A total game changer for many industries, not just surfboards.

Much like the computer itself, there will be a gradual then accelerating progression of sophistication, size and affordability.  

Once the full size 3D printers have gone into production and have become relatively affordable, probably a decade + out, nothing will be sacrosanct that can be scanned and replicated.

The only barriers will be complexity.  The more complex the object, the more it must disassembled in order to be scanned, although the replicated part from the 3D printer will be built layer upon layer, no assembly needed.

The ultimate outcome, once the replication process is available and affordable, will be the premium placed on the protection of Intellectual Property.  The ability to scan that custom Brewer and replicate it to within .0001% will equivocate IP theft. 

So the battles will become about how to protect designs, and how to either prevent or charge for replication of copyrighted designs.  Good luck with that considering how poorly the world is managing the current China Copying Everything syndrome. 

Initially as the large, mass production printers become available and affordable, mass producers will jump into production, offering ripped off surfboard designs for ridiculously low prices, decimating the Big Box surfboard industry as the profit margins just vanish.

The smaller volume custom shapers who currently utilize computerized milled shapes will be the first to adapt,  quickly embracing the new paradigm, buying their own printers.  Glassers and sanders will becomes obsolete.  The shapers will become known as designers.

‘Home Designing’ will become en vogue.  No need for a shaping room, investment in tools, blanks,
access to glassing…the entire process will become a matter of either
self-designing with on-line tools or buying some shapers copy righted
algorithm, tweaking it a tad, and sending it to the nearest commercial printer, maybe even the one in the garage, for completion in 24 hours.

Challenges of what the replicated surfboard will be built of, varying density cores, rigid/flex sheathing, etc. will be resolved as the 3D hopper materials continue to advance, and trail and error pushes the development process forward, very possibly at the…Swaylocks 3D Printer Surfboard Shaping Forum.

And thankfully, there will always be some old guy somewhere, foam dust between his toes, cutting rail bands with an ancient Skill 100…and the blank he’s mowing will probably come out of …a 3D printer.

 

 

 

3

Hi

Thanks for posting this topic up. I think this issue is going to become increasingly important. One advantage of this technology is the way its mobile. It can be set up to “manufacture” on site…whenever and wherever it is needed. With solar panels for power and the capacity to “print” required objects a surfing lifestyle operating from a well equipped RV van…now that would put a new spin on the idea of the “Endless Summer” !

4

I guess the next ten years 3d printing will not affect surfboard shaping.  Probably Someone prints Some finplugs. I think it ist not possible to archieve the desired Material properties (low density Core, flex, …) with 3d printing.

5

It won’t affect surfboards. Too large to be cost effective to print in the materials required for strength/weight of todays construction. Initial investment for a huge size 3D printer is much higher than the cost of a planer. 6’+x2’+x1’+ 3D printers are not the norm and never will be.

It’s might rock some other industries though. Then again, the invention of the printer did not put the publishing industry out of business over night. Mass molding plastic junk will still be cheaper than 3D printing it.

6

I see it being mostly used in the future for printing fins, fin cores and (once they can extrude foam into a filament that can then be re-printed) replacing CNC machines as a less-wasteful way of machining a blank (you only use the foam you need rather than starting with a block and shaving a bunch off). I’m actually playing around with some ideas for applications of this, but I’m not going to be sharing too many details of that just yet

7

 

See, I think you’re forgetting here the way technology evolves. It used to be that incorporating nano-tech into things as simple as glass panes or fibers was impossibly inefficient due to costs and materials, as well as sheer dificulty of designing on such a small scale - and this was just about 5 years ago. Now, you flash-forward to the present and we see Nanotech in everything from car windshields that never fog and wick rain, to rapid-drying elastic fabrics, to stretchable electronics, and even self-mending cutting boards and fabrics. 

 

3-d printing is new, so yes it’s expensive and difficult… but as it grows the materials, machines and processes will become exponentially cheaper. I mean, think about it. It used to be cheaper to have a bunch of union workers building your cars than those fancy-wancy assembly line robots… now you walk into a car factory and people are the minority compared to machines

8

Objet, maker of fine 3D printers, is at Euromold 2012 this week to
show off its latest innovations in 3D printing, the Objet1000, it’s largest 3D printer yet.

