Chronicles of the Happy Fun Plate at the Bomber Factory

[OhD]

Fin

Consider supplying these with a big bag of various Belleville spring washers that user-geeks can stack in series/parallell/thickness/stiffness combinations - tweaking the spring rate until their mounting screws wear out. Keep 'em busy and out of trouble..

[Arclite]

Arclite: 1, Dad: 0

:D

Thanks you, thank you! *bows to the crowd*

[bobdea]

Fin

Consider supplying these with a big bag of various Belleville spring washers that user-geeks can stack in series/parallell/thickness/stiffness combinations - tweaking the spring rate until their mounting screws wear out. Keep 'em busy and out of trouble..

belvilles tend to not work smoothly in some aplications I thought?

[Fastskiguy]

I think you've nailed it...it's the FHP baby, "Fin's Happy Plate"

Can we preorder the FHP yet?

I got to see the new Happy plate in action today. Fin is very pleased with the performance of his prototype and while it is still a long way from production and in its rought 1st attempt form, it is a thing of beauty. The installation of this system is effortless compared to some of the other systems currently available. It is definately a very nice, well thought out and highly tuneable unit. You racer types out there need to seriously consider a Happy Plate, when they become available that is. Nice work Fin.

[fin]

Corey Dick: you are correct! That is why I have some hope and curiosity on the Spring Pods as this will allow us to work with concepts like “sag” in the suspension. In other words maybe we can use a spring that sags a tad with your base weight on it.

Jack: right now there is not a “hard stop” as the Main Plate travels down and the board travels up at the ends. I am not too concerned with the urethane pads as it is unlikely they can compress that far. However, it is fully possible to bottom out the springs if the correct spring is not selected. This will become evident with testing and spring selection. To me the ultimate spring would give you all the travel of the system but never go to the point of bottoming out. We’ll see.

Queequeg: if you’ll notice I have a large hole in the top of the Spring Hats for just this issue (snow clogging springs). I learned a valuable lesson on the development of the Bishop telemark binding: do not try to seal the snow out, give it a place to not only come in but exit. I tried sealing the spring tubes of the Bishop and it failed big-time in testing. Snow eventually got in and caused the springs to go solid. So these Spring Hats are open on the bottom and the top so the snow can come in and leave as it pleases. We’ll see.

Nekdut and Tex1230: yea, love to work with Delrin. It has little issues with cold as far as I can tell. I have used it on the telemark binding before with great luck in snow. Yes, there may be issues with various other top sheet materials out there. As mentioned in this thread this could be easily fixed with a sticky, thin material that goes down on the board first to act as the bearing surface. But honestly, most top sheets should be fine. Delrin is used quite a bit just for its ability to self lubricate and slide.

Arclite: I had to be careful of this interference with the Spring Pods big time. That is the main reason the Pods are positioned so far outward, they have to be for clearance. So right now they do not hit the Base Plate as it rotates around so you get full adjustment on stance angle. Also, the height is just so the bottom of your boot also clears the top of the Pods. Computer Solid Models are the key! All these fitment issues are taken care of in the virtual world. There is little to no “Oh Sh*&” when you go to build it as you already know everything fits. It makes life WAY easier in projects like this.

Bjvircks: Nice! Love it, a Spring Pod that gives you the ability to adjust pre-load with a screw on the top. Looks like the key is that off concentric pin that keeps the top plate from turning and allowing it to screw up and down. Very cool. I suppose in my iteration right now we could just increase pre-load with shims in the Spring Pods, but this would be a very slick way to do it.

crazyTKDsquirrel: “That also answers the question of the suspension bottoming out, does it not? Although if you manage to do that, it's going to be a nice shock at the bottom”. Agree that bottoming out any suspension is bad and causes you to get a spank. However, remember that spring still did some work in decelerating you up to that point of hitting the hard stops. But, yea, should pick the right spring to stop this.

Shred Gruumer: Well, if you had come by when you where in town I could have put you to work in my shop baby! But I hear you sat around Von Rips place and read Romance novels all day. And what’s a Tail Stock?

