Great. Keep on trying it out in various conditions.
What I hear mostly in your recent reports is how immensely useful a tool-less removal and adjustment of fins really is.
If you could just swap fins (instead of fin and board) in the surf, then it would be much clearer soon what actually works best and when, at least for yourself.
Problem is, it takes 2 people with ‘wet-swappable’ fins to get the benefits of it.
I’m continuing to tinker with the 3D printer, it’s giving me grief and I don’t know what is causing it. Cannot get a fin to finish printing without a weak layer or more somewhere in it.
Fin stiffness and resonance frequency should be ‘tune-able’ by changing number and type of carbon rods, once I can just print one at will.
Once I get the printer sorted out, it will be very easy to just shrink the fin size in software in one (or several) axis to make in-between sizes, if required.
Moving the fin up and back in the box without requiring tools would be awesome, but how easy is it to move it?
Twice I have hit bottom with the fin into sand when duckdiving when i estimated it was deeper. Would those spring loaded balls retain the fin in the board? With such a high aspect ratio it would seem the fin would get knocked out much easier than a regular fin. If it pivots on the backside balls, perhaps this would allow the fin to break the box?
Sorry to hear of the printing issues. IS there any way dust/ contamination in the printing environment can screw up the print head for that layer? Perhaps there is a slight change in supply voltage or Hz, or some electrically noisy appliance is in the area? Some LED lights and some AC/DC transformers are very electrically noisy and can easily affect sensitive electronics that are not even sharing any parts of an electric circuit. Twisting the power leads in a drill tightly can negate some of the RFI, snap on ferrite cores can also help, and one can solder cpapcitors of some value between the DC outputs to help negate RFI. Sometimes an AM radio can help one find and locate sources of RFI with trial and error.
So far the ball spring plunger system has worked well for me, but the devil may be in the details. I have adjusted it so it works for my surfboards, and maybe it’s all different in other boards with different boxes or more wear on the box.
I have gently scaped over the sandy bottom while proning towards the beach at the end of a session a couple of times and the fin did not move in the box.
Changing fin position is easy, just flip the board over, give the fin a gentle whack with your hand from fore or aft, pull it out and push it back in where you want it. Or just leave rear or fore ball spring plunger engaged and push it. I can also just whack it from fore to move it backwards, but that may hurt if done from aft.
It’s all experimental at this stage, it could turn out that damage to the fin box or the board is more likely than with a traditionally fixed fin, but I expect the opposite, at least for severe impacts.
Good points about the electrical interference, this printer is indeed quite vulnerable to this. I have wrapped the ribbon cables in aluminium foil to reduce the problem. Supply voltage at my place is usually higher than it should be, 255V Ac instead of 240V. I run the printer through an isolating transformer and then an uninterruptible power supply, which had to kick in a few times. Gives me 15min to turn on the generator to save a long print in a power outage.
At this stage it looks more like a mechanical printer problem, I have replaced a teflon tube inside the hotend with a hopefully better adjusted one and a print is half-way through and looking good so far. More details here: http://shop.prusa3d.com/forum/original-prusa-i3-mk2-f23/baffling-problems-under-the-microscope-t4731.html
I know this is away from the Wavegrinder fin but…
Mr Mik, Just a quick word of praise for your efforts over the past year. I like to start threads just to post about my own little sphere of fun however last year you started the 3-D printing gullwing fin thread and it went on and on and on like that bloody ‘Neighbours’ show but every page has great gems of scientific insight, there were moments of triumph and failure and it was a helluva read every week. Sometimes every day, because it was a riveting ride following how you kept pursuing an idea, the twists and turns, the reviews, the way you worked around the shortcomings of the machine and it’s capabilities.
I’d buy one of your fins instantly because I know you’ve not held back in your energy to make it the very best fin that you can.
There’s lots of cheap, over hyped commercial crap and then theres the occasional item that’s got soul, you know the guys made an honest effort , and then gone the extra mile, and then kept going and going.
And you’ve done it for the knowledge not the profit, which is even more amazing.
If you ever put them up for sale I’ll buy two, 1 to ride and 1 to keep because they are such a rare item of creativity.
I’ve really enjoyed testing the WG2 fin.
We have had some more swell which had me on my shortboard, btu I did not use the WG2 in it. Yesterday I rode the smaller longboard again and think I had the best frontside cutback i’ve ever had on that board. I believe the pivotal nature of the Fin allowed me to put the board in the hook rather than further out on shoulder, and initiate the turn, then after 75% of the redirection was complete the turn evolved into a downturn and the line was held and the board accellerated into the pit as the wave backed off.
