Did anyone see the boards that you pump up at the Lost surfboards booth in the Sacred craft area of the us open? The guy selling them said that it allows you to change the flex of the board and makes the board stronger, does this really work?
i can't believe ambrose
hasn't composed some terse prose
comparing a blowup board to a blowup doll
ala the hollow men by ts eliot...
I guess they are not really inflatable they have foam and some type of glass, but it also has chambers that you pump up. Am I the only person who saw these?
Stronger? You have to vent compsand so they don’t blow up. most things that gets pumped up aren’t very strong (from my experience)
So the flex will change when you leave them in the sun, or when you step into the water or …
Sounds like a bad idea to me!
Any familiar with the truss-rod set up in the neck of a guitar ???....................Interesting!!!.......maybe
Hans, you echo what I was thinking exactly, even if there is pressure in the air chambers they seem like a weak spot.
I wan’t to up this thread because I’ve seen that bufo does it too!
http://www.surfweer.nl/2009/08/04/blow-up-doll/
(It’s dutch but it’s all about the picture)
I thought about it again and this is why it DOES NOT WORK:
Why do inflatable things get stiffer?
Inflatable things have a soft wall, a surfboard does not.
When it’s blow up a bit, the wall can not take big compression forces (a surfboard can)
The more you blow the thing up, the more the walls get fixed in place and the wall can take more compression forces, it gets stiffer (this is similar to adding resin to your fibres)
The form
Inflatable thing always go to the form of maximal volume/surface-area, a surfboard is far from that! It’s only in that form that stiffening by comression works!
Shear forces
Air can’t take shear forces! So when you account in all the above, you’re just adding dead weight!
Delam
No explanation needed here
Conclusion
Stiffening by compressed air doesn’t work because:
-The walls are already stiff
-The form is not maximum volume/surface-area
When can this work?
When you use a foam that can take a lot of tensile forces. But isn’t it just the foam we are trying to get lighter? the foam is close to the neutral fibre, it’s where there are the least forces due too surfing, do we want to add new forces there, and make it heavier? By the way, heavier foam is more airflow resistant so there will be a big pressure difference in the foam, do we want that?
This is the way I see it, am I wrong?
Hydroflex technolgy works insane, I got them from Germany and their technolgy is way advance than our old fiberglass polyester boards.
I got the customized boogie fish 6’1" and took me one year to get them. But when I got them it was like a gift from god.
It is the lighter than competition style glassed board of same size and they are stronger than two layers of 6 oz. regular fiberglass board. And most important, the board was going faster and turning tighter than any boards I ever owned before.
I love my Bufo pressureized Boogie fish. I been surfing very hard on it for over one month almost everyday and it doesn’t even have one dent on the deck and I am a heavy footed 225lb.
I am still tripping on this crazy technology. I have a feeling this is the future of high performance surfboards.
Last time I heard that they are bringing this technology to America, I can’t wait til I get different designs on this radical technolgy.
I honestly thought Bufo was making a big fat hairy joke but it seems they mean business. They even patented it… but then they patent everything they can… but whatever. Hans’ arguments are along the lines of my own thinking but add to that that I respect Bufo’s spirit of innovation and drive to make something new in an industy that seems to walk backwards into the future (moonwalking?)…
Just think about the repair and replacement market opportunities!
LOL!
oh, the regular machined blue-and-epoxy boards retail round 700 euro’s so they are not cheap by anyone’s standard, I have yet to see the inflatable prices (pun intended)
I talked with a guy, glass shop owner, that said Bufo flew him to Germany for training. He plans to start making them here. The technology is an air filled bladder, they're not just pumping air into the blank. If you put a balloon into a bag, and blew it up. The bag is absolutely stiffer with the air in the balloon than before.