Hans: Actually we are quite a bit longer on the board then the Hangle. Total distance of hard contact on the board with the HFP is 240mm (9.45in) and the Hangle is 150mm (5.9in). The Vist is the entire length of both bindings so it is a different measurement. HFP width is 17.5cm, Hangle 19cm, and Vist is 18cm. So pretty darn close there and hardly a big difference. But I could certainly just make a wide Spring Foot to go wider if desired.

Erwin: you are correct, if you had a solid material (in our case aluminum) just extended outward and bolted to the board it would be bad for many reasons (huge dead spot and point loads) but if you look at the assembly you will see that the entire Main Plate is suspended by the 4 Spring Pods (or Urethane pads) at each corner. The only metal contact to the board is the Center Disk, all other points of contact are a material design to give and compress. So the aluminum in the Main Plate is used due to its strength and lightness it never actually touches the board. Does this make sense?

BadBrad: agree, and I should have defended Urethane better in my list before. It does have some great built in vibration absorption. Just depends on the application. My goal with HFP was to create a LOT more suspension travel then what we currently have and I think a spring would be better. We’ll see.

OhD: my plan is to ship the HFP to the end-user totally disassembled and in one large bag that has been shaken for at least 3 minutes. There will be a sheet included but all it will say is “Some assembly required”. And the tech support number listed will only have 5 numbers in it. Remember, do not taunt Happy Fun Plate (come on, who remember that skit! Anyone?)

[pow4ever]

happy fun ball!!!!

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/happy-fun-ball/229058/

[fin]

Now we make the torsion bar....or the drive shaft.....still can’t come up with a good name for this.

Here is something I am VERY interested to find out how it works as I don’t think it has been done before like this. The concept is: keep/lock the front and rear foot/binding in the same plane torsionally. What I mean is lets lock the two Main Plates together mechanically so they will NOT twist/rotate relative to each other. However, we still need to allow the Main Plates to pivot inline with the flex of the board as we decamber it. We only want torsional control.

One interesting piece of feedback I got from racers talking about these current sub-plate systems, is they gave them the feeling of being on a solid, stable platform. And after riding a few of these system I also felt just that, you where standing on this platform that did not seem to care what the board was doing under it but at the same time let you pressure the board in ways that still where beneficial.

So I thought it would be interesting to try this concept out with the HFP.

First we need to make the End Brackets to hold the Torsion Bar. Here is the computer model of what we make

Start with these blanks

Here are the tools we need loaded up

Shot of the entire mill set-up for the hell of it

Blank before cuts

After cuts

Now we need to make a very nice clean and accurate hole for the bearing that will house the pivot. For such a simple Op I decided to use Old Betsy our manual/knee mill. Had her since day one of Bomber. If you want to start machining parts and learn more about it, this is what you want to buy. They are extremely versatile and you can make just about anything on them if you are creative.

If you want to make a quality hole you better center drill

Then drill

Then ream

So here are the 4 brackets we need. Those are the bearings we will press in to them (as seen on the right one). I use these composite bearing all the time and they are fantastic performers. They come in a billion sizes and are very durable. For the amount of rotating action we are talking about an actual ball bearing would be over-kill, heavy, and expensive.

Here the Bracket is mounted on the Main Plate

Now the heart of the Torsion Bar, the Spline interface. What you see in this picture below is some spline material I sourced ready to go. It would be very hard for me to machine these myself and these guys have the stuff in stock in all types of material. And the tolerance is very tight and the finish is smooth, all things you want in a spine interface. The drive shaft of your car uses the exact same item, it allows the suspension to move up and down but yet still can apply a torsion force to the drive train. However, in our case we are using it to NOT allow torsional movement.

Here are the Splined Collars I turned down on the lathe to fit the Tubes. One has been cut down extra small as I wanted to see how light I could get it as they are made of steel.

Need to cut the Splined Shaft so it can act as a clevis with the already made End Brackets. Fist put in CNC Mill

And machine down sides to a very good finish (it is a bearing surface)

Turn on side and drill/ream hole

I couldn’t stand it, I had to chuck it up in the lathe and drill out the center of the shaft to lighten it up. Have to use oil as this is steel.

