yes and no …
drew made a comment about looking at tried and tested materials from a different perspective …
now fair enough alot of the same ground gets trod , but the concept of pre gassing xps was a new concept to me …
because one aspect of xps , is at a certain temperature around 65 to 80c , the material softens and the gas inside the cell can diffuse through the cell wall , it honestly never ocured to me to attempt to pregas the foam …
one problem with urethane foam when this happens , is once the gas has diffused , then as the cell cools down again its under a partial vacuum , this leads to the collapse of urethane foam …
i would suspect there is an ideal temperature , that would allow diffusion to just get started , which means when returned to lower temperatures it will still hold enough gas in the cell to remain rigid and have strength but also now need a way higher temperature before problems occured …
its just like the eps thing …
for years the whole industry wrote it off because of certain problems , but a persistant few went the extra mile and solved a lot of issues , i know ive done my share of sleepless nights , both at the factory and laying awake trying to figure stuff …
greg and i are at different ends of the eps scale , but we both made it work on a commercial level , from a little extra persistence …
sometimes , it takes a fresk outlook to pick up where some one else left off …
ive been doing my thing for years , but now speedneedle mr josh steps in , and a whole fresh perspective gets thrown in …
josh comes up with ideas and 90% of them get torn down based on stuff ive done in the past where i had tried and failed , but then an idea gets thrown in and its like wow , if only i did that back whenever ,it would have solved the problem and i wouldnt have written off that whole branch or direction…
sometimes we look down a bumpy road and say oh it looks to hard , where as someone sitting in another seat can see a way around …
for me now , my daily routine is packed with R&D projects and the list goes on , so the thought of adding xps pre gassing experiments to the list isnt an option , but i can honestly say , with the quality of some of the urethane foam i have seen recently , drewtang maybe onto something worth trying to figure…
but yes for now , eps has been proven to be more commercially viable , that may not always be the case , and its only those that persist and say no i will keep trying that will be the first to take advantage if they do find another way …
or stay broke for longer if they dont …
i remember one surfboard manufacturer i used to know , who every time he saw me would say , " why the hell do you waste your time playing with this stuff , why dont you just crank out volumes of normal boards and make money like the rest of us ?"
last time i saw him was about a year ago , i said i was glad i didnt take his advice or else i would probably not be making surfboards anymore , hes now working in horticulture , thats a big step from owning one the of the largest production houses on the coast 20 years ago …
at the time he made those comments to me , he was considered one of the major industry players , which says to me , that even the most experienced people can still have opinions which can turn out wrong …
so there is the other side to the argument as well …
greg and i could have our opinions , but were not infalable and the next big breakthrough could be just around the corner with some material that all the experts say will never work …
a whole industry wrote off eps , now cobra make 3 to 400,000 boards a year with eps cores …
even since ive been on sways things have changed …
just the mention of eps or epoxy 2 years ago and out would come the silver bullets and wooden stakes , but now every second thread is in support of the materials and the benifits and positive results people are having …
all i can say is why i dont think its a good idea based on what ive experienced with it , this really is like passing the ball …
the most refreshing thing is to have crew ready to catch , rather than the status quo mentality of turning there back and saying im not playing and the let the ball drop on the ground …
its all good …
regards
BERT
I do have some testing, sorry I posted prematurely, I’m bad at that! Like I said, fishing for some shortcuts, and someone with more experience than me with the Tex…