Hi Snow MX fans.
We appreciate all your emails and inquires this past few weeks!
It's been a bit overwhelming, but we are gearing up to get firing on 8 cylinders.
If we have missed you or your email, we apologize for that as we are just in the middle of setting up our new shop, we got a new phone number last week, switched our toll free number to our new number, installed a new phone system, and got our email addresses switched over to a new server.
Lots going on, and it is all good!
SO enough of that stuff....
We want to share you the story about the evolution of our new ski that we are extremely happy with!
But before you can see the final ski, you get to go on the YETI ski evolution journey with us.
FIRST SKI "THE DUD"
So we talked with a bunch of avid snow mx riders, they all wanted a ski that would not slide out on the corners, give the rider confidence on the trail, float on top of the powder, and we wanted to save weight too. After 30 years of ice racing/riding dirt bikes, I could appreciate that feeling of the front end being "planted" so that you can go FASTER. This seemed like a good challenge.... and away we went. We figured that the ski needs to have multiple cutting edges, so 5 of them seemed to make sense.
We CAD designed a ski, 3D printed it, looked at it for a while, and then machined a billet one from a solid chunk as a flat plank, (not a cheap thing to do) and then heated it, curved it up the nose, welded up a skag, mounted it, and rode it.
Needless to say it was called the "DUD" because it was. Kevin rode the bike about 2 feet and just about fell over a couple of times, this ski would not hold any edge at all, after a very short ride, he loaded it up, he never got to the powder on this ski, it was too dangerous to go that far...lol....we called it progress and went back to the drawing board.
This ski would push, we determined that there was not enough pressure per keel, and by adding a couple more we actually made the pressure per keel lower than a 3 keel ski. We also attempted to make the transition from keel to keel easier, removing the huge gap from the centre keel to the edges, by adding another step in between. Lots of brain power from a few guys went into this ski, though it failed, the learnings were very good.
This ski was then heated up and the edges curled down to a more aggressive angle, and ridden again. It was better and would bite a bit, but Kevin and the team had more idea's and a new CAD drawing was started.
We had started on a long journey!
We will go through all the ski's with you, the learnings, and then share the final result.
Attached are the picture of the first 3D printed model version of the ski, then the machined billet one.
We appreciate all your emails and inquires this past few weeks!
It's been a bit overwhelming, but we are gearing up to get firing on 8 cylinders.
If we have missed you or your email, we apologize for that as we are just in the middle of setting up our new shop, we got a new phone number last week, switched our toll free number to our new number, installed a new phone system, and got our email addresses switched over to a new server.
Lots going on, and it is all good!
SO enough of that stuff....
We want to share you the story about the evolution of our new ski that we are extremely happy with!
But before you can see the final ski, you get to go on the YETI ski evolution journey with us.
FIRST SKI "THE DUD"
So we talked with a bunch of avid snow mx riders, they all wanted a ski that would not slide out on the corners, give the rider confidence on the trail, float on top of the powder, and we wanted to save weight too. After 30 years of ice racing/riding dirt bikes, I could appreciate that feeling of the front end being "planted" so that you can go FASTER. This seemed like a good challenge.... and away we went. We figured that the ski needs to have multiple cutting edges, so 5 of them seemed to make sense.
We CAD designed a ski, 3D printed it, looked at it for a while, and then machined a billet one from a solid chunk as a flat plank, (not a cheap thing to do) and then heated it, curved it up the nose, welded up a skag, mounted it, and rode it.
Needless to say it was called the "DUD" because it was. Kevin rode the bike about 2 feet and just about fell over a couple of times, this ski would not hold any edge at all, after a very short ride, he loaded it up, he never got to the powder on this ski, it was too dangerous to go that far...lol....we called it progress and went back to the drawing board.
This ski would push, we determined that there was not enough pressure per keel, and by adding a couple more we actually made the pressure per keel lower than a 3 keel ski. We also attempted to make the transition from keel to keel easier, removing the huge gap from the centre keel to the edges, by adding another step in between. Lots of brain power from a few guys went into this ski, though it failed, the learnings were very good.
This ski was then heated up and the edges curled down to a more aggressive angle, and ridden again. It was better and would bite a bit, but Kevin and the team had more idea's and a new CAD drawing was started.
We had started on a long journey!
We will go through all the ski's with you, the learnings, and then share the final result.
Attached are the picture of the first 3D printed model version of the ski, then the machined billet one.
