thank you carl, very cool pics…it is real enlightening to see the real deal instead of the illustrated diagrams. does seem that there is a bit of attention to detail missing in the layup of the interior of the core. are the contours in the foil “built in” or shaped into the blue layer by hand/cad?
thanks for the info Carl, very interesting
i made a mistake with the foam i have - its expanded polypropylene (EPP) popular with the categories of aeromodelling that crash a lot
http://www.slopeflyer.com/artman/publish/article_257.shtml
looks very similar to eps, hot wire cuts, won’t melt if glued with solvent based adhesives, much tougher and snap resistant. epoxy peels off it. Just been to salomons website, they say they use EPP - i should have checked earlier
here is my chunk, takes a bit of effort to bend
I wonder if the blue XPS foam sheets are formed in a heated mold?
Hi Carl,
How thick are the skins, bout 3/8" or so? Do you know what glassing schedule was used?
regards,
Håvard
A few questions. How did this board break?
And can you cut the board cleanly and then take pictures of the cross-section, especially the rails when they join the top and bottom?
Interesting. Dow blue board skins (I wonder which density?). That does look like polypropylene in the ribs, could be polyethylene. They used the same thing in some of the hollow boards from the early 70’s. Hansen’s stratoglass I think? The glue looks messy but that’s because it’s a foaming urethane glue. We used to use one like it for stringer glue up. Stuff is great at filling inevitable voids between parts. It foams just enough without going crazy like two part urethane. The board obviously failed at the rail. Doesn’t seem to be much structure there. I’m guessing they are counting on the overlap on the outside for some of that structure. Perhaps lapping all layers might help. Possibly even some glass tape over that rail. Shear loads on that rail are going to intense though. The polyprop ribbing will do nothing to relieve this and the carbon would actually force more of the load to be carried by that rail. Also, the weight of the carbon looks a bit overkill to me. I would think a lighter weight would be ample. Most of that load inside will be tension so I might think about using 2 oz. Kevlar instead. Just my view though…
Also the carbon under the deck is a non woven unidirectional. Since it’s not a woven so there is no crimp at all. This will vastly reduce flex in the deck half of the composite. Even more stress on the rail. Cool pictures of an interesting product. Thanks dude.
I know the blue foam isnt EPS… I have a piece of blue foam… and thats inst normal foam.
Haavard- The skins are 1/4" thick. I believe the board is glassed 4X4 deck 4 bott. It looks like all 4oz cloth. [=1]
[=Black][ 2]Vanbokklen - The board got caught under the lip in a close-out upside down. I think if it had been deck up, it probably would not have failed. Who knows? 
-Carl [/][/][/]
Everyone on this site should realize by now that Salomon is not the brightest company when it comes to engineering. I might be the chump who accidentally got the S-Core ball rolling back in 1996. I explained to the fellow who now heads the S-Core team how I used to make prototypes out of hollow Dow blue XPS foam back in the early '80s. It was a late night dinner in Vegas. He was but a fresh magazine intern from West Oz. This is indeed all that you are seeing on this website. They borrowed their EPP knowledge from Jim Richardson of Surflight Hawaii, who is lightyears ahead of all of Salomon engineers combined. They’ve been flying to the Northshore and dumpster-diving at his factory for the last three years. Jim’s website is www.surflight.com. His boards have insanely progressive qualities but are time consuming to build. I own boards of twelve different unique types of constructions that most people have probably never tried or are not aware of. The Surflight kicks arse. Please don’t give Salomon any more credit than they deserve. They are really just hoping to sell surf clothing. They are actually losing $millions on hardgoods for mother company Adidas every year. This is their attempt to enter the surf clothing market just as K2 tried with the $50K big wave challenge. Bert Burger’s and Randy French’s sandwiches are way superior sandwiches to S-cores. Salomon marketing is very relentless. The “engineers” should start by cutting their Gorilla Glue amounts in half! Love Delbert Pumpernickel
yep …and the other half of the development team either worked alongside some of my former employies ,or have been intrigued by my developments over the years before they became salomon workers…anyone on the west coast of oz in the surfboard industry knows the real deal…
ok here come the stats …
the blue foam is indeed dow xps at 28 kg per m3,hotwired into 10 mm sheets then lightly sanded …
the beaded foam is eps L grade 17 to 18 kilo per m3 …
that glue is single pak foaming urethane whick needs moisture to make it foam better…
the basic method is this …
the skin is reverse vacumed into a mold with the carbon and epoxy resin on one side ,each side is done separatly …once the resin setts it keeps that shape…
then the 2 halves are lightly press joined with the 3 eps stringers and foaming urethane…
the 10 mm xps offers a little room for a shaper to put some some light contours in …
