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Myths about UHMW Base Material and New Base Material Idea

Jacques

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Tony said "If true, it just makes my idea better because I can formulate hybrid materials with heat sinking ceramics that will operate for two or three minutes well about 400 or 500 degrees."

That's been done too.
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IMG_1491.JPG

Wow big learning curve dto post stuff here!
 

Jacques

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Read the appendices to Kuzmin's paper - they will make you even more steamed at unsupported assertions :D .

I have read all that stuff a long time ago. Old dry or "burned" base is slow, so scraping to fresh will make it faster. You know i know that. But the it needs wax so that won't happen again. At least so quickly. If you scrape to fresh all the time you will have no ski left real quick.
I'm sure you have seen my video "How To Renew A Sinterd Base An Alternative To Stone Grinding"
 

cantunamunch

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I have read all that stuff a long time ago. Old dry or "burned" base is slow, so scraping to fresh will make it faster. You know i know that. But the it needs wax so that won't happen again. At least so quickly. If you scrape to fresh all the time you will have no ski left real quick.
I'm sure you have seen my video "How To Renew A Sinterd Base An Alternative To Stone Grinding"

That's not the part I'm talking about - see if you can find the parts where he talks BS about "I've never seen water go into a ski base and a wax molecule is BIGGER than water so how can wax penetrate?"
 

Jacques

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That's not the part I'm talking about - see if you can find the parts where he talks BS about "I've never seen water go into a ski base and a wax molecule is BIGGER than water so how can wax penetrate?"
Yes, I read all that like I said. A good portion of all his paper is poppycock with a little bit of truth. Very dangerous. It's like a snake oil sales man.

Oh BTW I now go to the shop to scrape and brush some skis. The snow will be fresh, then get warm.
Therefore I used Anti-Stastic for new snow and High Fluoro mix. Both hard waxes for snow temps of 5 to 20 F.
The snow will start out around 22 F and get warm after a few hours. Still this will work best as fresh snow wants harder wax always. THe HF will make them much faster as the fresh snow warms up and it will do that tomorrow.
Be good and don't eat too much tuna.
 
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cantunamunch

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Yeh, I just did four pairs:

Base RenewG (2 cycles) with Graphite/Silicone warm wax on top <- testing this stuff, hate the smell.
Base RenewG (2 cycles) with Briko HP3 blue <-quite slippery, ski is a little hard to hold
BP77 with Zardoz liquid and Zardoz blue (Felix) <- extremely slippery, ski is very hard to hold
BP77 with Briko RBM and Toko blue HF <- probably my most durable combo
 

CalG

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That's not the part I'm talking about - see if you can find the parts where he talks BS about "I've never seen water go into a ski base and a wax molecule is BIGGER than water so how can wax penetrate?"

Water is SO polarized!

Hydrocarbon chains can be as well, but as hydrocarbon chains are long and skinny, they stand on their tails (or heads as the case may be) and let the "other end" take the abuse.

I hear tell that "wax" is a lot like oil in that regard. ;-)
 

eok

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I've been watching this thread for a while because I love skiing & I find developments in materials science interesting. I *think* hydrophobic materials have been discussed in this thread (I haven't re-read all the posts). Anyway...

Super-hydrophobic surface materials have always faced a durability challenge. But there's been a lot of R&D in hydrophobics for a while to address this. Ironically, a big driver for the research is the shipping industry. Lower the drag on tanker/cargo hulls and save big on fuel costs (which currently can be immense). From what I understand, hydrophobic paints typically don't have the durability to be fiscally practical for the big ships. But that is changing. One lab/company seems to have achieved a breakthrough with hydrophobics. Article here:

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-self-healing-water-repellant-coating-ultra-durable.html

Synopsis: the material can be painted or engineered into sheets. It's super-hydrophobic and "icephobic" (their words). It's durable & self-healing. Abrasion does not impair it's properties. Temperature range its properties support: -50C to 250C. It apparently starts as a liquid suspension and then goes through a curing phase after application/deposition. Suitable for coating ship hulls and other surfaces requiring durable hydrophobic surfaces.

