Malaroo, good to see you around and posting still. Your technique still sits in the back of my mind every time I look at a surfboard template, trying to visualize the slices and shapes required to come up with the curves.
Let us know once you get something ready for consumption. I have an APS 3000 machine available locally and would be very interested in buying a file from you to ride for myself. There’s a lot to be said for following your passion. Good luck!
Moved to bottom.
If you are lucky, you get to spend a lifetime developing and refining a specific personal interest – shaping surfboards, teaching, carpentry, CAD, CNC, math, science, engineering, design etc.
Most people have a personal Holy Grail.
I would say you have found yours John.
I have surfed with malaroo and broken three fins out of the board he loaned me (still feel guilty about that).
He is indeed a mad scientist (nicknamed Einstein, though partly because of his hair) type surfer, like a couple of other friends I have, who like tinkering with ideas or things as well as not following established paths.
I think it’s simply the quest to put ideas into action and hopefully make a living. Good luck to him.
I admire your passion, malaroo. Ditto what stone burner said. Mike
Great to hear from you again Lawless, I remember your posts and value your input.
Lawless said: Your technique still sits in the back of my mind every time I look at a surfboard template, trying to visualize the slices and shapes required to come up with the curves.
Malaroo says: Oh no what have I done to this man? It sounds like you have the same mental problem I have. Trying to visualize slices and shapes required to come up with curves.
Imagine a walk on the beach together, “Oh look Malaroo, a perfect quarter width slice elliptical outline”. And I’d say. “Yeah but it’s got the wrong fin for that plan shape”. “What about the rocker do you think its derived from the plan shape?” And you’d say,“Pretty close”… “but the deck curve is not related to the rocker, they haven’t (have NOT) used the quarter of a quarter rotation to get that deck curve!” And I’d say “Well if that’s the case lucky they didn’t do and ellipse to Outline concave?” “the nose would be like the beak of an eagle!” and we’d both laugh, Squark! Squark!
… Sorry I drifted off into nutty land there for a minute, but you probably know exactly what I mean …
Lawless said: Let us know once you get something ready for consumption. I have an APS 3000 machine available locally and would be very interested in buying a file from you to ride for myself. There’s a lot to be said for following your passion. Good luck!
Malaroo says: Lawless! You have suffered enough mentally, just like Rooster, I will happily send you a file for free and hope you follow it through to completion and report back to us all with a genuine report so that I learn where there are faults. Constructive criticism welcome. (big words from me that hasn’t even got a file to send yet, I’d better finish something soon).
I think I understand your situation, as I’m inflicted with a closely related ‘fin-making-mania’ at the moment.
HAHAHA!
I wonder if you could also use your process in reverse, by starting with a fin, then designing the surfboard to go with it…
Now I’ve done it, sorry, there go another 5 years of our lives…HAH!
Regarding making it a business, I wonder if there is a way to protect the design files so that they cannot be copied or used more than a certain number of times.
I have no doubt that your approach will lead to highly functional surfboards, it’s immediately obvious to me when I see the pictures.
And I understand some of your comments in previous posts on Swaylocks, that it’s ridiculously easy. I have arrived at some ridiculously simple solutions after weeks or months of intense concentration myself.
The problem with at least some ingenious inventions is that they are so simple that many people will immediately ‘get it’ when they see the result of the intense concentration, and run with it, and before you know it, it’s the new standard.
But it would be nice if you could rig it so that you get back to having a comfortable lifestyle, with at least enough passive income to fund the purchase of your own equipment for the ‘mad scientist lab shed’ and go on to obsess about the next project.
And I mean expensive equipment, in a big air-conditioned shed with state of the art air filtration etc.
I suggest not to protect the design files but to embrace and encourage it. Make your site the go-to place for fin designs. Make your site the place where people buy and sell their fins to each other. Encourage sharing and working together.
Use this all in a compatible strategy. You could have a button people click to order a fin from a 3D print company. You get a commission. Plenty of ideas.
What strategy to use?
For 24 case studies on companies who build their business with liberal intellectual property, see this book:
https://creativecommons.org/use-remix/made-with-cc/
In a gold rush sell shovels and let others dig for gold.
Personally, I enjoy making boards for the community aspect more than any money potential but I respect anyone who likes to make money with it too.
Hope this helps.
-j
can i just say i love pretty much every point of view you’re communicating. But maybe thats cause i teach math and shape surf boards… i must read more of your stuff!!!
