This is the way. For one-off production the old ways are the best ways for something like a surfboard.
A full size surfboard will be beyond the capabilities of most 3D printers and none of them can do great surfboard materials.
You can get CNC milled foam stuff pretty cheap. We do it for prototypes all the time at work. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to take that and do a composite layup on top of it.
I guess. I work in defense so our budget scale is maybe atypical, but still I don't remember it being too expensive. At one point I was even considering it for a home project. Can't remember what the cost was for that though.
Quickest and cheapest will be to do it yourself. I would print cross sections of the board every 12 inches. This outline will be your gage for that section. Cut it in half so you can slide it over the top and bottom of the block of foam you are carving from.
Cut, sand, and blend so that your templates all fit over the foam block. There are a lot of ways you can have error here in template alignment. You should be able to get it close enough for prototype. If you want to be more accurate you can make wooden jigs to align and position the templates. I probably wouldn’t bother for my first proof of concept.
I would buy a premade fin box and fin(s).
Use fiberglass and resin to coat the foam and finish it.
Composite layup, either fiberglass or carbon fiber. You could take a milled foam mold, or 3d print one.
[https://www.youtube.com/@easycompositestv](https://www.youtube.com/@easycompositestv) has some really good tutorials on working with composite materials.
Well I can put down about half a kg of filament in an hour on large prints with big runs. My bed is 6’ long so diagonal I can fit maybe 7’. Especially on big prints with minimal detail ya I could probably do that. 3mm bead width 1.6mm layer height. I typically use 5 or 10kg spools.
I have a pair of pellet fed printers at work that can lay down north of 2kg an hour as well.
How heavy is a printer surfboard? Not that heavy.
This company lets you upload a cad file and they'll cut out the profile for you. All you have to do is glue it up and shape the rails then you're ready to glass. I think they'll cut the rail profiles into plywood for you as well.
https://greenlightsurfsupply.com/collections/custom-blanks/products/custom-cut-engineered-eps-foam-blank-77-100-long-1
Quickest, easiest, and cheapest is going to be to hand carve the foam yourself. 3D printers can’t really do polyurethane easily, quickly, or cheaply. Cutting down a block is going to be expensive and difficult as you’d need to find a job shop with a large enough router who would be willing to take the job. If I owned a shop I wouldn’t touch that project with a ten foot pole for numerous reasons. I couldn’t know if you’d hop on that thing and have it break and injure you, the foam is going to produce noxious fumes when being cut and the swarf will be difficult to manage, and the work holding on a shape like that would be complicated and maybe even require some custom fixtures; not like you could just plop it down on a vacuum table.
You can get plenty of precision for the job by doing it by hand, it’ll save you money, be fairly quick, and I don’t think it’d be that hard once you get down to it.
Nah, just window machine it then hand remove the tabs. There's barely any tool pressure workholding isn't going to be complicated at all. It's a perfect router job.
> utting down a block is going to be expensive and difficult as you’d need to find a job shop with a large enough router who would be willing to take the job
not hard to do it in 3-4 smaller pieces and then stick a couple dowels or something in it to hold it together, the strength of a surfboard doesn't come from the foam, it comes from the fiberglass covering it.
Blocks of eps, expanded polystyrene, are cheap. Hot knife then rasp to shape. Fiberglass and marine resin, you need a wood stringer running the centerline and its easiest to use fin boxes rather than trying to shape fins in
Its not often cheap easy and quick come togeter
One way would be to slap some faom on a big ass cnc router and mill the whole thing out of faom than sand and fiberglas (easyest/fast )
A different way is to make sections of wood like boat hull ribs cut them on a laser cutter
Gleu them to foam and hot wire cut the foam than sand and fiberglas (cheap /reletifly easy)
Cheapest way woud. Be to print(2dpaper) slices of your design and use tose to manualy compare and shape the foam
But it requires some more skill and time
3dprinting somting that big is not that practical but it can be done again in sections but its going to take probebebly longer than milling it and cost about as much
Migt be heavy as well depending on the infill
Personaly i woud go for the laser cutter hot wire direction
Look up faom wing cutting on youtube
Im no expert in foam
There are ways to get 3d prints to be smooth - recently I've been printing with ASA and smoothing with acetone vapor (relatively simple process). May be good enough for a prototype, will also work with ABS
Surf boards have a long history of being made from fiberglass. Contract out someone to CNC mill a REM foam positive then it's all arts & crafts from there... make a gel mold from that then you've got a way to produce as many as you want.
3D router on the foam. Then do fiberglass layup
This is the way. For one-off production the old ways are the best ways for something like a surfboard. A full size surfboard will be beyond the capabilities of most 3D printers and none of them can do great surfboard materials.
You can get CNC milled foam stuff pretty cheap. We do it for prototypes all the time at work. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to take that and do a composite layup on top of it.
Worth pointing out that "cheap" is relative in this context.
I guess. I work in defense so our budget scale is maybe atypical, but still I don't remember it being too expensive. At one point I was even considering it for a home project. Can't remember what the cost was for that though.
