Personal Research Paper

Eli Agutter Writing 1010 Erin Rogers 10/28/18 My Ski Building Experience I am a senior in high school, I want to go to college for an engineering or design degree. At my school we have to do an internship to graduate. I did mine over the summer before my senior year. It was at an industrial design firm. They asked me what I wanted to make, and I brainstormed with the other kid who was also doing the internship. We came up with the idea to build some skis. They had built skis before for a dogsled that they had made, but they had never pressed skis. They had only used a vacuum bag. Their experience with the materials and what had worked for them was probably the most helpful information during this process. They helped to steer us away from certain materials because they had trouble with them before. When I started the process of building my skis, I had no clue what I was doing. I essentially had to learn how to build skis from scratch. The mentors that I had at my internship were very helpful in finding sources good sources, that would give me the information that I needed. They also were very helpful with the knowledge that they had from building skis previously. The first step in the process was to build the tools and equipment that I did not have access to. For this I found many websites and forums that would use what others had done to tell you what works the best. Finally, I had to construct the final product, for this I used a ski companies website to get the dimensions and shape that I wanted. I also used some websites to find out what to put into my skis and how to do it.

To begin building I had to some research, I had to find out the materials that I wanted to use, the equipment and tools that were needed, and I had to get some sense of what I was getting myself into. I also had to 3d model my skis so we could use the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine. I found a very helpful youtuber named Lars Christensen. His videos were short and very easy to understand. His videos were also specifically for beginners with the program which made it, so I didn’t have to guess how to do anything. I remember a specific video called “Fusion 360 Tutorial for Absolute Beginners – Part 1 (Lars Christensen)”. This was the first video I watched, and it went over the basics really well. I continued to watch the series and j eventually began to understand how to use Fusion 360. These videos allowed me to model my skis, so we could cut out the base material, core, core profiler, and mold. To model the skis, I had to figure out what dimensions I wanted. The other kid who I was doing my internship with had a pair of skis that he really liked. We went to the website for those skis and found the dimensions. It describes the skis as having “Playful Float, Maximum Confidence, Ultimate Freeride Experience” (Kästle Ski, BMXM105 HP)”. We liked the description and he liked the way they rode so we decided to use the dimensions that they had on the site. R ADIUS LENGTH SIDECUT 19 M 134 mm

173 CM

Tip 105 mm Waist

21 M 181 CM 23 M

123 mm Tail

189 CM

He already had the 189 cm and the 181 cm so we decided to make our 185 cm with a 22 M Turn Radius. We kept the Side cut dimensions the same. This site was very helpful both in the modeling period and during construction. The next step was to figure out what tools we needed and how to make them. I looked for forums because I knew that other people had done what I was trying to do, and they had to have figured some way to make the tools without too much expense. I found a website called skibuilders.com, which is a forum that has been made easier to figure out what is going on. They have it organized into pages that make it very simple to get around to different areas of the page. In the how to section it says, “The equipment needed to build skis includes: a ski press, a core (usually wood) profiler, and an edge bender (Leang, Kam S., et al.)”. There is then a small description of how to make each one of these things. The edge bender was the most helpful bit of information that I found on this page. The rest was much easier to figure out otherwise. Edges are made out of heat tempered steel which make them extremely hard to work with. There is a specific page with step by step instructions to build an edge bender. We used this to make our own edge bender rather than trying to do it with plyers or some other tool. The final edge bender that we made worked extremely well thanks to the instructions given by the site. This site alone made the whole process go so much faster than it would have otherwise. For the final construction process, I needed more information, I found a series on YouTube where they toured a snowboard factory in which everything was done by hand. This gave us an idea of how to lay up the skis (putting everything together with epoxy before you press). It also gave us an idea of how to clean up the skis after the press. I also found another ski shop site which had a video following the process of how they build skis. The shops these videos were filmed in are Never Summer Snowboards, and Community Skis respectively. The Never Summer Video is in a

factory setting whereas the Community skis video is in a local shop. They were both very helpful during this process. This whole process was very challenging and at the same time it was very fun. I feel like it taught me how to start something and finish it without having any experience in that field or subject. I enjoyed my time building the skis and can’t wait until skis season, so I can test them out. They ended up coming out of the press a little funky, but they are still cool and I am still proud of them. If I wanted to make another pair of skis they would probably come out better than the first time due to all that I learned throughout the process

Works Cited “BMX105 HP.” Skis – Kästle Ski, www.kaestle.com/en/products/skis/show/bmx105-hp/. Christensen, Lars. “Fusion 360 Tutorial for Absolute Beginners- Part 1.” YouTube, YouTube, 20 Dec. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5bc9c3S12g. “Community Skis - Custom Ski Manufacturing.” Community Skis - Custom Ski Manufacturing, www.communityskis.com/. Leang, Kam S., et al. SkiBuilders.com: How to Build Your Own Ride, skibuilders.com/howto/. Snowboarding, Transworld. “Building a Custom Snowboard at the Never Summer Snowboard Factory : Day 1.” YouTube, YouTube, 11 Oct. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX0P5_km9UA&t=2288s.