once the rails and bottom are up to scratch the board is glassed in the conventional manner with 4 bottom and 4x4 deck with epoxy resin…
i wont waste my time highlighting all the shortcomings of these boards…
when the salomon masters was on down at margaret river a month or so back…
salomon had flown all of there retailers to the contest …
anyway there best retailer in australia just happened to be a guy ive been selling boards to for nearly a decade on the east coast …he told me he brought 8 of them back in november hasnt sold one yet but still made him there best retailer in oz …
so were hanging out at the comp and around the place at salomons expense ,we had just been for a wave and were in the carpark talking to another salomon retailer …hes raving about his new salomon 6’-3" and how light it is ,how strong it is …
my retailer buddy says to me " better show him " so i pull a seven year old 8’ board out of my van and hand it to him ,hes blown away that its lighter than his 6’-3" …then i take it back put it on the ground deck down and start jumping up and down on it like a trampoline…then i put it back in my van …
the guy is standing there with his mouth open…i couldnt be stuffed with an explanation …
the bottom line is salomon are a full decade behind the times ,have a lot of learning to do ,what there they are doing now i was doing 10 years back and wrote off as a bad experiment while i digressed for a period from what i was doing all along and am still doing now…
i could probably throw in a few expletives about salomon and how they’ve done business and gathered information …
but im not really fussed anymore …
i just wanna go surfing and enjoy life and i hope it works out for them…
regards
BERT
Hey Bert, I’m surprised Solomon, or a similar company, hasn’t offered you a deal for your technology. Maybe they have.
Could you, or would you, be bothered, if the price and terms were right? Seems to me you would save a them a lot of wasted time and energy, and at the same time give your technology the credit it deserves.
Quote:
Hey Bert, I'm surprised Solomon, or a similar company, hasn't offered you a deal for your technology. Maybe they have.Could you, or would you, be bothered, if the price and terms were right? Seems to me you would save a them a lot of wasted time and energy, and at the same time give your technology the credit it deserves.
How would he get the credit he deserves? If Solomon bought the rights, they’d go ranting about their “new breakthrough” and Bert couldn’t even talk on Swaylocks about how they’re full of balogna without being sued.
Quote:
ok here come the stats .....the blue foam is indeed dow xps at 28 kg per m3,hotwired into 10 mm sheets then lightly sanded …
the beaded foam is eps L grade 17 to 18 kilo per m3 …
that glue is single pak foaming urethane whick needs moisture to make it foam better…
the basic method is this …
the skin is reverse vacumed into a mold with the carbon and epoxy resin on one side ,each side is done separatly …once the resin setts it keeps that shape…
then the 2 halves are lightly press joined with the 3 eps stringers and foaming urethane…
the 10 mm xps offers a little room for a shaper to put some some light contours in …
once the rails and bottom are up to scratch the board is glassed in the conventional manner with 4 bottom and 4x4 deck with epoxy resin…
Very interesting.
That’s a lot more low-tech than I expected. I was expecting heated steel or aluminum molds, and higher tech foams. They’re doing something that anyone can do in their garage with off the shelf materials. One could easily make the molds out of fiberglass and make their own S-cores as a weekend project.
Although I agree that this constuction may not be worth any performance benefits, it does show how the homebuilder can easy try things for pennies on the dollar, that cost mega-companies millions of dollars.
Word!
Word!
Word!
Try it at home, but use higher density PVC foam or end grain balsa for the skin core. Outsmart Salomon on your first try! Don’t forget a pressure/drain plug. All materials are available from fiberglasssupply.com except PU glue which is at Home Depot. Elmers is half the price of Gorilla Glue. Love Delbert Pumpernickel
oh boy, this is nice. reminds me at my days in the sailboard industry. get some old sailboard mags, you will find all there. and more. but keep in mind that in sailboards a lot of weight could be saved because of their volume. this is not the case in surfboards and you will soon create a “popper”, something that has too much flotation and becomes too stiff due to the materials/technology used. some of these effects can be conter acted through the shape and more technology. the alternative is a pu blank with little glass, you can make several of those for the price of one high tech thingo. and no amount of carbon,kevlar, r and s-glass can withstand that little dumper. enjoy, have fun, don’t take the easy way out. evolve.
As far as “too floaty” is concerned - this may be true for lighter weight surfers - but as a heavier guy (I keep telling myself it’s 225 lb of muscle - sadly not true) - I find that super light weight boards just go much better. I especially find that wave catching is helped - maybe due to the extra buoyancy in the tail? Delbert, Greg and Bert seem to like lighter boards - is this because they’re heavyweights + corkiness is not a factor.