I thought it was CNCed but it looks like injection molded aluminium. Can you confirm ?
That’s a lot of weight for an enclosure, seems like a suboptimised solution, all that just to be able to use your existing board?
Yes it is CNCed. There are tooling marks I can see.
Yeah pretty much that. I think they were trying to target people that that already had boards (and foils?) and the preorder price was only 3899 which is a pretty decent deal at the time.
We had 3 guys around here with one. It is nice that you could go to the beach to wingfoil, the wind dies, and slap it on that board and not have to bring much extra gear.
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Same problem as with the rifle case: how thin can be the enveloppe when top and bottom skins are locked to one another … both skins work together…
It’s actually pretty light enclosure-wise.
±2.7kg for a sealed enclosure, 6kg for a board and you’re under any commercial efoil. Most commercial boards struggle to get under 10kg just for the boards.
When pwrfoil did an enclosure like this I thought it was ugly as anything, but weirdly enough my use case of boards and foiling has changed now and I’d happily use a solution like this.
Interesting:
A lot going on in there. The 3 power connections to the VESC and external BMS makes it look more spaghetti like than a lot of even DIY builds. It does mean that fault finding like Bryce is doing is a lot easier though.
I get quite a bit of joy seeing off the shelf components being used in commercial products like this - it make sense, no point in reinventing speed controllers or connectors for low volume products.
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It’s interesting that they used a single xt90 for the battery connector though. I would have gone with 2 or an as150
This has nothing to do with a vortex. The design for bottom of the board units existed long before the vortex was designed!
yes ! btw there would be a nice opportunity for Alex to go for foil assist like enclosure. More cost effective, smaller box and it opens to the surf foil world. eFoil is nice but you need to go big. Foil Assist is more simple as an end product. I would have definitely bought a smaller version of the Vortex… I’m sure this is where FD will be going. No more heating issues on ESC… weight on the mast baseplate… and easy battery removal and you’re good to go!
I heard a rumour there are prototypes for FD, but I’m not sure when they plan on showing it…
What would you propose to do PWRfoil justice ? PWRfoil BBU for board bottom unit ? Simply BBU ?
As I’ve already explained, I’ve been following the PWRfoil adventure since 2017 (press then Web). I no longer see the point in mentioning PWR who created and popularised the concept of box under the board here since May 2019 - classic (vs invisible) was its name - but was not adaptable to any foil board and abandoned after a year. LACROIX not only made a universal module adaptable to any board fitted with a double US rail, gave it a name (Vortex), believed in the concept and sold it until the very end (4th October 2023). VORTEX talks to people…
yes, positive outcome is what we should be looking for
I wish all the best to Alex and his team. The world of ESK8 is a though one, even tougher depending on where your headquarters are located on planet earth. I’ve seen builders investing all their family time to get beautiful products out of their garage but timing is everything and sometimes luck as well.
It’s a tough world to do business.
That’s a bit of a broad statement… VORTEX is dead unless they sell off the enclosures. On top of I don’t think it was the best looking or most hydrodynamic enclosure either. Realistically its filled with design flaws.
If we dredge through the site, there are probably posts pre vortex that talk about units that fit underneath.
It would make more sense to start a completely generic thread about “below board” Efoil units as I know of a couple more that are coming. Then include PWRfoil and Vortex as examples of that.
2022 April 27th is the date this thread was created.
… and we have a witty Thomas from Canada applying 6 months later (2022 oct 17th) for this patent WO2023065018 published 2023 04 27… 
PWR foil didn’t dare doing it in February 2019] see post #9 above.
Looks like a patent troll of you look at some of the other patents he’s attached to…
Some guys try to patent open others prior art to then try hold royalties