Chronicles of the Happy Fun Plate at the Bomber Factory

[pokkis]

This is twisting also "nicely"

[tex1230]

This is twisting also "nicely"

is that a landing or a transition between turns?

[pokkis]

Transition :rolleyes:

[NateW]

We can control torsion between the bindings with our feet, but...

Having thought about this some more, I'm not sure I agree with myself anymore. I guess we'll know when a few people have had a chance to comment on what it's like to ride with that center link.

Fin, have you considered making solid/rigid corner inserts so that the effects of the damping and the center link can be evaluated independently?

[Bordy]

Don't worry Fins got a old college prodject from friends that will test the flex and twist.

He has put my one of my boards with a vist plate to the test I was almost worried the next time I rode it. Since he can make stuff bend so much.

Fin just keep on trucking, As always I am amzaed how many posters already want to give you their money and you don't even have a prodect yet????

[bjvircks]

This fellow caused his own problem here... He landed with the board at such an angle to the slope rather than a bit flatter and he hit with his rear leg straight/stiff, causing the board to take the landing force. It flexed all it could and then yielded at the 1st stress riser, where the binding rear edge met the board.

[pow4ever]

Fin just keep on trucking, As always I am amzaed how many posters already want to give you their money and you don't even have a prodect yet????

I am aware the existence of the plate system but the infomation on them are far and few in between. It seems to be a product more gear toward racer. I havn't got a clue on how it will work for the non-racer rider.

It's nice to see Bomber/Fin take the time explain what the plate system actully does. It's strengh, weakness, possibility on how to improve on the product and etc.

For certain thing be it snowboard or car

good for racing == good for everyday application

For cetrain thing it might be the case

F1 engine rev to the moon; which is great for going 200+mph not so great for duribility.

Metal top sheet is great for what it's design to do(from what i read); but for the non racer I don't want to buy couple same board every season. Now the metal board have trickle down to the user level and it's getting rave review.

It will take some time for racing technology translated to vialbe consumer product. This is exciting for me as I am always looking for the next "handicap" or "enabler" to make up for lack of talent. It's alos super cool to see something being made from raw material to finished product.

I don't know any snowboard racer, so i don't have any first experience on the plate system that's currently available on the market. Bomber forum have not yet steer me wrong yet. I might sounds like a kiss ass; but if Bomber put out a product; it's a fine design, work well and worth the money to feed my addiction. Which can explain why so many is willing to buy. If the product is good; one shouldn't have problem selling it.

Just my 2 cents

David

[queequeg]

So this whole thing has got modular written all over it. I wonder if that is something that will end up being a part of the product - in particular, I could see recreational carvers possibly forgoing the bar for weight savings and lift skating, but wanting the platforms and suspension benefits nonetheless, whereas I could see racers wanting the whole kit and kaboodle.

Will we be able to order it with and without the torsion bar?

Will the elastomer suspension VS the spring suspension be offered as an option, for weight/cost considerations (I would imagine the machining of those little spring thingies adds some cost to the whole unit. Or are the springs just so much better that the elastomers don't make much sense?

It seems like part of the huge benefit here is not just the weight savings and rock-solid design and build quality - but also the ability to put together a system that is going to work for different riders based upon their particular priorities (and budget).

[crazyTKDsquirrel]

So this whole thing has got modular written all over it. I wonder if that is something that will end up being a part of the product - in particular, I could see recreational carvers possibly forgoing the bar for weight savings and lift skating, but wanting the platforms and suspension benefits nonetheless, whereas I could see racers wanting the whole kit and kaboodle.

Will we be able to order it with and without the torsion piston?

Will the elastomer suspension VS the spring suspension be offered as an option, for weight/cost considerations (I would imagine the machining of those little spring thingies adds some cost to the whole unit.

It seems like part of the huge benefit here is not just the weight savings and rock-solid design and build quality - but also the ability to put together a system that is going to work for different riders based upon their particular priorities (and budget).

Totally agree...+1

[trikerdad]

I don't think Erwin's second picture is as bad as it looks. I think the tail's near side edge is buried in the snow making it look like it's bent at an acute angle.

