Donek

At this point we just have the inserted version. We are doing some testing to verify that the screw retention will excede the ASTM standard for regular alpine bindings. Assuming everything looks good, we will release an alpine version without inserts.

It's finally done. Take a look. Let us know if you find any typos. Donek

Where the sidecut ends in relation to where the tip of the board turns up can have a large affect on it's performance in a turn. If the sidecut ends right where the tip begins to bend, you get a bit more drag in a carved turn. The board can feel almost as if it is trying to burrow under the snow. By bringing the sidecut into the bend a little bit, the board tends to plane over the top of the snow better when in a carve. This design can also assist in initiating a turn.

Randy, When you continually bend the board (revers cambering it), the base material creeps. The is similar to a pane of glass in a very old church/building. The glass will actually be thicker at the bottom because the material is still flowing. This creep in the base generates certain stresses in the material. By heating up the base and the other plastics in the board, you are releaving those stresses. Why don't we cut pre-cambered cores? The machine we have would require some modifications to do this. I'm not dying to do them. There is a significant amount of labor in producing a core block as well as quite a bit of lumber. Because of our bookmatching process we already loose more material than conventional processes. If we were to cut camber, we'd loose even more. In some cases this would ioncrease the material cost by as much as 33%. I have also seen boards some of my with 300 days on them with the same omount of camber in them as the day they were build. As a result, I see very little reason to make the investment. If it's not broke, don't fix it.

The best thing you can do for camber retention is frequent hot waxing. It may even be possibly to revitalize your board by hotwaxing it. If you get the board quite warm during waxing, you relax many of the stressed that build up as a result of riding. Your camber will last longer and return to a certain degree on a board that has lost it.

Cores are typically made flat and bent in the mold. The only company I know of making pre-cambered cores is Vokl. I'm not sure if it's done on all their models or just their high end stuff. Doing so generates more waste and requires a saw mill that can cut an arc or curve. Our mill could do this, but would require some modifications. Most mills for cutting cores would not have the ability to be modified in such a manner.

There are a lot of ways to make cores, but most manufacturers use OEM producers. We make our own cores as well as produce cores for a couple other manufacturers. Our cores are all bookmatched with an ash perimeter. This requires a lot more operations to complete the process. When we OEM cores, it's pretty basic. We laminate 3/4in lumber into a block that is as wide as the finished core. We resaw the block into several cores on a sawmill. The individual blanks are then planed on both surfaces and drilled for the inserts. We then presaw the shape of the sidecut on a bandsaw and then taper the core on a special planer. The core is then pattern cut with a template cutting router bit. This is probably the most common procedure for making cores, but can have variations depending on cap or type of sidewall construction.

No, it'll add a small bit of weight, but shouldn't affect the performance any.

These guys do custom top stickers. http://www.sikkosports.com/skinsoverview.asp They are the second company to offer such a service. The first stopped a few years ago. It's the sticker material used in grocery stores for floor art. Should be pretty tough. Won't hold up as well as a standard topsheet, but will probably do better than paint.

Just trying to get some feedback on this shop. They are interested in carrying some boards. They seem to know their stuff and be very customer service oriented. Would be very interested to hear any comments regarding experience with these guys. If you've shopped there, let me know how it went. Thanks a bunch.

Thorndike, Smith and Warren are all riding Donek. You can find their various models on the web site. Warren hasn't chosen a GS stick yet, but has his SL.

Jeff, I'd say it's a bit of a mix. There are definitely more people on soft boot setups, but some use plates. I've started running catek freerides on mine. It's the ultimate cross over. If you want something that's a bit more freestylish, the phoenix line is softer and more park freindly, while maintaining exception edge control.

Scorpio, The problem really arrises when binding screws work loose or with very heavy aggressive riders. You've got plenty of time before the seson begins, so just give me a call and We can get you a set. It comes with longer screws and washers for the bumpers. The milk jug idea won't really do the job as they tend to be too thin.