The Objet1000  has a 1000 x 800 x
500 mm build volume that will allow creators and industry specialists to
create anything and everything. Objet says that the printer will be
most useful in in making 1:1 scale models of cars, airplanes, household
appliances and much more.

Objet Announces Its Largest 3D Printer Yet 
  </div>
  <div class="facebook-button">
    
  </div>
  <div class="buzz-button">
    
  </div>
  <div class="twitter-button">
    
  </div>
  
  <div class="digg-button">
    
  </div>
        <div class="reddit-button">
		
		
  </div>
   
  <div class="clear"> </div>
</div>

 

The Objet1000 is also a fully functioning Connex
printer, that can use over 120 materials, and
print up to 14 materials into a single model.

 

3-D printing is in the infancy stage of development.  The financial implications are so profound for the manufacturing sectors that many of the biggest companies have decided to recruit their own ‘best and brightest’ engineers and provide them with significant R&D budgets to develop proprietary ‘conveyor belt’ systems to avoid ending up cost and quality captive to purchased systems once 3-D manufacturing accelerates.  Much like Toyota did in the US with it’s massive investment in robot technology on the production  line.  R&D is focused on dense layer copying, production chamber scalability, and  perhaps most importantly, development of new materials to decrease cost per unit production.

Producing a multi-material surfboard with defined flex patterns from a 3-D printer a decade or so from now will be a routine printing task.

time will tell, right?

 

9

Even though nano tech does appear in some household products it’s usually used in extremely small quantities, in alot of products sold as nanotech there isn’t anything nano at all besides the hype. Most of the technology is still experimental. One thing that would be cool for surfboards is if we could get carbon nano tubes cloth to laminate with, strong stuff. Carbon nano tubes were first discovered about 60 years ago. New techlonogy make it possible to produce kilos per day of this stuff (as opposed to a couple of grams). Still, in pure form it cost approx. 90€ pr. gram in small quantities. There is a long way to go there before it’s cost effective in surfboards in any sizable amount (though I would love if someone could prove me wrong). While technology advances it takes a long time to make it common.

The problem with 3D printing isn’t just the size and initial cost of the machine. Due to the technology, there is limited choice of which platic to use which may affect how suitable it is for a surfboard. Beating the strength/weight/cost of a lightweight PU or EPS core laminated with glassfiber is hard. Printing speed is limited by the melting and cooling time of the plastic (alternatively curing time) and the tiny amount of plastic you need to apply in one go for reasonable accuracy. Beating a guy with a planer for 20 min shaping or 10 minutes with a shaping machine + 1 1/2 hour of glassing/sanding in a well greased factory is hard. Surfboard materials are cheap and surfboards are easy to build by hand with minimal training and experience (As opposed to you car example which I don’t see anyone building from scratch in their garage in a few hours after lurking at forum.diycar.com for a while). As long as that doesn’t change, I don’t see the 3D printer changing anything when it comes to surfboard building.

 

 

10

If I could get my hands on a 3D printer I would make 3D printers with it.

11

It might be useful for rapid prototyping molded fin / fin box designs and the creation of molds for injection molding the designs.

The first laser printer I purchased in 1996 cost $3200. You can buy an equivalent one nowadays for around $150. You’ll get reamed when you have to replace the toner and it cost almost as much as what you originally paid for the printer.

So that might be the same business model used for selling 3d printers… Give the printer to you for cost and make the money on the consumables.

12

That’s the future right there, it’s likely that out of those 120 materials there’s sure to be a combination that would allow a  " shaper "  to print a custom shaped colloidal blank and also a high density top and bottom outer skin so that later…

the skins can be glued and vacced around the blank.

Not a fully glassed and polished board but the components necessary to put together a functional craft that does a similar function…

 No resin or glass but you still get a surfboard that you can make to any dimensions and have it all completed in under an hour I’m guessing.

maybe a basic surfboard is too simple and that makes them a perfect target for mass production…

 Like other developments , we won’t see it coming until its too late !

13

Still waiting for my flying car.

14

Printers are under development at this time 2 and 3 times the size of the 1000.  Because of the 3-D printers ability to layer and bond multi materials precisely, a fully completed board, including ‘glassed on’ fins, will be cake to produce.

Still keep in touch with some from my old team (used to build and manage high tech infrastructure),  one who is working on a heavily funded 3-D printer development project, designing physical plant needs.  The stuff he tells me they have already achieved, and what their target goals are, is no less then a massive game change in how things can be made. 

