new shaping machine part 2

General Discussion
1

A couple of weeks ago I posted a new story about a new shaping machine here on the gold coast. I thought it would be of interest to some of you as there had been several discussions on using machines and getting the technology to the stage of having a finished board come out of a machine. I cannot believe how many posters related machines to Asian imports and popouts. I have been in many industries over some years now and have had various experiences with changes and advancement in technology. For example, photography has changed immensely in the past few years. Sure black & white is a great art form along with processing and developing your own prints. However, for the everyday person digital is the most practical for a wide spread generic population. Yes, the art has been digitalized but it suits a wide span of people who can have instant photo gratification!

How close-minded are the comments on “NO SOUL” in a surfboard because it was not shaped by hand! What a crock! How did you communicate with others today? Did you send emails or did you hand write it and fax it? Alternatively, maybe you sent it with Morse code. Whichever way you did it the meaning of the message got thru! I am sure it is nice to get a hand written letter now and then, once you crawl your way thru the scrawls and poor spelling. But now how much more of the message can we get across immediately when we send an email with digital photos attached. Just think if mrJ had to describe his whole vacuum bag project in just words…

I think the soul thing is so misinformed and uneducated. the most important thing should be that the designer/shapers original concepts and thoughts are actually produced as near as possible to his original ideas. Whether the best way for you as an individual is to use sandpaper and blocks, a hand planer, a hotwire, a profiler like KR’s, a shop bot or a $200,000 aerospace robot, Maybe even a mould like Bert’s etc etc… but your original concept is king! As long as you get what you are trying to achieve.

Back to my point about the new machine, I being on the gold goast I took the opportunity to have a look at the finished product and talk to the machines designer! To put it short AMAZING! Running a glass shop here I see many beginner shapers bring in work, the finished product from this machine is better than most of them! The designer of the machine kindly explained that all the other machines around are just profilers and this was the first machine deserving of the tag SHAPING MACHINE as it really does give you a 95% finished board. Looking at several well-known shapers boards cut out from the APS3000 I could pick the designer/shaper immediately so close was the character captured!

Over the years, I have been involved with making boards I have been given unshaped profiles from many shapers/blank manufacturers. A couple of them by reputation had me quite exited to finish off and ride, but with all of them, I was disappointed! None of them went better than anything I was shaping at the time, in fact most were much worse! I do not mean this as a negative thing to those shapers I have a high respect for, but the difference was the finishing touches to the profiled shape that made it perform well. Those personal intracies and character that anyone who has finished someone else’s work for them will understand. The APS3000 eliminates that altogether. The photos on the website do not do the finish justice. Sure, the glassing, sanding etc is done by hand, but let’s eliminate one variable at a time!

One poster summed up some of the import and competitions issues by saying “make a better product!” this is now so much more possible with the APS3000. it is the best “custom shape producing machine” I have ever seen.

As everyone recoils at the onslaught of “Asian imports and popouts”, rise to the challenge and make the best custom shape and board for your customer! If your customers go somewhere else to buy their next board you are doing something wrong. If you cannot make what they want in a board and give them the service they require, you do not deserve it as your day job! We know that beginners and the uneducated surfer will buy on price point; if they stick to surfing, they will soon enough find the shortcomings of their cheapie and look for a reputable board maker. If you have a reputation for giving your customers a product that works, and is of high quality your goodwill spreads worldwide.

Are not all stock boards’ popouts? Most of you people here on Swaylocks are purists in our art form or you are attaining to be. Remember the board is only as good as the designer/shaper WHICHEVER way it was made and whatever TOOLS were used. All I can say is get out there and produce the best you can with whatever you can. Custom make custom boards for your customers! I know the APS3000 is on my tools wish list!

2

…the average newbie dont find the best builders… never the crafty backyarders…, they find the marketing ones, builders who get tons of money to advertice in magazines, etc…

…blah, blah…

if a person gots enough money to buy this machine and put a whole installation , this person whatever would be, do not go for the boards go for the money only. yeah, all goes for the money , but i think money to be able a surfing life…if you go the rich onlyway you should change the job my man…

in other hand, the machine seems fantastic…, but this is not the only point…

man all this frantic race man for what…??? for surfing?; for life?; for live better?;for be the ONE?; for will be a board tech guru? for craft the best board? man the best board dont exist… if us , we, took only this way…, i think that only the mega corporations dominate our lives…

3

im not sure what your getting at reverb but, with this aps300 machine never you have to do 2 or more of the

same boards out of economic reasons. the program gives the designer/shaper total control and this is how he puts the “soul” into each of the boards he produces. its kind of like a real expensive planer that remembers what you did last time!