No we make the other clevis end of the torsion bar. Start with a bar of aluminum in the lathe. Same one we use for the Spring Hats. Here it is and I have already done the first few cuts

Here they are after being picked off from the lathe

Then onto the mill to machine down the sides

and then turn over and machine the profile and hole

Here they are done

Now we need some aluminum tubes to connect all these parts. These do not need to be crazy thick as they are only really transmitting a torsional load so we will use some thin wall aluminum I have cut down to length on the lathe so we get nice true ends

So with all the parts made here is the collared side of the torsion bar

Now we need to attach the various ends to the Tube. The splined collar is made of steel so it cannot be welded to the aluminum tube. And I want to be able to replace this part incase something needs to be changed. So I first inserted the collar into the tube and then clamped up in the manual mill. Then drilled a hole all the way through

Tap this hole on both sides to accept a little locking screw. Once again, this assembly seeing only torsion loads so these screws will be only in shear so they do not have to be large

This next part was one that caught me a bit by surprise. I realized that before I welded the aluminum clevis end on the tube I needed to index the entire assembly so it was oriented in the correct spot. The spline interface does not let me rotate after the fact so I need to make sure everything is in-line before I weld it permanently. Best way to do this is to weld it while installed. To do this I mounted everything on a snowboard and spot welded it

The beer bottle was there when I bought the welder.

After the spot weld I pulled it off and finished it was some nice(ish) full sized welds.

So here is the final assemblies. One is a bit longer then the other as I wanted to have some spread of what stance width we can run with these.

Notice there is a small groove in the end of the spline shaft near where it goes into the collar. This is to let me know we are near the end of the shaft and to not go any farther then this. The O-ring is a travel indicator so we can see how far the spline is traveling in the collar and thus how much the snowboard is flexing.

[fin]

The final piece to the puzzle is to make a modified cant disk that sits in the center cavity of the Main Plate. I was going to machine these out of raw bar stock, but time got a bit tight and I figured out how I could just modify a Skwal Cant Disk we already make and sell.

Nothing to thrilling here, I clamped it up in the CNC Mill, made a quick program to cut out the middle and then put in some holes and counter sinks that line up with the holes in the Main Plate. Right now on this version it is fixed at 60 degrees so I get mostly lift on my binding setup. But a final version would have the same rotate adjustment the TD3 currently has.

And here it is installed in a Main Plate

After all this cutting this week here is what the CNC Mill looks like. Those chip represent about 2/3 of the material we started with. FYI: we recycle all aluminum chips. But we use the money to put gas in the company Hummer that we let idle for hours at a time. So I guess we are coming out flush as far as the environment goes.

Next I will have final shots of the entire system on a board, stats of how we did on our mechanical goals height, weight, etc. And then the big news, how does it ride. I have some guys/gals from the Steamboat Team lined up to put this thing through the paces this and next week. Hold tight, results to come.....

[Erwin]

@Fin: Thanks for your reply. In my opinion it looks a little similar to the TD1 with its bumpers. Maybe you could post a picture of the board being pressured like it would be in a carved turn at the binding position: showing the bending of the board with and without plates. Anyway, I think time, test results and the number of sold items will tell whether or not your design makes sense. ;) And I'm curious to see what the overal weight including the torsion bar would be.

IMO worth mentioning are the plates by Swiss Worldcup rider Louis Schnidrig: simple concept, cheap materials and flexible.

Best regards,

Erwin

[pow4ever]

wow; someone contact discovery channel/TLC

I smell a new hit show

"American Snowboard Plate binding Maker"

we can leave the show name to the marketing dept.

so cool.

It sounds like this product would be more gear toward racer type of riding?

I would love to hear feedback from racer and recreation rider.

[tex1230]

Anyone else find it ironic that Fin is welding on a $1000+ prototype Donek instead of some beat old rock board?

[Jack M]

you said "ream", huh huh huh.

[Sinecure]

Splines are steel. Rust not an issue? Will the final be SS? Lube with Bomber Butter?

Could the whole thing be thinner and lighter if made from Titanium? Plus that would make it uber expensive and therefore even more desirable.

This is fun to watch Fin. Thanks for letting us in on the development process.

Is there any chance that we'll be able to move this from board to board without having to completely disassemble everything (including the TDs or other binders mounted on it)? I can already tell its not going to be cheap.

[neil sunday]

Tex,

Fin is welding on a $1000+ prototype, but don't worry.

He's got a beer for safety on the table. :)

KEEP WORKING FIN!!!!

