Frank does it again....

[kevbo]

THE CAMBER OF THAT BOARD IS JUST AWESOME. I THINK THESE THREADS HAVE GOT ME MOTIVATED TO SPRING FOR THE BERSERKER. ANYONE OUT THERE KNOW THE BEST ROUTE TO ORDER ONE OF THESE SWEET RIDES?

THANKS

KR:lol:

[Istvan]

Kevbo, to get a Virus you must talk to master Frank.

VIRUS-Snowboards@t-online.de

www.virus-snowboards.de

+49 602 265 5553

Cheers

[kevbo]

THANKS TO YOU BOTH FOR THE INFO. I WILL GET ON THE HORN:)

[Donek]

I'm not questioning, at all, the qulity or durability of Virus boards. Absolutelly love my Vampire.

I just want to understand why a material would be used in an application that seems wrong for it. As I said, it makes perfect sense to be in the bottom layers of a board.

Torsion box, yes, works great, but Zylon is not a material for that. You need a material that's good in compression, tension and torsion, like carbon or glass. Zylon works great in tension, and that's about it. Torsion (twisting) actually destroyes it.

So, I expect someones engeneering kind of input, to enlighten me.

Again, very concise question:

Why would Zylon work good in the top layer of a board?

_

As an engineer and board builder who's visited with Frank a couple times at SES, I'll answer a couple of these for you.

Frank uses a spray finish to generate the ultra glossy look. My guess is he's researched the UV penetration of that material and found it adequately protects the materials under it, but ask him.

UV sensitive is right. In our tests, the stuff we left out in the sun lost 50% of its tensile strength in 2 days.

The connection between strength and stiffness is commonly missplaced. Just because the ropes broke under less force after UV exposure doesn't mean the elastic modulus changed. A change in strength is not going to affect the boards stiffness/flex. Given the overwhelming strength of this material and the fact that it is right next to a piece of wood, it's pretty easy to see which is the weaker component. Even if the fiber's loose 50% of their strength, they're still dramatically stronger than the wood. The wood is still going to fail before the zylon.

I'm not really sure where you're getting the data on compression vs tension on the zylon. There was similar data on fiberglass until they discovered the compression failures were buckling failures rather than true compressions failures. Regardless of performance in compression and tension, a properly designed composite laminate is symmetric about the neutral axis. This is why you see titanal on top and bottom. Well designed snowboards have the same glass laminates top and bottom. It produces a product that flexes consistently without warping, twisting or cupping. The board reacts consistently to changes in temperature (basically stays flat edge to edge) as well. Unbalanced laminate stacks produce all sorts of problems, so I'd be concerned if there was just zylon on one surface instead of both.

Hopefully that clears things up a bit.

[BlueB]

Sean, great, thanks! That's the kind of input I was looking for.

All good if the materials are paired top and bottom. Makes sense.

[Hans]

Those guys who have a hesitation about Zylon VIRUS boards better stay far away from it, stay there otherwise you will be:AR15firin infected by the Zylon VIRUS...:lol: and you will never get rid of the VIRUS. It has 'infected' many people like me, Ray, Istvan and many others here. So don't argue here, stay away from it, just ride the damn thing and you never gonna heal

[carvedog]

As an engineer and board builder who's visited with Frank a couple times at SES, I'll answer a couple of these for you.

Frank uses a spray finish to generate the ultra glossy look. My guess is he's researched the UV penetration of that material and found it adequately protects the materials under it, but ask him.

The connection between strength and stiffness is commonly missplaced. Just because the ropes broke under less force after UV exposure doesn't mean the elastic modulus changed. A change in strength is not going to affect the boards stiffness/flex. Given the overwhelming strength of this material and the fact that it is right next to a piece of wood, it's pretty easy to see which is the weaker component. Even if the fiber's loose 50% of their strength, they're still dramatically stronger than the wood. The wood is still going to fail before the zylon.

I'm not really sure where you're getting the data on compression vs tension on the zylon. There was similar data on fiberglass until they discovered the compression failures were buckling failures rather than true compressions failures. Regardless of performance in compression and tension, a properly designed composite laminate is symmetric about the neutral axis. This is why you see titanal on top and bottom. Well designed snowboards have the same glass laminates top and bottom. It produces a product that flexes consistently without warping, twisting or cupping. The board reacts consistently to changes in temperature (basically stays flat edge to edge) as well. Unbalanced laminate stacks produce all sorts of problems, so I'd be concerned if there was just zylon on one surface instead of both.

Hopefully that clears things up a bit.

Post of the month right there. That turned on a couple of light bulbs for me. Thanks.

[Chris Houghton]

Having had the opportunity to compare carbon/texalium/zylon/titanal Virus boards (not right to compare across brands, the usages could be quite different) I would say that the carbon feels by far the most "brittle", and there is a definite high frequency ping to it. Texalium is much softer in response, almost cushioned in comparison. Zylon has more snap on the return but is still more cushioned than carbon. Titanal is much damper, but still responsive. So - I guess it depends what you want, they all have a place in the quiver!