Hi
Before I deal with the 7.8m sail question, here is a
technical post looking at the future of manufacture in our sport.
The way boards and fins are manufactured has
not changed since modern surf boards were made back in the 60’s. Anyone looking around at modern developments in
manufacture has to be questioning the way our industry continues to
operate. Despite the appearance of high
tech scanners, 3D printing, unbelievably strong and light composites, we
continue to design and manufacture fins, boards, masts and sails using the same
methods used at the birth of windsurfing.
The business model has also become obsolete. Take boards for example – a model is designed,
tested and finalised. The dimensions and
material specs are then given to a central factory where the board starts off
as a milled foam blank, composite and carbon fibre layers are applied using
vacuum packing, heat, pressure and finally, labour intensive hand blocking to approximate
specified shapes and dimensions. The finished
board is then shipped to a foreign country to be sold.
What should happen in a modern world is that the approved
design is scanned into a file which can be e-mailed anywhere. The file is used to produce the board where
it is needed. 3D printing makes this
possible. The sticking point for me has
always been that you cannot print with carbon fibre. Without carbon fibre I am not happy. Well a guy called Greg Mark has invented a method
of printing with carbon fibre and with his team, has produced a printer to do
this. Yay!
Control/Click on the link below:
Their initial printer
looks too small to print a whole board but the technology has been nailed so upscaling
should be easy. Just imagine being able
to print off a few fins from your desk. With
this technology each fin will be exactly the same as the original, providing the
recipe used is exactly the same. You could
have one shape with a few recipes - each giving a range of bend/twist/stiffness
ratings. Download the file and print the
fins of your choice. Awesome!
The moral dilemma around all of this is ensuring that designers get paid for their designs. We
have to retain the great designers and developers of our sport and will only do
so if they can prosper within a new order. Windsurfing without the likes of Kashy,
Fagerholm, Vollenweider, Green, Zajicek, Spannier, Ezzy, Wentzel etc, etc, etc would be very sad indeed.
Some food for thought
Talk to you soon
No comments:
Post a Comment