4

Really nice with a shape machine making everything XX% perfect, but doesn’t it leave out chance a bit like nature without mutations?

/Erik

5

There’s enough people out there building there own boards to guarantee the mutations will still appear in the line-up. The mutations that work will then be hooked into by the mainstream and be machined.

I like to think the real soul is when you are standing on a board, sliding down a wave, being pushed by nature.

Old saying…good tradesmen don’t blame their tools. They just keep getting better ones. Keep saving, Dave, I want one too.

6

i think the extra time you save with the machine, will allow you some imagination time and experimental things will be refined into practical use quicker

7

I think the “machines lead to outsourced production” arguments are correct.

The big thing stopping them is that the machines still require a skilled shaper to finish the blanks. When that ends, the biggest roadblock is removed.

But I don’t get the arguments about mutation or soul. People will still mess around with designs - a machine just makes it possible to do it and know exactly how you are changing things.

8

Well I was thinking of a “mutation” more as something that comes up as You’re actually right in the process of shaping.

A spontaneous idea or an actual error, You can’t get that when the machine shapes Your blank.

Of course a shaping machine is a really good idea for consistency and finetuning new ideas that come to You out of the blue.

Well win some of the above but maybe lose out a little bit on spontaneity.

I don’t know so far I’ve only shaped one blank where I started out from a square insulation block of XPS. It’s been tricky and taken a long time.

But I think the less preshaped the blank is You’re working on the less You know exactly what will come out in the end.

It’s a little bit of a different process and I think for me being a beginner I’ts been difficult but very rewarding and fun.

I don’t have access to blanks here in Sweden, the nearest place to have some sent is from the UK. Expensive freight!

I understand that building boards professionally would be a whole different ballgame!

What about the very big companies like Rusty, Al Merrick etc do their shapers still handshape boards from scratch?

Or is every single board they do machined?

Like Your boards Dave, seen plenty of them in Indonesia.

Keep them coming

/Erik

9

Merrick and Rusty each have a large number of machined blanks done by “finish shapers” which are really just other local shapers. These shapers need to be skilled. Then they each use a number of glassing shops to handle their volume.

Making that many boards a year using the normal USA boardmaking technology is a challenge - generally their boards cost quite a b it more than comparable boards from the local shapers.

10

Erik, Actually, machines CAN make errors when cutting blanks. Vacuum hold down comes undone, sag in the blank, etc. Usually it IS human error, but it does happen occasionally. My favorite board is an “error”. The blank sagged, there was less rocker than was programmed in. The end result is a killer, low rockered board that hauls ass!

11

My favorite CNC shape that I have seen so far was an error also. The program had a glitch in it, the machine cut the entire board on the same linear line… by the time it was supposed to be cutting the last passes on the rail, it had cut all the way through the blank and was in the process of milling the hold down system into a new longboard. As you can guess the machine operator wasn’t observing this (he was in another room cruising the internet) and the machine finally ripped the blank off the hold down and chucked it into the wall… made a noise similar to a train wreck and left a sizable hole. The hold down was a little worked along with the bit also. No one ever did get around to glassing that sucker. -Carl

12
Quote:
Well I was thinking of a "mutation" more as something that comes up as You're actually right in the process of shaping.

A spontaneous idea or an actual error, You can’t get that when the machine shapes Your blank.

You are forgetting that the shaping doesn’t begin when the machine is turned on, but way before, within the design software. The real shaping is done on the computer. And by tweaking the software, a whole new kind of mutation occurs…mutations beyond your wildest imagination.

13
Quote:
The designer of the machine kindly explained that all the other machines around are just profilers and this was the first machine deserving of the tag SHAPING MACHINE as it really does give you a 95% finished board.

There is no pictures of the machine on their site, so I can’t determine if they are using a new technology. But saying that all the other machines are just profilers is just misinformation.

And I looked at the time it took to machine a board to different percentages of completion, and this is no different than all the other shaping machines. Most of the other machines can shape a board to 95% finished. It just takes longer to machine. You can easily tell the software to cut with a .05" step over instead of a .5" step over. It will just take more time, 360 passes per side instead of 36, or about 2 hours instead of 15 minutes. This will produce a 100% finished board, no sanding needed. They all can do it.

This isn’t new technology, the machine shops have been doing CNC for over 20 years. It’s just new to surfboard shaping.

