Collapsible 3D Printed Surfboards | MatterHackers

Individuals who journey continuously know that airways can gouge you for the price of over-sized baggage. I do know this all too nicely as a result of I journey with my surfboard so much. I wanted to discover a technique to minimize the price of touring with my board, in addition to the inconvenience of hauling it via airports.

I made a decision to cut my board aside into three items (loopy) and use my Ultimaker 2 Prolonged to design fixtures to reattach it. It was a dangerous thought, however it positively paid off due to 3D printing. 

Under is my step-by-step course of in creating the collapsible surfboard, from CAD to meeting. All in all, the undertaking took about 60 hours to finish.

CAD

The CAD information have been purposefully made to simply accept a variety of board sorts by remaining generic in type. All crimson highlighted areas in [Figure 1.0] are current to assist in meeting and may stay or be eliminated (relying on choice).

All crimson highlighted areas in [Figure 1.1] are supposed to be eliminated after printing.

The undertaking requires 4 x Assist Tubes and eight x Bolt Guides.

The place of every 3D printed half is printed under in Determine 2.0.

The elements have been printed in MatterHackers PRO Sequence ABS filament on the Ultimaker 2 Prolonged. Listed here are some photographs earlier than and after trimming. 

Supplies You will Want for Meeting

• 1 yard fiberglass fabric
• 1 quart epoxy resin
• PVC noticed (tough sq. file would work too)
• Angle grinder with flap disc
• Dremmel
• 120 grit sand paper (5 sheets)
• ABS filament (Nylon X can be used for model #2)
• Security glasses and painters masks
• 1 x onerous exterior suitcase (Bought $20 at thrift retailer)
• Both line with foam or use your cloths for you journey to pad your board

The Course of

Use the forstner bit to create the primary gap for the assist tube. A PVC noticed can be utilized to create the grooves for the fins.

Dry match the assist tube in place and trim any portion of the print that sticks up out of the floor of the froth.

Fiberglass each mating assist tubes in place with a minimal quantity of fiberglass and resin. You solely need to use sufficient to carry the items in place.

Insert fiberglass rod into each items to assemble the 2 thirds.

Align the 2 items with the rod in place and maintain along with painters tape. You might have to assist the 2 items to maintain them aligned whereas the resin dries. As soon as dry, you may separate the items and end fiberglassing the the inserts in place.

Take these identical steps for the third piece of the surfboard.

Now you’ll want to complete the fiberglass work to seal the board ends that you just created when chopping the board into three items. This isn’t any totally different than regular fiberglass work so I’ll skip this half.

Utilizing the alignment from the assist tubes, drill a gap from roughly a forty five diploma angle from the highest floor of the board and about 50 mm from the rail. You have to to drill 4 of those holes. The secret is to attempt to drill immediately via the center of the mating surfaces.

 Assemble the T-nuts onto the bolt information and seal the connection by wrapping a small strip of painters tape between the T-nut and the bolt information. Subsequent, fiberglass the daring guides in place at your required angle. The bolt guides are purposefully lengthy in order that they stick up out of the board in an effort to keep away from resin dripping into the information. When the final layer of fiberglass is dry, trim off any extra print materials sticking up above the floor of the board.

Notes

Take your time. This can be a very troublesome undertaking and isn’t really useful to anybody who doesn’t really feel comfy with detailed fiberglass strategies. Keep in mind, you could simply destroy your favourite surfboard (I certain might have ruined mine had this not labored or had I botched my glass job). I’m a newbie 3D Printer, however proficient with fiberglass work. You don’t want a 3D printer to do that undertaking, however by using the advantages of 3D printing, all of the mating elements are good and solely took a couple of hours to print quite than days to manufacture. That is a fully superb profit to utilizing a 3D printer: Dependable and correct execution.

All in all, the undertaking took about 60 hours to finish in 7 days…it was a protracted week. Nonetheless, I wish to assume the reward was value it! Now I can take my favourite board with me anyplace and by no means pay a baggage price once more!