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.
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.
i have found the build thread of the board here… it really seems to be the same manufacturer and in this video it looks like its really not very stable
At the end of the video, I had the feeling that if I pressed a little harder on the nose, the board would fold in half. I hope I’ve dissuaded you from wasting your money.
man, your build looks awesome and so clean. love it!
If I go with the easyfoil inflatable, which really seems to be good quality then I would for sure 3d print the rounded sides. inside i was also thinking of building two compartments. one for the battery+bms that would use a screwed in lid and should normally not be opened and the other one for the esc which would be in its aluminium case with all the plugs coming out. this one might get a round hatch as those seem to be the most waterproof…
I also built my first board based on an Inflatable, my children still use it.I got it from Alibaba, I rhink it was an easyfoil prototypy, at least it looks like the awrly easyfoil boards, the opening for the boxnos just a bit durther to the front. If you build the top plate big enough that you can stand on it, it works quite well. Also depends on your foil shape/size and angle difference between front and back wing.
One thing that is harder with an inflatable is touch down at speed. They tend to stick to the water surface when you touch down too hard at speed.
Link to my build: https://foil.zone/t/daniels-un-geared-inflatable-slowly-built
You might have to open the thread directly to be able to scroll down the entire thread.
Another awesome build. What kind of 5mm foam did you use? How much of the structural integrity is because of the material itself and how much of it is because of the fiber and/or carbon layers? I’m still stuck at finding the right material.
First I thought about 10mm XPS foam, but it might not be a good fit or eat up too much space inside the box for the batteries…
It is 5mm Rohacell but you can use any pcv foam ( purposed for lamination core material) with around 50 to 70kg/m3. The stenght comes from the fiber sandwich, the foam itself has no srenght. The thicker the core the more strenght (assuming the same number and kind of carbon layers).
ah so you have the esc connected directly with the mast top plate, right? My plan was to use the embedded 12mm aluminium plate as an intermediary and it also provides the threads for the top plate, but it might become too heavy overall
I had it like that in the early days, go through the whole thread to see changes over the years.
You might have to search for the thread instead of using the embeded link I posted in your thread.
Ah yes I see. I read that you first made a mistake with the 3d printed frame and in a later picture it looks like you only havea bottom and a top plate, connected through standoffs, but I guess that can’t be right…
I changed the link, now it is not embeded anmore and you can read it through until the end. And yes it is to plates that sanwich the board with. standoffs.
