SunSurfer 2011 Plates

[SunSurfer]

Snow starting to fall on the mountains here in New Zealand. Season starts in late June, and my main blast on the slopes will be in August. And Aspen beckons for Feb 2012.

Meanwhile, over the summer last years design has been tweaked and developed in a number of directions.

I've built a range of plates, to enable me to have a plate on each of my four boards, and developed better bearing surfaces in the axle units.

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This plate is mounted on a Coiler glass All Mountain 177.

UPM pattern inserts added, centred on the original 4x4 binding insert pattern.

Set on the outermost inserts i.e. 66cm interaxle distance.

8mm full width solid stainless steel axles. Sliding axle is the front one.

This plate was made from 7-ply exterior ply, with an X-shaped rib pattern underneath. A small amount of camber has also been built into the plate. The aim was to still allow some flex but increase torsional stiffness. Reinforced with West epoxy and fibreglass.

The final plate outline is yet to be determined. Narrowing the waist should produce more flexibility if I so desire.

Stance is fixed to my preference (50cm binding centre to centre, 65 degree front, 60 degree rear, centred over the original binding inserts in the snowboard below), with customised binding inserts allowing direct mounting of heel/toe units to the plate. The heel/toe units are both further apart than on the original base plates, but also offset from the midline to place the boot centre over the midline. With my size feet that was previously impossible with the SnowPro and F2 bindings in conventional 4x4 binding mounts.

Removing the binding base units reduced weight and height.

SunSurfer

[kieran]

niiiice. it'll be even better once the aluminium f2 toe pieces hit the market.

[xy9ine]

love the direct mount block concept. way too much superfluous hardware accumulation on curent iterations. well done.

[scrutton]

good job - I like it a lot.

[leeho730]

Looks good! That's what I want to do with the donek plate.

[SunSurfer]

My full weight, 82kg, is resting on the plate and essentially flattening it.

The plate is an old freeride double ended snowboard with X-shaped ribs underneath, reinforced with fibreglass.

Note the motion of the rectangular washer, relative to the green base block on the front unit, as the snowboard decambers.

SunSurfer

[SunSurfer]

The UHMWPE raw material is a sheet 10mm thick.

The 8mm axles in both units are now held in 10mm thick blocks of UHMWPE, drilled with an 8mm hole.

The blocks sit/slide against a lower surface 1mm lower than the 5mm deep slot the bare axle sits in.

The slots in the base block have been cut with a router. All holes were drilled with a drill press.

The sliding blocks are held down by a 1.5mm thick stainless steel plates. (The hex head machine screws are not the fasteners to be finally used. I'll be using SS joint connecting bolts with a 1.5cm diameter x 2mm thick head.)

The fixed blocks are held in place using melted P-Tex on either side and 3mm thick aluminium plates above.

(The hex head machine screws are not the fasteners to be finally used. I'll be using SS joint connecting bolts with a 1.5cm diameter x 2mm thick head.)

SunSurfer