The weirdness post bottom turn I notice on my other larger longboard board on my frontside, seemed to appear twice on my backside on this board yesterday, once causing me to fall on the board, prone out for a bit and regain my feet, the other time causing me to swim. I think it might be the super flexy nature of the fin combined with my ~210Lb body, but cannot be sure.
Todays waves had a bit more grunt where I surfed, and the max RPM in third was not achieved. On one larger long period left I expected it to, but I suspect I was dragging along some kelp/seagrass on the fin, as thats what it felt like, and on other waves i saw kelp, ran it over, and dragged it for a while before it broke free. Very obvious when that happened. it is entirely possible the soft rails off the tail, have kept, and will keep the top speed limited.
But more testing is needed.
On one forehand cutback into downturn, the board’s rail and fin combo said 'do not try and adjust, just hold on. It was like it was stuck and any input from me was not going to do anything but knock me off. While this board, perhaps any board, can do that sometimes in certain parts of the wave, this feeling was very pronounced, accentualted, like I had to let the board and fin dictate the arc after completing the redirection at top and aiming back for the trough.
One more late left into a pigdog just had the whole ass end loose, but not sliding straight toward shore, I still made the wave, but there was traction loss and the same smoothe predictable reengagement.
The more I ride this fin on this smaller longboard the more I feel the fin could be even smaller. The times it busts loose I think that even a significantly larger and heavier fin would do the same, but more abruptly with loss of forward momentum. When this fin busts loose it is so predictable, and has been enjoyable as it has often held me closer to the pocket and in a position it would be hard to finagle the board into otherwise.
And with a little fin behind on the tail they go even better…
The inline trailer on the smaller LB has its own FCS plugs behind FU box. I always appreciated the trailer fin with my standard 8.25 inch fin as it kept the tail planted during hard frontside turns.
I do want to try the inline with the WG2, but as I;ve gotten used to the WG2, and feel that it is more fin than actually required on the tail of the smaller LB, It is hard to want to add more fin to it. At some point I will make a FCS sized wavegrinder fin, and the FU sized 8.25 WG2 replica and try them together.
i had another surf on it yesterday, and the main peak basically to myself, as it was fairly walled and pretty much required the early entry and taking off on the diagonal to make it any distance. There were no surprises in how the fin performed, no weirdness off the bottom turn, no huge unexpected speed bursts, no draggy feelings. I did get onewave that bowled and I dropped straight into the flats then threw everything into a backside bottom turn, and could really feel the fin flex with a slight delayed reaction, and a bit of twang when unloading it.
I really like the fin overall but am curious as to how the flex is either an advantage, or perhaps a detraction. Its ability to shrug off turbulence when doing a floater or riding through froth from the previous wave is one of the most easily noticeable attributes of it, and I wonder how much of this is the Flex, versus the shape and foil and winglets or a combo.
I am a bit more leery of patches of kelp/seagrass when positioning myself for a wave. During lulls I have tried to catch kelp or grass on the fin and it is pretty easy to accomplish, and clears itself perhaps 1/2 the time while still moving forward, and sometimes requires that I stop all forward momentum.
Thanks Surffoils, much appreciated!
The only way (that I can see) to sell such fins for profit would be to offer a custom fin service: Buyer designs the fin on finFoil, then I (or anyone who is able to follow my convoluted descriptions) adapts the file for custom carbon-rod insertion and prints the fin including the fin base.
That way anyone could get a fin shaped exactly the way they want it. I imagine that would be much harder if you ordered one hand sanded.
The cost would mainly be for time spent tweaking the position and length of carbon rods, and printer time.
That’s very close to my plans with finfoil for 2018, I’ll contact you soon to see if there is some possibilities for collaboration!
There were still some remnant southern Hemi sets, but there was also a nw windswell riding atop and combining at times. Not recognizing anybody out, and the few number that were out, were not very skilled, so I was ruthless in my wavecount and soon found myself alone on the peak, and the occassional higher tide SW/NW combo sets were actually Bowly, at a break not known for being bowly. It was only waist to chest max, but some were really nice wedges providing a lot of squirt that could all too easily push one from the pocket, so more effort was required to stay in the pocket than usual with more backfoot pressure and much less walking forward to trim.
I really liked how the fin felt in the smaller longboard in these smaller conditions, the speed and shorter turning radius were appreciated and often utilized, and on one hard frontside stall, backdooring a wedgy peak got me slotted with a great view and a clean exit and a shock of surprise, as this spot rarely has that kind of juice. The only real takeawy from this session regarding this fin is that once again I thought it could be smaller. It does not feel too big, or overfinned, just that I feel less depth is required on this thin tailed narrow pintail 9’3", and that a smaller fin would be even looser and faster.