[Gecko]

Anyone else find it ironic that Fin is welding on a $1000+ prototype Donek instead of some beat old rock board?

I'm sure he is only tack welding it there to get the positioning right and pulled it of to finish weld it someplace else

[BadBrad]

So what the boot height above the board end up at after you install the cant disk, baseplate and toe/heel blocks?

[Fastskiguy]

Screw the plans for a metal board...I want a happy fun plate!

[trikerdad]

Fin, I really love the idea of a torsion bar but, I'm curious as to how much you'll find the board flexes. I think it will be much more than most people realize. Some carving photos show a lot of flex but, I doubt that many have caught a board at full flex during a day of riding. I run 6 degrees of toe lift under my front foot and have had problems with the long TD2 plates compressing and cracking the top sheet under my front heel. When you look at the setup in the static position, you can't imagine that it would be possible for the plate to contact the top sheet but, it does. I solved the problem by using a short plate on my front foot with the blocks in the last holes. Every thing you've done so far looks like you're going to be taking our sport to another level but, I wonder if you've allowed for enough travel with either the torsion bar, the polymers or the springs, without considerably stiffening the board or bending the plates. Can't wait for the test results as I know, if there are any problems, you'll work them out and have another great product to offer the carving community.

[csquared]

Are we ultimately headed toward a shock of some kind in the cylinder? I think if you could find the right gas shock you could probably dampen some longitudinal (flexure) vibration. I am guessing that a gas shock from the rear suspension system on a mountain bike might work but I've never had the opportunity to examine one up close. If you could combine this with a spring and a preload system, you could vary flex between the feet (only stiffening) but this would tend to increase camber. I am guessing this would probably be an undesirable combination but it might help edge tracking on ice.

Hmmm... something to think about on the commute home.

I am loving this thread.

[csquared]

Perhaps it would be good to weld a nut on the aluminum tubes rather than tap the walls for the set screws to hold the splined collar. You could turn a groove around the collar and put dogging holes at two locations so that you could either lock the collar to arrest torsional flex or let it rotate freely for a more traditional feel. The welded nuts would permit the set screws a little more travel so you could disengage them without having the come out completely.

Clear as mud?

[mr_roboteye]

Splines are steel. Rust not an issue? Will the final be SS?

It's steel, rust will be an issue. I imagine that Fin will send out both spline (male / female) pieces to be nickel plated, unless this would interfere with the internal clearance of the spline. SS is very heavy, but there may be no other choice. Sourcing the spline pieces in titanium will probably be difficult and expensive. But there's always military surplus.........

Could the whole thing be thinner and lighter if made from Titanium?

As much as I like titanium, it's about 40% heavier (volume to volume) than aluminum. Another awesome quality of titanium is corrosion resistance, it's even better than SS. The only metal with a better strength to weight ratio than either aluminum or titianium is magnesium, but it cracks if you look at it funny, so that's out. The way Fin has done it is the same as I would do it, every piece made from aluminum except where it isn't feasible.

later,

Dave R.

[NateW]

We can control torsion between the bindings with our feet, but how about torsion bars (anti-torsion bars) that extend from the bindings to the tip and tail?

It would require inserts at the tip and tail - really shallow inserts. Might not be terribly practical. But I always thought that's where torsional flex really came into play.

[Erwin]

I'm curious as to how much you'll find the board flexes. I think it will be much more than most people realize.... ...I wonder if you've allowed for enough travel with either the torsion bar, the polymers or the springs, without considerably stiffening the board or bending the plates.

I agree with Trikerdad on this issue.

Maybe a picture can clearify what happens during a normal slalom run (me):

Or, worst case scenario (friend of mine landing a boarderX jump):

Both boards are custom Tomahawk slalom boards (2006), using titanal and sidewall construction. Bindings (F2, Burton physics) were mounted directly onto both boards. Seeing these images, I had to come up with something to solve these localized pressure sites. Because of the stiff interface between step-in bindings and the boots, any input is transferred into the board directly. So, I'll be definitely looking forward to the new TD3 version Fairchild was testing.

Best regards,

Erwin

[tex1230]

that second shot is awesome.

[Jack M]

That second shot above makes me hurt for that board! There is also some pretty crazy board flex going on here, look closely: