I’m looking to create my own surfboard through CNC, but am worried about not making an efficient design through whatever software… I’m trying to create a 7’5 x22 X 3 single fin, with low-low medium rocker… Any tips would be much appreciated!
Hello Chrisman20-
-Are you hoping to design with surfboard shaping software and have it cut on a surfboard shaping machine or are you trying to use non-surfboard software and non-surfboard CNC to do this job?
-Are you going to be purchasing a surfboard blank or use some alternate materials?
-Do you have a specific design in mind or do you just want something close to that size?
I love me some CAD and some CNC…but I do not have access to a large enough CNC machine to cut boards. So I make templates and shape manually. I do not spend lots of time in shaping software since all I need is 2D for the templates and the rest of the contouring happens on the stands.
Step away from the computer, and get out the masonite, pencils, saws, and sandpaper. You need to embrace your creative side. Train your eye to see ‘‘fair’’ curves and lines. Pushing buttons on a keyboard, and using a program created by someone else, does NOT make you a surfboard designer. Wake up, and smell the sawdust !
I’m with Bill.
all the best
I don’t have a lot of experience of either but so far shaping by computer has been a lot more difficult than you might think.
The French surfboardtemplates.com probably have something similar you can use as a starting point.
CAD doesn’t really get a lot of love here. (Un?)fortunately there isn’t a vibrant community of people working with it and sharing designs online like in say, DIY electronics.
Anyway, feel free to share the file you come up with off that site here. The best way to do this is to attach the .brd and then screenshot the pdf plan as well so people can easily see it.
There is a huge learning curve and skill to drawing something on cad and getting it to come out of the machine how you would hand shape it there is still a skill to it its just very different skill not bad not good just different and useful for different applications.
The best way to start is download shape3d and go to there warehouse and down load something close to what you want and then modify it from there.
I normally end up drawing a board on cad cutting it on the cnc then tweaking it by hand if it is not correct and then putting those changes back into cad so next time you can make micro changes to one thing and you know the rest will stay exactly the same.
If you do computer design and machine cut, I recommend you cut the rails square and turn them by hand.
In my experience rails are the hardest thing to get right off a machine. Rocker, bottom and outline are “easy” off the machine if the machinist sets up the blank straight and level.
Use surfboard CAD software (Shape3d, etc.) otherwise you’ll be fighting the software, too.
Plan on throwing the first one (two, three) away, lol. It’s easy to design on software in theory, but probably less likely to stuff it cutting by hand if you’re careful.