I busted out my 9’6" x23.5" x3 5/8" and put the WG2 into it. This is an overrockered weirdly foiled board that is kind of slow and Blah in terms of performance. It was the first wood longboard I made and it is far from perfect. It has a ~7 inch wide square tail, and I am pretty much evolved into a round pin/pin tail convert.
Waves were small and weak. The board felt super corky and the WG2 fin was noticeable paddling and when itting on the board it was more tippy as it is barely submerged when I sit on it flat, compared to my other Lb’s which are thinner with much less volume.
The pivotal shorter turning radius of the fin was noticed. Any additional speed due to less drag, was not. it has been 2 years since I rode this board, and the last time I rode it with a larger 9.25" cutaway fin I liked it, but I had two surfs on it the last 3 days, and neither of them was I very thrilled or satisfied when I left the water, but a lot of that was warm water summer crowds of Idjits who would not respect etiquette if they were forced to learn it, which they did not. but underfoot when I did get a good shoulder, i was just not impressed with the feel/ trim responsiveness to input, and felt offbalance and quite kooky at times when I was expecting accelleration which did not happen
The only attribte I can really say about the fin in this board is it paddled really nicely, and was very tippy withthe lack of surface area and the more volume keeping it higher in the water. Ride quality, well this board might have some magic on some days, but not with this fin and not the last two days.
I did once get a sick pit on my backhand on this board. i have had fun on it before, but also some mediocre sessions where the board felt like a bent butter knife on half frozen butter
Me thinks this board simply cannot benefit from less fin drag due to the very soft rolled bottom and rails and excessive rocker.
The WG2 fin fit tightly, side to side wise in the this LB, but still had some depth issues. the Ziptie under the fin in this board, was a bit too thick, but better than not being there as it wcould be moved for and aft without it, even with screw tightened fully.
Today I ripped it out of the 9’6" and put it back in the 9’3" and had a better time of it.
The waves have been mostly shorter period tropical energy which was welcome, and unexpected.
The waves would stand up where they usually woud, for that size, but not quite break, or if they did it was like they were moving in slow motion. The WG2 fin did not feel stellar today in the 9’3" either with the lack of grunt, but it felt a lot better than the wg2 in the overrockered 9’6"
I still want to try it in my six eight without sidebites when there is some chest high somewhat juice conditions. Shoueld require a lot of tape or it will be wobble city in this board.
Have not touched my own surf related projects, wood WG2 replicas or HWS, in a while, but soon, as complete a non surf related construction project I should be able to maks some dust related to surfing rather than my wallet.
I’ve also been busy with lots of other stuff for a while, but managed to make some mods to the 3D printer and run a few prints here and there in the last 2 weeks.
It looks promising, the printer seems to work as it should, so I can actually work out how to design the internal structure and adjust the printing parameters for the fins.
So I hope that I can soon mail you a printed snap-in Wavegrinder-approximation, and a bumpy-leading edge Wavegrinder adaptation fin. The purpose of the Wavegrinder-approximation fin (red) is to determine if it performs sort of similar to the blue wavegrinder fin. If that is the case, then differences in performance between the purple BLEF fin and the blue Wavegrinder2 fin should be due to the Bumpy Leading Edge.
I hope I’ll get to surf with the red fin tomorrow, to find out if it has the basic strength required to not snap off. It feels OK when yanked by hand while clamped in a vise, and has very similar flex to the blue Wavegrinder fin.
Wow, would love to try those fins too. The grid structure in the red fin almost looks to be on the surface. Are you leaning away from the carbon rods inserted from base to tip?
The WG2 has been getting a lot of comments from those that see it en route to or from mother ocean. Most calling it a throwback and thinking the winglets are foils to help lift the tail. Most are skeptical when I say it works and works well, as was I, before trying it.
I’m still keen on a 8 inch version for my smaller LB, and I also want to try it with a smaller trailer, as the inline triailer fin is, in my opinion, a boost in the board’s positive attributes. A couple detractions with it like occassional tracking and a somewhat slower rail to rail transitions, but heavy longboards do this anyway, a little more is usually of no consequence. I’d Rather have the confidence that the tail remains planted when I throw everything into a frontside cutback.
I surfed the red fin in the post above today, at Burleigh, in my 8’4’’ McCoy Nugget.
The waves were up to chest high and mushy, no really reliable test for the mechanical strength of the fin.
However, it did not come out of the box, or snap off, or hum. But I really did not get very fast, guessing 25km/h maximum speed.
The fin worked fine, no unexpected stuff whatsoever. it feels loose and pivots very well.
It may well be that it would snap off in barrelling waves, but unfortunately I cannot test that at will.
The fin appears to have gained 2g in weight but I cannot see any water in the hollow spaces. So, all good so far.
I’m making progress with the optimisation of the printing parameters and I produced a very nice fin over the last 24 hrs.