I’m sure this is a good machine, but it’s hard for me to sit quietly and not say anything when I know that there are machines that can do just as good or better, and can be had for under $7000. Now that’s getting to where we all can afford one.

14

Erik, a mutation is actually something that goes wrong in the DNA that occationally turns out to be right. Most mutations are lifthreatening tho’. Last minute ideas or just plain wacky ideas may as well come at the drawingboard or in this case at the computer. God knows how many wacky ideas have been designed with computer software… And with a machine, you can have the endresult at you hands in just minutes.

regards,

Håvard

15

What happened to building your own? A design like this http://members.shaw.ca/axxus/m1.htm should be possible to build large enough to shape a surfboard. You might have to scale up a bit in steppersmotors(or use servo motors) though and/or ramp up the speed of the gantry. Standard CAD/CAM software will do(or write your own). Cost should be way less than $7000.

regards,

Håvard

16

[=1][ 2]Most of the other machines can shape a board to 95% finished. It just takes longer to machine. You can easily tell the software to cut with a .05" step over instead of a .5" step over. It will just take more time, 360 passes per side instead of 36, or about 2 hours instead of 15 minutes. This will produce a 100% finished board, no sanding needed. They all can do it. [/]

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i stand by what i said. i have never seen any other machine that comes close. has anyone else out there seen a surfboard shaping machine that is operating now on a daily basis that can do a 95% finished board? i have used and see many diferent machines here on the gold coast with many operators trying to impress with the product they use… none of them are anything like this one

There is no pictures of the machine on their site, so I can’t determine if they are using a new technology…(3 lines later)…This isn’t new technology, the machine shops have been doing CNC for over 20 years

kenz do you work for shopbot?

i cant see electricity but i see the results everyday!

17
Quote:

i stand by what i said. i have never seen any other machine that comes close. has anyone else out there seen a surfboard shaping machine that is operating now on a daily basis that can do a 95% finished board? i have used and see many diferent machines here on the gold coast with many operators trying to impress with the product they use… none of them are anything like this one

This must be all new to you, but where I live there are quite a few machines that are capable of similar cutting quality. My machine can easily cut upto 95% finish, but the increase in cycle times would increase due to the increase in passes the cutter would have make this is nothing new. In this respect kenz is correct.

In the hands of an experienced finish shaper and special finishing tools, it takes just as long to hand finish a 95% as an 85% finished cut, there is no gain to cut 95%. Most machine programmers tend to edit cycle times to the most efficiently in terms of cycle times, weighing the time on the machine to the time of hand finish. Why double/triple increase the cutting cycle time of the machine, when there really is no gain when hand finishing? You could easily double or triple the production the time it takes to achieve a 100% finish. There is no getting around this, the closer you cut to finish, the cutting cycle time increase.

Theoretically it is vitually impossible to cut 100%. You will always have to touch up, this the nature of the beast.

This is nothing new. There a machines with these capabilities running 24 Hrs a day. Atleast where I live.

18
Quote:

There is no pictures of the machine on their site, so I can’t determine if they are using a new technology…(3 lines later)…This isn’t new technology, the machine shops have been doing CNC for over 20 years

kenz do you work for shopbot?

i cant see electricity but i see the results everyday!

I’ll have to admit that I am a bit skeptical that it is new technology, and that’s why I would like to see a picture. Since you saw the machine, maybe you could describe what it looks like.

I don’t work for ShopBot.

But I never thought I would ever be able to afford a shaping machine until it came along. I’m enthusiastic and just wanted to share my experience. I’m not selling anything, I’m just letting everyone know that it exists before they spend a lot more on something that isn’t necessarily better.

19

By the way, there are a lot of shapers out there with ShopBots.

Why don’t you hear more about them, you ask?

Because they don’t want their competition to know. They are so inexpensive, just about anyone can own one. They want to keep it their little secret.

Before I bought mine, I asked if I could talk to someone who owned one so I could get some feedback. This was what I learned.

I don’t shape boards for a living, just for myself and a few friends. That’s why I’m sharing the info. I’ve got nothing to lose.

20

sorry kenz i didnt mean to jump on you… after seeing the aps300 cuts i definitly would consider what comes out of KKL, 3d and abro only 75% finished! the depth of the ridges on the aps3000 measured in at .2mm, hardly worth gauzing. the 1.5mm grooves in the other machines are mountians now by comparisin for me! sorry im in australia so i cant see the shop bot in action but im sure it works for you. can you name any/all the other shapers that use it? can any of the post here about its merits?