Designing & Manufacturing Powder Skis

Abstract

Growing up skiing was something I did every weekend with my family. As I got older I got more into racing and learned a lot about the technical aspects of skiing. Since I began studying mechanical engineering it has been a dream of mine to build my own skis. The goal of this project was to build a pair of functional powder skis as well as test and compare the skis to professionally made ones. I began by doing research into the aspects of different types of skis and how they affect skiing. From there I designed the shape and looked into the layering and material composition determining where to acquire all the materials. I began with the wooden core using a CNC machine to perfect it. Then cut out all the necessary layers including fiberglass and PTEX to go into the skis. Along with this I created a mold in order to press the rocker and camber into the ski. I did this step along with some of the design process with my partner Allison King who shares my passion for skiing and is also in the department. We built different skis however the mold design was the same so we used the same one. Once this was built we epoxied the layers and pressed them into the mold. This created the final skis. From there I did vibration testing in order to compare the modes of vibrations of three pairs of professionally made skis to my skis in order to determine how the chatter would feel in our skis compared to others. Through this process I was able to successfully build skis which are somewhat comparable to professionally made skis especially at low frequencies.