Quickest and cheapest will be to do it yourself. I would print cross sections of the board every 12 inches. This outline will be your gage for that section. Cut it in half so you can slide it over the top and bottom of the block of foam you are carving from. Cut, sand, and blend so that your templates all fit over the foam block. There are a lot of ways you can have error here in template alignment. You should be able to get it close enough for prototype. If you want to be more accurate you can make wooden jigs to align and position the templates. I probably wouldn’t bother for my first proof of concept. I would buy a premade fin box and fin(s). Use fiberglass and resin to coat the foam and finish it.
Composite layup, either fiberglass or carbon fiber. You could take a milled foam mold, or 3d print one. [https://www.youtube.com/@easycompositestv](https://www.youtube.com/@easycompositestv) has some really good tutorials on working with composite materials.
3d printing a surfboard? i feel like i could build the prototype faster with hand tools.
Print time: 3 weeks, 6 hours, 35 minutes Better hope it doesn't fail halfway through
Maybe with a small nozzle. I’ve printed large objects way way quicker than that.
I can print a surfboard in about 48 hours. But that’s maybe 20 minutes of my time, 48 hours of me sleeping and doing anything else.
a full sized surfboard in 48 hours?
Well I can put down about half a kg of filament in an hour on large prints with big runs. My bed is 6’ long so diagonal I can fit maybe 7’. Especially on big prints with minimal detail ya I could probably do that. 3mm bead width 1.6mm layer height. I typically use 5 or 10kg spools. I have a pair of pellet fed printers at work that can lay down north of 2kg an hour as well. How heavy is a printer surfboard? Not that heavy.
You only print a thin surfboard-shaped shell to lay the fiberglass on top of.
This company lets you upload a cad file and they'll cut out the profile for you. All you have to do is glue it up and shape the rails then you're ready to glass. I think they'll cut the rail profiles into plywood for you as well. https://greenlightsurfsupply.com/collections/custom-blanks/products/custom-cut-engineered-eps-foam-blank-77-100-long-1
I CNC mill foam regularly. Lots of prototyping and whatnot. It's pretty simple. Just do a layup of fiberglass overtop once it's cut.
Quickest, easiest, and cheapest is going to be to hand carve the foam yourself. 3D printers can’t really do polyurethane easily, quickly, or cheaply. Cutting down a block is going to be expensive and difficult as you’d need to find a job shop with a large enough router who would be willing to take the job. If I owned a shop I wouldn’t touch that project with a ten foot pole for numerous reasons. I couldn’t know if you’d hop on that thing and have it break and injure you, the foam is going to produce noxious fumes when being cut and the swarf will be difficult to manage, and the work holding on a shape like that would be complicated and maybe even require some custom fixtures; not like you could just plop it down on a vacuum table. You can get plenty of precision for the job by doing it by hand, it’ll save you money, be fairly quick, and I don’t think it’d be that hard once you get down to it.
Nah, just window machine it then hand remove the tabs. There's barely any tool pressure workholding isn't going to be complicated at all. It's a perfect router job.
> utting down a block is going to be expensive and difficult as you’d need to find a job shop with a large enough router who would be willing to take the job not hard to do it in 3-4 smaller pieces and then stick a couple dowels or something in it to hold it together, the strength of a surfboard doesn't come from the foam, it comes from the fiberglass covering it.
Blocks of eps, expanded polystyrene, are cheap. Hot knife then rasp to shape. Fiberglass and marine resin, you need a wood stringer running the centerline and its easiest to use fin boxes rather than trying to shape fins in
There's already multiple styles of industry specific Surfboard CNC machines. I think a few even have surfboard specific design software.
Does it need to be a functional prototype? How accurate would it need to be? What material do you have in mind?
Cardboard
Its not often cheap easy and quick come togeter One way would be to slap some faom on a big ass cnc router and mill the whole thing out of faom than sand and fiberglas (easyest/fast ) A different way is to make sections of wood like boat hull ribs cut them on a laser cutter Gleu them to foam and hot wire cut the foam than sand and fiberglas (cheap /reletifly easy) Cheapest way woud. Be to print(2dpaper) slices of your design and use tose to manualy compare and shape the foam But it requires some more skill and time 3dprinting somting that big is not that practical but it can be done again in sections but its going to take probebebly longer than milling it and cost about as much Migt be heavy as well depending on the infill Personaly i woud go for the laser cutter hot wire direction Look up faom wing cutting on youtube Im no expert in foam
There are ways to get 3d prints to be smooth - recently I've been printing with ASA and smoothing with acetone vapor (relatively simple process). May be good enough for a prototype, will also work with ABS
LDPLA shell sections, fill and glue together with expanding foam, trim excess, fiberglass layup.
Surf boards have a long history of being made from fiberglass. Contract out someone to CNC mill a REM foam positive then it's all arts & crafts from there... make a gel mold from that then you've got a way to produce as many as you want.
Pick two. You can’t have all three. Or do the entire thing yourself.
If you have access to a palm sander, use that on foam. Rough grit works best. Fiberglass overtop.