Inflatable Foil box questions (before build)

Build, Repair & Mod
1

Hi everyone,

I finally want to start building my own e-foil and came across somebody who sells an old inflatable foil (some russian design). Unfortunately there is no box included, so I have to make my own.

The side walls I want to 3d print because of the curves and I thought to embed a 12mm aluminium plate for the top mast plate from the bottom and the esc mounted inside an aluminium case on top of the plate. The main idea is to transfer the heat from the esc to the case and on to the plate and maybe even down the mast, but I don’t think it would get that warm.

The threads on the underside for the mastplate are also meant to be 10mm deep and only a single hole for the cables to come through.

I am unsure which material I should use for the large plates on bottom and top of the box. 3D printing feels wasteful for such a big box.

XPS foam or another light material?
Which thickness?
Can I glue 3D parts to the foam before glassing?

Here is a pic of the board and the dimensional drawings of the box. I hope to get a constructive discussion here going and will be happy to share my build process, once I have everything planned and maybe someone finds it helpful.

inflatableboard
inflatableboard703×1147 123 KB

technikbox
technikbox1281×898 115 KB

2

Don’t use aluminium, its just going to make it heavy!
There are a couple of ways to do it.

  • You can bend a custom hotwire and then hotwire foam.
  • You can 3Dprint and then use a combination of foam and 3D prints.
  • You could 3D print a custom sander and then sand the shape.

For the mast interface, use blind SS316 M8 threads into a carbon plate. Use HD XPS or PET for the foam on the bottom. Then laminate with a combination of carbon and fibreglass and epoxy.

3

Look how this board deforms under the front foot (at the eight-second mark). I wouldn’t recommend buying this.

4

Are you sure this is the same board? Do you have any experience with it?

5

Luckily, I don’t have any experience riding this board. But I’m sure it’s an ArtFoils board, and it’s soft.