[Fastskiguy]

I think I want mine in anodized purple with gold anodized spring thingies LOL

[NateW]

This fellow caused his own problem here... He landed with the board at such an angle to the slope rather than a bit flatter and he hit with his rear leg straight/stiff, causing the board to take the landing force. It flexed all it could and then yielded at the 1st stress riser, where the binding rear edge met the board.

I'm guessing he rotated backward a little bit while he was airborne, and had to do that to keep from falling backward when he landed. Assuming the camera was level when that shot was taken (an admittedly dubious assumption), his center of mass is behind where it should be.

[Erwin]

This fellow caused his own problem here... He landed with the board at such an angle to the slope rather than a bit flatter and he hit with his rear leg straight/stiff, causing the board to take the landing force. It flexed all it could and then yielded at the 1st stress riser, where the binding rear edge met the board.

Dude, that's not the point of showing that image. Of course he did not have his board parallel to the landing. If you read my post properly you could tell I'm concerned about localization of pressure. The image is just an illustration of what happens in an extreme case.

[NateW]

Slightly off-topic - did that board survive that landing intact?

Or did it develop a hinge behind the rear binding? :)

[Erwin]

@NateW: completely wasted - the angle you see in the picture remained in the board. The metal boards are a great ride, however, they are really vulnerable...trust me, I can tell...

[bjvircks]

Dude, that's not the point of showing that image.

Erwin, you are correct in that my comments were not directly related to board flex, twist or point load concentration. The perspective of my comments is that any mechanical system pushed significantly outside it's design envelope will give negative results. As we make systems more robust or more tolerant... we then push then further!

[NateW]

@NateW: completely wasted - the angle you see in the picture remained in the board. The metal boards are a great ride, however, they are really vulnerable...trust me, I can tell...

To be fair, I kinda doubt a wood board would have survived that either. :)

[fin]

Just a quick update: we are going to do another round of testing this week up at A-basin. I have made a few small modifications to the HFP and want to see how it goes on the snow. Back with more information and results soon.

[bjvircks]

Did you ride the board without the HFP? I'd be interested in a rough comparison.

I wonder... how many non-racers are standing in line right now, money in hand, ready to plunk down a cash deposit just to hold a 1st production run HFP setup for themselves? I'd guess more than a couple gear junkies.

[bjvircks]

Fin... was geht hier?

[Fastskiguy]

I wonder... how many non-racers are standing in line right now, money in hand, ready to plunk down a cash deposit just to hold a 1st production run HFP setup for themselves? I'd guess more than a couple gear junkies.

Where does that line start? [waiting with money in hand]

[fin]

Erwin: I could see where your confusion on this comes in. There is a huge difference in what the HFP does and the old TD1 did. The key is the Base Plate of the TD1 was fixed to the board, it did not move or have the ability to move. With the HFP the Main Plate "floats" as it is NOT fixed to the board, so it can travel (and tilt) up and down. This is achieved by the Center Disk capturing the Main Plate, it keeps the Main Plate from moving in left, right, and rotation but still allows it to move vertically. Then this motion is controlled by a spring/urethane damper. Does this make sense?

Tex1230: Yea, I just grabbed the nearest board for this. As mentioned, this was just a spot weld so not a lot of sparks. Luckily the beer was not needed to but the fire out.

Sinecure: the spline material is actually stainless steel so no issues with corrosion. And we did lube with Bomber Butter for smooth action.

BadBrad: I'll be going over the final stats (weight, height, etc) in my next thread.

trickerdad: Bill, I agree, this was something I was not sure would be an issue with the HFP. I have also seen some of the big, powerful carvers (you!) bend their poor board so much the ends of my TD series base plates kisses the top sheet of the board. Cool part is this is a testament to the design as it shows we are allowing the board to flex under the binding. If this was a "base plate flat on board" design that other brands use then the area under the binding would NOT be allowed to flex creating a large dead spot on the board.

The difference with the HFP is what would be the contact point of the HFP to the board is filled with the urethane pad. So in order for the aluminum Main Plate to contact the board it would have to go through the pad (or spring if used).

Csquared: Not sure what you are describing on that? Can you make us a drawing?

NateW: Nate, your statement (and then your rebuttal) of "We can control torsion between the bindings with our feet" brings up a good point. Are we controlling the torsional flex or are WE being controlled BY the torsional flex. In other words the board still twists between our feet no matter what we do and we have to adjust to this motion? Or how about we do twist the board under our feet but this only happens as a by-product of the turn, in that we are not doing this on purpose but rather it just happens? Lots to think about what is going on between our feet. The point of the Torsion Bar is to see what happens when we remove this factor completely. Good or bad? Hope to find out.