One could also have a mix of open-source and protected files, the technology is being developed.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318277458_Copyright_Protection_in_Additive_Manufacturing_with_Blockchain_Approach
Most interesting would be a technology that allows to store the fin (or surfboard or any other objects) ‘heritage’ in a blockchain. The file could be open source, but a smart contract automatically pays crypto-currency royalties to the original developer, calculated according to how similar the new design is to the old design. Smart printers download the file from the blockchain and pay a fee that is automatically split into multiple parts via smart contracts, and allotted to the various contributors of the fin’s design as it evolves.
OMG this is a long reply, I’ve tried to make it interesting and worth reading …
mr Mik said: I think I understand your situation, as I’m inflicted with a closely related ‘fin-making-mania’ at the moment. HAHAHA!
malaroo says: Oh no another person inflicted with “Finmania!” A terrible condition that effects different people in different ways. Symptoms include: Not being able to hold a conversation without mentioning fins, buying their wives or girlfriends fins for Christmas, (and then testing the fins for them), spending their lives buying, making and testing fins on their surfboards, then buying, making and trying the next fin, and the next and the next … a shocking condition usually ending with a garage full of fins and an obsession for a certain type of fin, a very rare fin, a unique fin, something special and life changing fin for some, but a stupid weirdo fin to others. Usually “Finmaniacs” try and make and sell their weirdo fins and even one sale makes them euphoric. it is proof that their efforts are worth it.
Treatment: there is no treatment, it is incurable. It just goes on and on like a problem gambler trying for the big win, they quest the perfect fin.
mr Mik said: I wonder if you could also use your process in reverse, by starting with a fin, then designing the surfboard to go with it…
malarooo says: I’m having an “Exorcist” moment round and round, Dizzy, dizzy, lie down …
mr Mik said: Now I’ve done it, sorry, there go another 5 years of our lives…HAH!
malarooo says: If I don’t try that idea I can save wasting 5 years of my life.
mrMik said: Regarding making it a business, I wonder if there is a way to protect the design files so that they cannot be copied or used more than a certain number of times.
malaroo says: regarding surfboard files: Shape 3d does have the options to prevent copying and setting a useby date. I don’t mind sending the same file many times for no extra cost if requested. as for fins??? Anyone can copy a fin.
True story: I went to the IP Australia office when I lived in Australia’s Capitol city a few years ago, met the man and was told the process and given the forms to fill out. A few days layer me friend invites me to dinner with friends and who do you think the friends were? Mr IP Australia and his wife. Coincidence! he advised me to forget patent and get myself established in the market place, that is the only real protection for a product like mine and in my poor situation.
mrMik said: I have no doubt that your approach will lead to highly functional surfboards, it’s immediately obvious to me when I see the pictures. And I understand some of your comments in previous posts on Swaylocks, that it’s ridiculously easy. I have arrived at some ridiculously simple solutions after weeks or months of intense concentration myself.
malaroo says: When I was 14, my parents had a guy from the gas company come and work on a 3 year old kitchen stove, when He left … the door didn’t shut, he told them it was stuffed, but it was perfect before he took it off. My father and uncle tried to fix it, they couldn’t sort it out. So the solution was a new stove, with no kitchen stove there was nothing to loose by letting me try and fix it. I worked on it all weekend and after school then in a few minutes I worked it out, for some reason the guy had unscrewed the parts that held the hinge together and put one part back in reverse. I fixed the stove, so simple. When my Uncle next visited, my mother told him “malaroo” fixed the stove, (well, she used my real name) My uncles response was “How long did that take you?” When I told him, he said “Any idiot could have fixed it in that time.” … Imagine what he would say if I told him it took me 5 years to figure out how the get fin shapes from surfboards shapes!
If he was right, that means: “Anyone can achieve anything they want if they just keep working at it”.
mrMik said: The problem with at least some ingenious inventions is that they are so simple that many people will immediately ‘get it’ when they see the result of the intense concentration, and run with it, and before you know it, it’s the new standard.
malaroo says: lets try an experiment! see pics below, I’m not gong to give away all the details but this is how I get one of my fin designs.
mrMik said: But it would be nice if you could rig it so that you get back to having a comfortable lifestyle, with at least enough passive income to fund the purchase of your own equipment for the ‘mad scientist lab shed’ and go on to obsess about the next project. And I mean expensive equipment, in a big air-conditioned shed with state of the art air filtration etc.
malaroo says: OMG, I like you mrMIK.
By the way, that fin shape is the result of those shapes intersecting, its not a cartoon, they are the shapes that created that fin shape. It is seen on a front view of the surface intersection lines. There are many methods and many different fins that result. This is just a classic single fin method. I hope you enjoy the concept.
I really hope you guys make some money out of all this , good luck .