The stuff is being commercialized by Hygratek: http://hygratek.com/

I'd love to play with this stuff. I could envision a ski base using the sheet form of a material like this for the base at manufacture. Then, perhaps, a skier/tech could "refresh" the base (if needed) with a spray-on version of the material (like after a damage repair or prior to re-grinding the bases of well-worn skis).
 

eok

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As a follow-up: yes, if tested on skis it might actually be too hydrophic and thus too "fast" for recreational skis. But, a hybrid ski base design could address this. That is, longitudinal strips of base materials - some hydrophobic some regular ski base material. I could see how one could play with the base material width ratios to tune performance/glide. I'm envisioning this assuming a "waxless" ski base - even though the base would have some regular base material.
 

cantunamunch

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As a follow-up: yes, if tested on skis it might actually be too hydrophic and thus too "fast" for recreational skis. But, a hybrid ski base design could address this. That is, longitudinal strips of base materials - some hydrophobic some regular ski base material. I could see how one could play with the base material width ratios to tune performance/glide. I'm envisioning this assuming a "waxless" ski base - even though the base would have some regular base material.

If it has good tensile and shear strength never mind bases, make skins and outerwear out of it.
 

CalG

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Rain-X should be the ticket to "Too Fast"! ;-)

Fear of water to the extreme. Or maybe it's just oily. ;-)
 

Jacques

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As a follow-up: yes, if tested on skis it might actually be too hydrophic and thus too "fast" for recreational skis. But, a hybrid ski base design could address this. That is, longitudinal strips of base materials - some hydrophobic some regular ski base material. I could see how one could play with the base material width ratios to tune performance/glide. I'm envisioning this assuming a "waxless" ski base - even though the base would have some regular base material.

A base could not be too fast. One would have edges to control the speed. I'd go for a too fast base any day! ogwink :popcorn:
 

Doug Briggs

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I am entering this thread late so perhaps this has been answered. If so I apologize for the repetition.

If the sintered bases on my race skis don't somehow absorb wax why do my bases still show the color of wax after a base grind (structuring with a stone)? I know I've taken off base material thus the applied wax on the surface must be gone, yet the color is still there.

In my case they are Fischer RC4s and the yellow sections at the tip are tinted red from all the red Toko I use. I've waxed them since the latest grind, but straight off the machine they looked pretty much like this:

20170525_165226_Huckleberry Grn.jpg


They show the red hue after a scrape, thorough brushing and multiple runs of approximately one mile each.
 

crgildart

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^^That could be wax in the tiny lines of structure, i.e. in the hair but not in the scalp.

As for is there a "too fast" I give you the Griswald Method..

 

T-Square

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One of the best scenes in that movie. When I first saw it I almost fell on the floor.
 

Doug Briggs

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There were no tiny lines left from the original structure to the one I photographed. I was in virgin base, I believe.
 

theart

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"If the sintered bases on my race skis don't somehow absorb wax why do my bases still show the color of wax after a base grind (structuring with a stone)?"

I have similarly discolored white bases from frequent use of Swix F4 Liquid. Except they're extruded, not sintered, and thus not alleged by anyone to be "porous". Keep in mind that the wax itself is colorless. The color comes from dye additives that are small molecules and not bound to the wax. Just because the dye went somewhere doesn't mean wax went with it.
 

cantunamunch

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"If the sintered bases on my race skis don't somehow absorb wax why do my bases still show the color of wax after a base grind (structuring with a stone)?"

I have similarly discolored white bases from frequent use of Swix F4 Liquid. Except they're extruded, not sintered, and thus not alleged by anyone to be "porous". Keep in mind that the wax itself is colorless. The color comes from dye additives that are small molecules and not bound to the wax. Just because the dye went somewhere doesn't mean wax went with it.

There are several people who have posted about amorphous zones within any PE that isn't strongly crosslinked - but your point about dye being more mobile than wax is reasonably well taken.
 

CalG

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The potential for engineering ski base materials is further advanced when considering the DPS "apply it once" wax free coatings.

I wonder where the denial of possibility comes from?
 
Thread Starter
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Tony Warren

Tony Warren

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I started this thread but have not kept up on it at all. I did however find a micrograph of the surface of sintered UHMW. The plastic was supplied by Polydor and the molecular weight was north of 4.5 million amu. As I said at the time, there are no pores on the surface of this material. The scale is on the top of the micrograph. The scale is 2 microns. The little dots are a lot smaller than that. They are not pores, it is likely that they are visible groups of the long chain molecules of the plastic. Wax doesn't hide or adhere to those dots.

The bases are treated by corona, plasma, wild and crazy chemicals or flame prior to adhesion to the ski. I think that any wax is hanging on to the abraded surface of the base and perhaps there is some cross linking of the wax to the base surface. Melted wax has very low surface energy and may be able to form bonds with the textured base. But it doesn't flow through pores into the plastic, unless it is smaller than micro, somewhere between micro and nano or in the pico meter range.


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