And you also just described a concept (torsional resistance tip and tail) I have wanted to try for years. Would this help? I guess we'll have to try that next.

"have you considered making solid/rigid corner inserts so that the effects of the damping and the center link can be evaluated independently?" Absolutely! You have the scientific mind Nate. This was done and results coming.

Bordy is correct, I have at the shop the board torture machine. This was a device some friends of mine made as a mechanical engineering senior project at Colorado University a long time ago. I acted as a consultant on the project and when they where done they gave me the machine. Here is a picture of it in action

As you can see it is pneumatically driven and it can bend a board in two axis. Longitudinally and in rotation. It can do these independently OR at the same time. It is a great way to deflect a board with lots of control. If I was to just clamp boards to a bench and hang weights of it you would need up to 400lbs of weight to get the kind of deflection this machine can. I can bend a board to about 30 degrees but at that point it starts getting scary as the forces are getting pretty high. You can start to hear the board and machine pop and moan with the forces. And as far as I can tell 30 degrees does NOT represent a standard deflection during our turns. 10 degrees is more like a standard turn and getting up towards 20 degrees is getting close to a very hard powerful turn. To confirm this I do need to do some on-snow measurement though.

I was using the machine in this case to look at how the HFP reacts to these bends and the results where VERY promising.

Queequeg: Yes, modular was the plan on the HFP. The goal is to make a plate system that can be configured and tuned to your liking. The obvious one is you can run the HFP with or without the Torsion Bar. Or you can tune the system with different springs/pads under the plate. Or we can replace the Torsions bar with ? All these items on the HFP are modular and replaceable. So yes, the product can evolve with time and use. These are the kinds of things I like in a product as well.

[fin]

bjvircks: Good eye, those are threaded holes for the Adapter Plate. The Adapter Plate allows you to run any 4 hole binding on the HFP. Here is a shot of the blank on the vice after I finished Op1 where all I did was drill and tap the needed holes:

Then in Op2 I bolted the plate down using the just cut holes onto a subplate

so I could machine the outside profile

And finally a shot of the Adapter Plate mounted to the HFP.

Here is a final shot of the Adapter Plates I made plus all the Cant Disks (0,3,6 degrees) for testing.

The only penalty with the Adapter Plate is it adds height and weight. As I mentioned before the goal of the HFP was to integrate with the TD3 bindings so it was clean, light, and easy. But at least there is an option to run another binding if needed.

Results next......

[fin]

Now for the testing results.

It was great testing as I had the Steamboat team in town for a full three weeks up at Arapahoe Basin. This is a great team and run by our good friend Thedo. These guys are a world class team with even some of the US team members opting out of the official US training to come work with Thedo Remmelink and Adam Casanova. Both Thedo and Ben Fairchild spent most of the time on the HFP but we did get a few of the other team members on it as well. Thank you to everyone on the team who helped out. I even got Snowman from BOL to come out and try it! Anyone with over 100 days on the hill has the right to an opinion in my mind! As a side note there was all kinds of good testing going on as Sean with Donek was up there with me going through his evolution of the new Doneks. Let's just say this, you are going to see some amazing products from Donek next year.

The only bugger was that the snow was not optimum for testing. Both myself, Sean, and the Steamboat team agree that hard, firm snow is the best to see how gear performs in the heat of battle. The snow most of the three weeks was very soft and wet. But we did what we could and the best thing was we could at least do side by side comparisons on gear.

Let's start with the things that did not work-out in the design:

- As much as the Spring Pods look great on paper and in person the Spring Pods failed miserably! Well, that is not totally fair but here is what happened. As you went down the hill base flat of low energy turns the springs did give way to bumps and variations in the terrain. However, when you dove into a large, high energy turn the springs seems to compress/uncompress and promote that effect where a board feels like it is loading up and then letting go, then load up and let go, etc. Not really chatter but an uncontrolled low frequency oscillation of the board. We knew it was the springs because when we went to the Urethane Pads it went away immediately.

