I remember back when 3-d printers fist became affordable in 2009 I thought to myself “These would be so awesome to make surfboard fins with” and my buddy was like “You should apply for a pattent before someone else thinks of it!”
Well… guess I’ll just add that to the ever-growing list of great ideas which I’ve had no way to finance or implement that someone else eventually jumps on years later. Though with the surf industry these days, I’m thinking you’d have a pretty hard time getting a patent for something like that unless you had a very unique method of making them
Yeah, injection molding is a lot cheaper for production, but where the 3-D printing comes in is for low volume fabrication: R&D, home-based DIYs, etc. Applications that are already running in ultra-low numbers. You’re eliminating the tooling costs altogether - you’re not even storing molds.
Design a file, drop it on a thumb drive or (literally) phone it into the machine and wait for the output. You’re in Indo and you break or lose a fin - no problem, print the replica out even if what it’s replacing was custom fabbed. There’s really no reason you couldn’t bring on of these machines with you on a boat trip.
For the glass-on fans think about this: A rout-in installation where the fin and the “box” are single piece - an integrated unit. You’re dispersing the load over a wider area and skipping the grub screws altogether.
I think it’s kind of funny how many surfer/shapers are negative to CNC shaping machines, but with CNC 3D printing it’s all hallelujah…
I’m a bit sceptical to the quality of printed fins, both strength and performance-wise. How many of you ride plastic fins in the first place? Carbon reinforced plastic looks promising, however I am a bit unsure about the bonding between layers. Looking at this
it seems that the fibers are seperated with layers of the plastic in between, thus between these layers it is possibly not stronger than the straight plastic and care must be taken in the way it’s printed. Might be better to print it flat in a crisscross pattern, but there might be issues when you need to print a double sided foil.
Even as the geek I am, I’m not totally sold on the idea of 3D printing replacing regular manufacturing. However with the hype it’s seeing I guess practically every household will have one in a few year (say 5-20) but they won’t see much use once the novelty wears off. Kind of like your regular printer.
Digital imaging and printing has rendered film obsolete for most consumer grade photography uses.
They can print with cellulose or other materials, too. They can print hollow shapes and they can print around inserts of various types. For the dual foil you would just print on both sides of a flat center panel, like a thin 3-ply panel of plywood or a flat fiberglass or CF panel.
A DIYer would probably be quite happy to scrub and finish a 90% fin blank.
I have been doing 3D printed objects for non-surfing things for over a year now. I’ve been dealing with their material makeup on the macro/microscopic levels due to the environments they will be subjected to. For fins and surfing, meh, I suppose you could print some pretty base outline and glass it up a bit to get the stiffness you are looking for. Me, I’d rather foil my own from balsa, bamboo, fiberglass or wood. Just my desire.
hi huie thats nice work you have got there, we should have a christmassy sykpe soon old mate.it would be good to have a chat. i have three compsands ordered and unfinished as usual . when do you get the time
i just got off the phone to roy yesterday to talk about the new board he is shaping me in FOAM hah. we are trying to decide to vac bag it or glass ala greg loehr style. we are going for a big wave single fin design and he rekons i can loose the sidebites with this new fin design. apparently the board wont slideslip. he says much higher angle of attack and the polycarbonate material is very stiff . it also has a type of micro grooving finish from the printing process which does something… when i say big btw i dont mean redbull suicidal tow waves. i mean shit you paddle up to 3oh. we are around 50 liters. should just do it i hope. anyway i cant wait for my new fin. apparently they are selling like hotcakes lol. i can imagine them as quads and with a tunnel as well. all pretty mad stuff iff you get bored with the same old same old like i tend to.
I am with everysurfer on this. Probably won’t be the fins that are printed, the molds will be. cloth cut put in mold pull resin in. I was talking to a friend of mine who’s buisness is 3d printing, he said the break through for the proper composites that have the right feel for fins will likely come from aerospace since surfing is a niche market and can’t afford to develop that tech.
As always in my inexperience, can I ask some perhaps dumb (or maybe not) questions.