Combining that with the insight that the fins will not float, I figure I’ll go to the extreme and attempt to print a solid fin from PLA. I have adjusted the angle of placement on the print bed and the angle of the infill so that every 2nd layer runs perfectly longitudinally from fin base to fin tip, for maximum strength.
wrcsixeight wrote: “I’m still keen on a 8 inch version for my smaller LB”.
The different sizes of the Wavegrinder fins are not simply scaled down versions of each other. The winglets have different proportions and the bump at the forward end of the base is much larger on the smaller fins.
I suppose just scaling it down from 9’’ 3/8 to 8’’ would not result in a dysfunctional fin, because the difference is small.
However, for the price they are selling these fins, the average person cannot make one. The amount of time and resources is way too high. The only justification for this sort of time wasting is if you really need an in-between size, or you want something like the snap-in fin base on my prints, or bumpy leading edge.
I found a video reviewing the original version of the large Wavegrinder fin. Note the difference in the winglet placement;
And here a video where the inventor shows the original Wavegrinder fin and other interesting stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1YU8jrNz0Q
And another video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syuiF-PcGSs
And here a link to the page explaining what size to choose for replacing other fins: http://finsciences.com/right-size-fsi-fins/
The best print yet finished earlier today: Very little sanding required on the foiled surfaces, just a bit of saing of the trailing edge and the top of the fin tip where the support material was attached to stop it from wobbling during printing.
100% infill, still not as stiff as a fibreglass fin, but stiffer than a WG2 fin, and that should be sufficient because I have still not been able to find a negative review of the WG2 fin.
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Unfortunately I have run out of ball spring plungers and need to order some more, or start taking BSPs out of (hopefully) perfectly good fins which I have not surfed enough to evaluate their merit.
Absolutely no doubt that making my own version of these fins is extremely time consuming, and I could likely buy many many sets if I spent that time earning money instead. I might have to purchase a set of quad fins from WG just for that reason, and to see if I like how they feel in a multifinned application, and give them some business for developing this fin which I have found quite enjoyable in my traditional styled longboards.
The leading edge at the base of your latest fin has that hard right angle on it. That will have it increase the interference drag somewhat no?
wrcsixeight wrote: “The leading edge at the base of your latest fin has that hard right angle on it. That will have it increase the interference drag somewhat no?”
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Yes, I think you are right, although I don’t know if it matters much.
The angle was not intended to be like that, but the rendering of the finFoil file turns it into a vertical wall because it is just the same height as one of the steps in the resolution.
I’m not sure if Hans can render fins at even higher resolution than the one used for this fin, but I also think that the first step on this fin is not well designed anyway. It has other faults in the design, too, but I wanted to develop a repeatable method to print the fins, before starting to tinker with the fine details.
The attached screenshots show detail of what it looks like in finFoil before and after rendering, and the same finFoil file after rendering at standard resolution.
As you can see, for some reason the resolution becomes coarser towards the base of the fin.
The increasing coarseness (of the rendering) towards the fin base is more obvious in the standard resolution: http://finfoil.io/s/3D/3qzyygdmxfhx1kc9xfw9p5a4qwkejqhe
than in the high resolution version: http://finfoil.io/s/3D/ihcweznf3igh4ifuqo4g6efj1pjfw5ej , but it is present in both.
In any case, a few strokes with a file will blend it in.
I mailed off 2 fins to you (wrcsixeight) today, they should turn up in about a weeks time.
Both are printed solid from PLA.
The bumpy version has the newer fin base, with the fore ball spring plungers moved aft a bit so that the tip can be sawed or sanded off for use with a screw.
You can tie them to a screw and plate either in the front or in the back of the fin box (they sink…), depending on where you want to try them out first.
If seaweed is a problem, then you can put a horizontal pin in the front so the fin will not release if hit from the front. If you don’t want it to come out at all, then insert a pin in the back and cut off the front and put a ‘traditional’ screw in.
I’m not sure if I have sanded them fine enough, particularly the fin with winglets did not come off the printer as smooth as I’d like it, and did need a bit of sanding. You could surf them as they are, and if there are any issues, sand them more as you please.
They both have the same foil and very similar vertical surface area and weight.
The winglet fin is about 5g heavier than the bumpy one (219g vs 212g or thereabouts. The Wavegrinder fins weigh about 196g).
Their foil is Eppler 168, which is different from the NACA foil of the Wavegrinder fins. I don’t know exactly what foil is used for the Wavegrinder fins.
I have not surfed them yet, it remains to be seen if they are strong enough to not snap off, so be careful.
If these are not strong enough, then the carbon rod insertion method needs to be used after all.
Hope you have some fun with them!