So just as some of you had predicted in past discussion and what I knew was the case but was willing to try it anyway, an undamped spring is just not a good way to control what is going on with our snowboards. Not totally killing the idea right now, but it would take another stage of intense engineering and machining to create some spring pods with built-in damping. I can see it now, eight tiny dashpots with adjustable rebound and compression inside and a ride height adjustment. Like a set of expensive coil-overs for your car!

So this is the exact reason I built the Main Plates to accept a variety of systems underneath it.

- Next thing I came upon was that I needed to tighten up my tolerances on the pivots for the Torsion Bar. My original pivot pins where pretty tight, maybe a couple of thousands of an inch of radial movement which does not seem like much. However, when we are talking rotational movement this can translate into a quite a lot of play in the system. Just like when your old cars steering system gets a little loose with age you get huge amounts of play in the steering wheel before it engages. So this play in the HFP resulted in the two Main Plates could rotate out of plane a bit before they locked up. Not the point of the system. So after a day or two of testing I re-machined all the pivots to very tight tolerances and now the two Main Plates can barely move relative to each other. Most play now is in the spline interface.

- Oh, and when I was welding the Torsion Bars up on the bench I left them mounted in the End Brackets and turned the composite bearings to liquid from the high heat. Smelt good as well. I am sure it is not carcinogenic in any way.

Now for the good stuff.

*DISCLAIMER* This is where I have to be careful as the guy who makes this devise as well as runs this website. It would be easy for me to rattle off how cool this is, everyone should have one, girls will talk to you in the lift-line, click HERE to be the first to own one, etc. This would be wrong and go against the rules I have on this forum for vendors. So I am going to do my best to just keep these test results non-subjective and straight-forward. I leave it up to you to decide if this is something you think will work for you or not.

Lets start with the suspension. As I mentioned above the springs did not go well so we went with the Urethane pads. Initially the softest I had was about a 40A durometer pad. Honestly this worked well but it was still just too stiff for the medium to large hits we would get on the snow. It was good with damping vibrations but we just did not feel we where getting the travel out of the system we wanted. And that was the whole point! So from other projects I was made familiar with an amazing material call Sorbothane. This material is a proprietary and highly engineered material used for all kinds of energy absorbing applications. The military is a large user of the material for machine gun mounts/grips, rifle stock pads, and other heavy duty applications. It is technically called a visco-elastic polymer put some even call it a "liquid-solid". The material is so soft and pliable it uses the "00" durometer scale as the Shore A scale will not go low enough.

I was able to get some usable samples of this material, use the punch I made before, stamp out some pads and try them out on the hill. The results where excellent. We now got the travel and absorption we wanted but the system still felt solid as far as power to the edge. We did have to add thin washers between the Main Plate and Pads as they wanted to squish out through the top hole. You can see these washers in the picture above with the Adapter Plate.

But was it better then if without? So as you brought up before Nate, we switched out the uber-soft pads for a set of crazy hard 90A duro pads I made just for this reason. These pads are about as hard as your average skate board wheel. We did this swap back and forth several time to make sure. The difference was very obvious. With the "hard" pads you would feel every bump and hit on the snow, with the super soft pads you did not, it was very smooth and vibration free ride. Isolation was good but not detrimental to performance. These where good results.

Don't forget, there is a secondary effect of these super-soft pads that is a benefit. They allow the board to flex more naturally under the Main Plate thus giving you less of a flat-spot. I did do some board bending tests to see how much the HFP allowed the board to flex naturally under it but the pictures I took did not come out as this is a very subtle and small effect to try and show in a picture. I will have to set that up again and try to show you how that looks.

So why don't we use something this soft in our current TD3 E-Rings? We tried this and they failed big time. They over compressed and did not last more then a day of riding. They literally just torn themselves apart from the crushing force. So why does this not happen with the HFP? Ah, and this is the part that I like. With the TD3 you have a lever arm (the Base Plate) that multiplies the moment force you put on the E-Ring. In other words the E-Ring is "inbound" of the end of the Base Plate so the force put on the E-Ring is say double or triple what you push down with on the Base Plate with your toes or heels. (some one do the beam equations for a TD3!). But with the HFP the pads are actually "outbound" from where you push down so they see a fraction of the force you push down on the Base Plate with. Keep in mind I am talking about a lever arm force as in levering the binding to one side for a toe side or heel side turn. I am not talking about pure compression in the vertical axis. And that is the neat part about the HFP design, it gives proper resistance when you lever it over for a turn (edge power) but when you take a hit from the terrain (vertical axis) the super soft pads do their work and compress and absorb. It really is a great combo and very effective.

