Ok, I have to eat crow here. I've never been a fan of machine shaping...why? well because I've never seen one in action, and I've never been around someone that knows the witchcraft to be bug your files and make them perfect.
A few week ago there was a post of some guy that got the wrong shape from some guys and his APEmaster 3000. He gave the machine something drawn on a cocktail napkin in crayon, and the guy had to decode it into a surfboard.needless to say it didn't turn out exactly what the guy wanted.
Fast forward to me and Segway Composites. I've been making this california gun for a few people around, and I feel pretty good at hand shaping it, So I say to myself "maybe I'll download Aku Shaper and save it in a file....just talking about the outline here." So I do that. Then I call Ken for a few EPS blanks and we get to talking about the rocker, and cutting eps, etc, etc....So now I get to thinking "wow wouldn't it be nice if the outline was precut, and the deck was slightly roughed out, like a poly blank, or marko foam" just the initial stuff, lord knows i wouldn't want a machine to finish (MY CUSTOM DESIGN!)...so I ask him, and he says "well if your going to do that why not do the rails, bottom. rocker?" So I say, sure let's do that.....he says well what about the bottom contours? I say,What! it can't do that?, thats blasphmey! Well it did.......and I'm still alive.
So game on. I go back to the AKU shaper software mess around with it for about 30 minutes, trying to do the rails, rocker, bottom concaves etc....and this is what I come up with (see above) The picture above is the finished blank in 1.5 EPS exactly how it came off of the machine. Fricking Amazing, exactly accurate. All I need to do is rail edges and nose & tail clean up. and a little sand up.
I can't say enough about Ken and his Aloha spirit. There were so many "file errors" in my program, and design F-ups that if the computer could have run the file as is, it would have been a complete oportion of a surfboard. were talking complete custom here! Ken built a custom EPS rocker blank, cleaned my file up in the APS 3000, cut the shape, all the while smiling and being Ken. And it was all at, very competitive price, actually cheaper than some poly blanks I have bought lately. So what if I had to drive a little bit....It was like an educational field trip. My first computer shape turned out exactly as I visioned it....and not like the boondogle computer file I sent over.
What I have done now for enjoyment or horror of those reading this post is taken the human error out of my shapes, given my boards an accurate, solid core for the foundation of different build materials. It's still a one off, and it's still custom.
So, as I finish off the last morsel of crow..I want to thank Ken and his help on this board.
If you guys need or want to try this kind of service, I'd giving Ken a call.