Given all the matrices, I wouldn't consider it too simple. I have the ability to build a laminate stack of any composition. I'm using an excel model I wrote in College that was verified against a commercial program called Utah Laminates. I suppose that there could be a problem with it, but I've used it on 3 separate occaisions to verify other programs I've writteno similar sorts of work and always been able to get the same results. I believe there is now a freeware program I found online. I'll check it against that this evening. Perhaps you can explain simple plate vs a laminate model. The text I'm using doesn't seem to refer to these terms. I'm using Jones "Mecahnics of Composite Materials".

First off, I'm no professor. I'll do my best to clarify things. When I talked about 0,45,-45, 90 laminates and then said the 90 degree contributed nothing to torsional rigidity, I was talking about 2 different concepts. The eaqualy spaced lamintes apply to in plane isotropic laminate. In theory, that laminate could be rotated 12.34 degrees (or any arbitrary number) and produce the exact same results as if it were not rotated. That is in essence the definition of isotropic behavior. The 90 degree comment was simply refering to the question regarding 90 degree fibers contributing to torsional rigidiy. Plate theory prdicts no contribution to torsional stiffness. There is an interesting side note to plate theory. It is much like beam theory in that it assumes small deflextions in the material. To my recollection, it never defines the term small. Getting back to the how the 90 degree fiber influences the composite. It builds stiffness side to side in the board. It could, therefore be used to assist in the so called "energy transfer" to the edge. The other thing to consider is that a board rarely sees a pure twisting force or a pure flexing force. It is conceivable that in the situation where the board is loaded at the tip during turn initiation, the bending force is not in a 0 deg direction, but at some angle to 0 degrees. One could say that in that situation, the 90 degree fiber is contributing in some small way to the stiffness (both torsionally, and in bending). To me, this begins to get a bit cumbersome. At some point, it becomes necessary to simplify the model and rely on what can be calculated and believe in the riders ability to compensate for what can not. To me 90 degree fibers seem useless for the most part. Their contribution to the needed stiffness is so small that they are unnecessary. Nate asked about the prediction for the 0, 60, -60 laminate. It's important to first note that in standard constructions for snowboards there are a lot more fibers in the 0 direction than in the +- 45. If I leave the volumes the same, plate theory predicts a 16% decreace in torsional rigidity. If we go with equal fiber distributions, there is a 6% increase in torsional rigidity and a 12% decrease in longitudinal stiffness. I hope I was clear enough and got all the questions. Excuse my engineering approach to spelling.

I've only looked at a couple Madds, so I can't be certain, but I believe that isn't exactly what they are doing. The core board is mostly glass and wood. The carbon fiber is just the butterfly shaped plate. I didn't design the board, so I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure they are using destructive interference between the plate and the board to dampen vibrations. Essentially this means you have 2 devices with differing natural frequencies. When they vibrate against each other, some of the peaks collide and essentially destroy each other. If you're a musician, you'd be familiar with this when you are tuning. The pulsing you hear between two untuned notes is destructive interference. I think their design actually incorporates a viscoelastic material between the plate and the board to act as a dashpot. This provides even further dampening when the the peaks are not coliding, but moving away from each other, by generating an apposing force to the movement.

Todd, When you have an equal weight of fibers, distributed evenly through 360 degress, it produces in plane isotropic behavior. This quadraxial laminate you describe is doing exactly that. If you're familiar with Volant's product, you'd have read that the isotropic behavior of the steel is what made their skis so torsionally rigid. An in plane isotropic composite laminate would in theory generate very similar results. Using a plate theory analysis, a 90 degree fiber contributes nothing to torsional rigidity. From a weight point of view, a 0, 60, -60 laminate might be more effective. If you drop below 3 directions, the in plane isotropic behavior doesn't apply. In other words a 0, 90 laminate will not produce the same results.