It will no longer be about supply chains, because the vast majority of manufactured objects will not be assembled in one central location from various pieces manufactured in various places and then shipped in.  Completed, complex multi-part objects will be made in place and the only supply chain will be for the raw materials.

Which comes down to composites, the basis for most which is petroleum.  The inevitable shift to next generation ‘alternative power’ transportation will be supported by the cognition that petroleum, vital to 3-D printing raw materials, will become too valuable to burn up in an internal combustion engine.

Much as the emergence of China as a dominating global economic power occurred so quickly that it caught the other countries by surprise, this manufacturing shift with 3-D printers will occur the same.  Those out in front will dominate their markets.

Back on the surfboard front, the day will come when if you broke that favorite semi in the middle of a swell, off to the corner printer, feed in the design algorithm with maybe a tweak or two, new board for the following days session.  And cost?  That is where the whole 3-D printing business is going to change things, as the price of manufactured goods drops with the cost to make them, and manufacturing returns to the US en-mass.

I personally look forward to the day when Made in China becomes as obsolete as Made in Japan became…

The future is already here

 

 

15

I like it Icc, bring on the new tech in every area…

new laporascopic surgical machines, new drug development, new housing solutions, new clothing materials and transportation solutions.

but can they please leave the humble tomato alone ? GMing food isn’t what people want.

16

You can get a MakerBot for $2200 -

https://store.makerbot.com/replicator2.html

They sell “PLA” which is a bioplastic. The consumption of oil-derived plastics will just lead to more innovation in the materials world to come up with more sustainable/cheaper alternatives.

 

The MakerBot could easily Rapid Prototype fins with precise NACA foils and thicknesses not condusive to injection-molding due to shrinkage.

 

Speed numbers from the big 3D printing machines are in the ballpark of 1/2" per hour. So to print a 6’ board with ~5" of nose rocker would take around 10 hours and use massive amounts of materials on a VERY expensive machine.

Compare that to 20 minutes on an APS3000 or KKL to cut a blank, and it just doesn’t make sense from an economic or productivity standpoint to 3D print a surfboard.

 

Currently, you can pay for printing services to print your 3D models for you using a variety of materials:

http://i.materialise.com/

If anyone happens to have a 3D model of a surfboard fin, I’d love to see what it costs to have 1 printed, you can upload your 3D model and get a quote (Prime Gray material looks like the best option for price vs. strength):

http://i.materialise.com/3dprintlab

17

I’m surprised everyone is thinking solely of foam and fiberglass boards for this application - wouldn’t it be reasonable to think that someone could 3d-print a board of ABS or other composite plastice material with very percisely placed chambers (they can even print the plastic core as a “porous” structure) with a solid outer skin? That doesn’t seem beyond possibility to me - this could replace the costco pop-out board. Companies could one day cheaply 3-d print boards and simply adhere the EVA material to the deck making a prined soft-top. 

 

Not to mention the whole idea of 3-d printers is to once day bring the ability for a consumer to download a product from a manufacturer and have it printed out in their own home to be used - one day they hope to do this on a scale that a consumer could even print large objects such as furnature, appliances and… why the heck not, surfboards!

18

Ok so since everyone is speculating I’ll say that hopefully 3D printers get to the stage where they are in every house hold, you can print new things you need out of a fully recyclable material, not 140 different materials.  So then you can grind the old toaster down, pour it in the machine and make a new one.

Endless consumerism is destroying the planet and will be the end of us.  A 3d printer that does not use recyclabe materials is a waste of time and energy and will only speed up the time frame for the depletion of earths resources.

If you’re dreaming of a 3d printer because you suck at shaping, glassing and sanding…well thats a sad dream.

19

Oh that’s so me ! Almost 40 years of doing this initially as a job and then as a hobby, a love, a vent and a distraction from the banality of existence and I still suck at all of it !

 Funny how the science fiction pundits saw the rise of robots and the homogenised society but no futurist ever saw on the horizon the complete dominance of the Internet or the ubiquitous cell phone and tablet. Or 3-D printers for that matter !

And so the same is sure of the 3D printers trajectory, there will be massive leaps that will take what they can do to amazing levels.

 I want one because I have dreams beyond what I can create…

20

 

 

I still think the best application for 3d printing is fin cores - you could use the structure to target the torsion and flex characteristics of the core