For anyone familar with 3D printers, the general concensus I have got is that both PLA and ABS will never be strong enough for making fins. Polycarbonate on the other hand seems it could be impact resistant enough to print fins? Further to this, if polycarbonate is strong enough, no offence meant to anyone selling 3D printed fins, but isnt the point of a 3D printer to allow one to manufacture themselves cheaply? If so, why would someone (aside from perhaps the fins being a wildly new design or not) pay just as much if not more to buy such fins?
Is PLA or ABS strong enough to build fin boxes out of? or again would polycarbonate only really be the choice?
I know opinions are divided on 3D printing but just been wondering about this whole new 3D technology really and where fins in particular are going with it.
You in theory can print with any number of materials, platics are just one of the options. Glass and metal are both capable of being 3d printed.The right material is out there waiting for us to pick it. If a fin maker finds it and patents it, game set match, down come the big fin companies. If a company were to sell 3d printed fins and the material met the standards of a rider, then this allows them to quickly and cheaply manufacture fins with less overhead and waste than a traditional fin manufacturer. Why would you go buy 3d printer when I already have one and can make you cheap fins in any template you can imagine.(Swaylocks’ DIYers are an exception to this) Heck, they could have a web app that let’s you design your own fin and then they print it for you. Then you wouldn’t need a 3d printer sitting around. No need to worry about matching the foil when hand foil fins. It also allows you to make a bunch of different templates for custom orders or with a CAD program you could easily tweak the design when coming out with a new model. In the design program you could even have it adjust templates while keeping area constant, that way just like putting volume numbers on surfboards, riders can have fins in a variety of templates with the same amount of area for different ride characteristics. These are just some of the reasons 3d printing fins could be a good business.
no i havent discussed the foiling option with roy yet bernie. there seesm a lot of different options with size as well. i just asked him to send what he thoguht would be best for a shortboard single fin. i think im getting the blue one. i am really bored with riding thrusters to be honest and i dont like quads . i like keels tho so i think i will have to do a keel version or perhaps a quad version. apparently the blue ones go better
3D printing is very much in it’s infancy, and has barely begun to accelerate as it will.
3D printer size and material complexities are current cost and technical barriers that will soon be overcome, and large 3D printers, which will be made by other 3D printers, will become increasingly affordable.
Large production printers will become common in the US, the end result making it cheaper to build domestically the tens of thousands of cheap widgets currently made in China. China will face a great depression as their cheap labor force becomes increasingly non-competative against 3D widget production costs, and holding an enormous amount of US debt, they will attempt to leverage that debt to fight the transition.
Back in the surfing world, surfboard designs will eventually become tweakable on line catalog sales that will go into que at the neighborhood printer just behind Bob’s quarter panel for his 56’ Chevy, ready for pickup in 2 days. A couple of the current large big box surfboard production companies will vie for their market share - “It’s still a …Lost, cause after all, we printed it.”
The custom surfboard market will condense around an ever dwindling hard core customer group, with the custom shaper becoming increasingly rare as the last of the Masters and Highly Skilled age out, and fewer and fewer younger shapers will be willing to gamble their futures under such conditions. And understandably. How many of the professional board builders on this forum would commit to full time board building today, if you were 20 years old and were starting from scratch?
Backyard builders? Will always be there. Just like Bob and his 56’ Chevy, there will always be a small, dedicated, hard core group of self-shapers who will want to do it themselves, just because it’s bitchin to do so.
Check out this unique fin I just picked up from Roy. Cheers thanks for that.
My first observation is that it’s stiff, strong, light, and very damn cool.
I’ll be putting it on a conventional long board to start, basically gonna put it on allot of setups, probably let my brother put it on his shorter board and rock it as a single fin too.
I had a cubeX 3d printer and tried replicating a FCS plug in PLA. It went alright, however after a month or so they would develop a crack by the screw hole. I figure the wireframe/ model’s geometry is sound, and will be ready when a better material can be used. Good luck.