Mikko, I'd be very interested to know what text your class is using. I just performed a plate theory analysis on such a laminate and it predicts a 25% decrease in torsional rigidity. Is this based on a bulk modulus model? have the results been duplicated in more than one lab with samples produced in different manufacturing facilities? Back in the 70's, it was believed that fiberglass was much weaker in compression than tension. It turned out that this was based on testing that allowed buckling failure within the fibers. When properly supported, the glass held up in compression almost as well as in tension. I'm very curious about these results and where they have come from. Please let me know your sources. Thanks

Shear flow through the core is a function of thickness. If you maintain the same thickness, yet thin the core up, the shear stresses increase. It's actually a cubic function. You start to excede the fatigue limit of the core very rapidly. If you've heard of a board turning to a noodle within 20 to 50 days, this is most likely the reason. The manufacturer has thinned the core too much and used too stiff a reenforcing laminate. This results in a wood core that becomes much like a tooth pick after you've chewed on it for an hour. There's not much structure left in the core. If you look at the elastic curve of carbon fiber, you'll find it's strain to failure is very short. In other words, it doesn't stretch very far before it breaks (it takes a lot of force to get there). The result of using such a material involves a need to sustain larger amounts of shear strain within the core in order to achieve the same stiffness obtained with a more elastic laminate such as fiberglass. This results in the problem indicated above. The fatigue limit is exceded and the core breaks down very rapidly. The use of carbon fiber in a very stiff device not intended to bend is advisable. A snowboard bends too much for carbon fiber to be an effective or advisable solution.

I think board width is a function of what you intend to do with the board as well as your boot size and stance angles. If you look at all the pro racers doing world cups, they try to keep their angles down to 45 to 55 degrees. This is largely due to the type of courses they are racing in. Balance is an issue more than speed from edge to edge. When you talk to most recreational riders they are interested in agility and narrower boards. I think it is largely a preference issue, but the recreational riders in the US tend to lean towards narrow boards. I've ridden everything from an 18cm waist to a 24 cm waist with plates. It all seems to work fine once you adjust to the angles. I don't notice a huge difference in agility, but many others find wider boards cumbersome. As long as you're having fun, ride it.

We have a good selection of junior stuff starting at 146cm

We just signed on Greenwood and he's asked for a 164 and a 168 incline. I think both Thorndike and Smith are on 164s. Thorndike is riding a catek Freeride this year. I'm not sure what Smith's inteface is, but I'm pretty sure it is a soft setup. Zoe Gillings will be riding a customized 162 incline and is also on soft boots I believe.

The axis will work for bx. You might want to know, however, that most of our riders are using the incline in bx courses. There has been the occaisional talk of modifying the tail shape of our race boards to meet the FIS requirements, but everyone winds up on an incline in the end.

Model: 04beck177fc Length: 177cm Effective Edge: 161cm sidecut Radius: 12.7m Waist Width: 19.5 Stiffness Index: 7.45 If you'd like the full updated list for this season, just send me an e-mail.

As a manufacturer I can say that I don't consider the olympics to be a joke. The Joke was, however, on us. If you watched the olympics carefully, you would have noticed that every rider not on a Burton had their board cropped out of the frame whenever possible. The only US snowboarder who's run was not televised, was Pete Thorndike who was and is riding our boards. To have worked so hard to get someone on my boards in the olympics and not be able to see him take his run was a major dissapointment for me. I can only imagine what it was like for Pete to not have his family and friends share in that moment. Not to mention the timing system error that made it impssible for him to qualify. We continue to sponsor riders on the national team. Our roster includes Pete Thorndike, Adam Smith, and Michelle Gorgone. We hope very much that one or all of them will make the next olympics and our riders will get the opportunity to be seen and recognized for their efforts. As for the addition of one event over another, I have no involvement in that, but would say that it has very much to do with the entertainment value. Seeing riders crashing into each other and fighting head to head sells tickets to a broader audience. As always Cindy, you are welcome to call me and ask questions. Thanks for giving this sport the exposure it deserves. Everyone here appreciates it.