Ben did the best test yet on this. He had set up two identical boards, 185 Kessler Race models of same shape and flex and both with TD3 "Race" bindings. Except one was setup with a Vist and the other with the HFP. The boards where at the bottom of the hill near the chair so he was able to switch from one to the other through-out the day. His conclusion was he liked the HFP set-up as he could feel the dampening effect over what he felt with the Vist.

[fin]

So how about the Torsion Bar system? That gets even more interesting. To be honest this one might come down to taste and preference. This was easy to test as you can remove the entire Torsion Bar system with just 4 screws (5mm hex of course!). So it was convenient to make runs with and without it. Side note: the worst thing I think I can hear when someone tests something is "I can't tell the difference". Nuts! Whether it is good or bad is up for debate, but at least feel the difference. In the case of the Torsion Bar you could definitely feel the difference. So that is a good start.

But what was the difference and was it better? Remember my description at the start of what racers told me they liked about their current sub-plate systems. They liked how it felt you where on a solid, non-changing platform. And the ability of the HFP to keep your feet in plane with each other would fall under this definition. I was thinking of why this would be good and so stick with me on a totally unsupported and wild-haired theory I have on this. This is not as crazy as my theory of the Brontosaurus but I do believe they are related in some way and I am sticking to that.

We spend a great deal of time and effort lining ourselves up perfectly on the board. Stance width, stance angle, cant and lift angles, boot forward lean, set-back, etc. We find this perfect "power" position that feels good and comfortable. Then you dive into a turn and all that alignment goes, well, out of alignment as you feet twist out of plane with each other. Lets say you get a twist angle of 2 to 3 degrees between your feet (totally made that up, have no data to support those numbers right now) then all your boot forward leans, lift and cants, stance widths, etc all go out of sync with each other. And this all occurs right in the power point of the turn where you might need proper alignment the most.

You car guys out there know what I am getting at here. We spend big bucks to have our suspension aligned with lasers so we have 1.5 degrees of camber, 1 degree as caster, etc. Then we dive the car into a turn and the gooshy, soft body of the car torsionally twists over 5+ degrees and all our effort to align is comprised. So to combat this we have Anti-Roll bars, shock tower strut stiffeners, and other way to stiffen the body up to minimize this. Then the car handles better.

Why would we not want our carving board to act the same way? Once again, the Torsion Bar may or may not be for you. This would be for you to decide. The racers on the team, after several days of riding, concluded they likes the feel of the Torsion Bar system.

Let me give you a few of the "white sheet" stats on the HFP:

- Total weight saving over a Hangle with a TD3 is 2.05lbs. With a Vist saving was 1.75 lbs. Very happy with this. I think with a little more work I could get this down even more.

- Total height (if you used a TD3) was .394"(10mm) taller then a stock TD3. Extremely happy with this as well. If you used the adapter plate total height gain was .75"(19mm).

- Total travel before system hits board = 5mm. Also you notice an O-ring on the Torsion Bar for travel indication. We consistently got around 1-2cm of measured travel with that.

- Set-up is very easy and quick with the HFP. It uses your existing 4 hole patter and there are a total of eight screws that hold it onto the board. And these eight screws (4 per side) are accessible with the new design of the TD3 that lets you get to the mount screws. So you can essentially remove and install one in the same time it takes to remove and install a TD3 with your 5mm hex key. If you use the Adapter Plate you do have to remove that first (total of eight screws) to get to the mounting screws.

That is about it for now on testing. Honestly, we need to put this thing through some more testing on snow that is firm. And for the racers, put it in a course. Running the course is where the rubber meets the road for these guys. The current HFPs will spend the summer getting put through the paces with various teams at Mammoth Mnt, Mnt Hood, and possibly the southern hemisphere. Only after this will be able to make some good solid confirmations on the design and performance.

Before you ask, we have not decided if this will even go into production at this point and be available for sale. I do NOT want to jump the gun and say otherwise. But the fact we have seen a LOT of interest in this with the view count on this thread, there may be some good interest here!

Ask me any questions you like and have a great summer everyone!