Wintersteiger Jupiter -- For an out of this world tune.

[Philpug]

@Philpug - not trying to be pessimistic,.. I would love to think all the operators are fully trained. but what I find is the full time year around team are trained, but some the season staff may not have the KSA’s (knowledge, skills & abilities) to properly operate these machines (not just the Jupiter).

We were referring to a specific shop and a specific machine. So, yes, I would say that Wintersteiger made sure that Pro Ski & Ride technician who are are working on the Jupiter have the proper KSA (knowledge, skills & abilities).

 

[Toddski13]

I think challenge arises when these shops have turnover and the new management does not know any better or intentionally cuts corners to save a few bucks. This also applies to what happens when a shop with one of these machines goes out of business and another shop picks it up on the cheap during the liquidation. In both cases you end up with a machine that does not get properly or regularly maintained and operators who are not properly trained. That stone gets damaged or goes out of balance and the machine starts to eat skis.

Also fully agree with the above comment these machines have various modules and configurations, the most basic of which go for well below $500K. Truthfully I have only seen the full setup with the auto-loader and all the bells and whistles in a few places that tune an incredibly high volume of skis every week, for most shops these capabilities are not needed and price aside would not justify the space needed in the store for a full setup like this.

While I can’t say that 100% of automated machine owners are, or always have been, exceedingly diligent with maintenance, the investment in these machines and the consequences of downtime are both motivating factors. Our techs are running, hard, from May to now to get all the preventative maintenance done. So much of it is on automated machines, but manual machines take up a lot of time too. I don’t disagree that things can go wrong, but I’d offer this perspective - a novice operator is far more dangerous on a manual machine than a robot (at least a Wintersteiger one). We also are directly involved in almost re-sale situation for robots, of which there aren’t that many, so the dropped maintenance ball doesn’t roll far there either.

 

[Toddski13]

Here’s an updated list of machines/locations for everyone.

 

[Swiss Toni]

The structures on the skis in the OP look a bit course to me, as far as I can see the machine used has a belt sanding module and a stone grinding module fitted. Better results are usually obtained if 2 stone grinding modules are used, 1 fitted with a blue stone for pre-grinding and another with a softer beige or brown stone for applying the structure. This video shows the procedure /Jupiter setup that a highly regarded Austrian shop uses for tuning race skis.



In the close-up photo of the possible structures shown above there are grinding marks on the base edges of 2 of the skis, these are also visible on the ski in the video, so it looks like the base edge polishing module still only polishes the edges near the tip and tail of the ski.

Wintersteiger streamed the launch event, which went on for around 45 mins and bizarrely included a performance by “The World Leading Quick Change Act” Sos & Victoria, unfortunately there are no English subtitles.



During the presentation Daniel Steininger Wintersteiger’s head of sales was asked about training, he said that even Christian Nehiba (the sports presenter asking the questions) would be able to operate the machine after about an hour’s training.

Whilst there are lots of new features that will probably be of interest to owners and operators there doesn’t seem to be much for us enthusiasts to get excited about. The ability to can grind base edge angles of 0.5° is a welcome improvement (the Discovery could only manage ≥0.75°) hopefully the Discovery’s tolerance of ± 0.25° has been improved. The sidewall cutter and V-Edge seem to be gimmicks, can the sidewall cutter be fitted with square insets and will it cut phenol sidewalls, how are home tuners going to maintain the variable angles when they sharpen their edges?

 

[Toddski13]

SwissToni, I’m baffled by what you seem to be looking at and the conclusions that you are drawing.
The machine used for the OP absolutely does not have a belt module. You can see the X-SSDP notation in the screenshot. That particular machine was fitted with two blue stones, but they were not the same. One uses a harder binder to pre grind more skis between dressing intervals and the other is our standard blue stone that structures very well and is more representative of what non-race specialists would choose in a 2 stone machine.
Now, to further debunk, the different grind examples that Phil photographed are skis that came directly from the Atomic race room in Altenmarkt and were all structured on a Race NC then edge ground on a TrimJet2 Race. So yes, you’ll see striations (indicators of uniformity, not roughness) on those skis. I’m not sure how you could be looking at any of those structures through anything other than a pessimists lens to think that you could possibly peg them as too coarse, especially since they were/are actually used on the World Cup. The Jupiter is completely capable of polishing the entire length of the base edge or just the tip and tail… which is chosen by the machine operator, but all of the training I do steers users to select full length polish.
And, lastly, I think your v-edge is a ‘gimmick’ comment demands addressing. If you haven’t tried it I suppose I could understand some skepticism, but Rossignol, Head, and Atomic have all bought or updated machinery to offer true, precision variable bevel. Montana and Fill quite plainly round the base edge and have imprecise, limited control of variability. PM me where you are located and I’ll set up having some of your skis tuned with V-edge. I was skeptical when we started the Jupiter project but skiing is truly believing.

 

[Toddski13]

The structures on the skis in the OP look a bit course to me, as far as I can see the machine used has a belt sanding module and a stone grinding module fitted. Better results are usually obtained if 2 stone grinding modules are used, 1 fitted with a blue stone for pre-grinding and another with a softer beige or brown stone for applying the structure. This video shows the procedure /Jupiter setup that a highly regarded Austrian shop uses for tuning race skis.



In the close-up photo of the possible structures shown above there are grinding marks on the base edges of 2 of the skis, these are also visible on the ski in the video, so it looks like the base edge polishing module still only polishes the edges near the tip and tail of the ski.

Wintersteiger streamed the launch event, which went on for around 45 mins and bizarrely included a performance by “The World Leading Quick Change Act” Sos & Victoria, unfortunately there are no English subtitles.



During the presentation Daniel Steininger Wintersteiger’s head of sales was asked about training, he said that even Christian Nehiba (the sports presenter asking the questions) would be able to operate the machine after about an hour’s training.

Whilst there are lots of new features that will probably be of interest to owners and operators there doesn’t seem to be much for us enthusiasts to get excited about. The ability to can grind base edge angles of 0.5° is a welcome improvement (the Discovery could only manage ≥0.75°) hopefully the Discovery’s tolerance of ± 0.25° has been improved. The sidewall cutter and V-Edge seem to be gimmicks, can the sidewall cutter be fitted with square insets and will it cut phenol sidewalls, how are home tuners going to maintain the variable angles when they sharpen their edges?

Sorry, I missed a few parts. We don’t currently offer a square bit as a radius bit is a better choice for the wide variety of constructions that will typically be run though a machine. Square bits have become a very specialized choice and I would never suggest that TrimCut replaces sidewall preparation for racing skis. It can help that process and for consumer tuning it helps impart a more precise edge angle by removing the bulk of the material that would interfere with the discs. With home maintenance, no one should be really doing anything to their base edge that would impact V-Edge. Side edge is a different story, but it does not need to be variable.
I agree that the European launch was lackluster. Here is a link to our effort in the US for more substantial information and less pomp.

 

[dovski]

While I can’t say that 100% of automated machine owners are, or always have been, exceedingly diligent with maintenance, the investment in these machines and the consequences of downtime are both motivating factors. Our techs are running, hard, from May to now to get all the preventative maintenance done. So much of it is on automated machines, but manual machines take up a lot of time too. I don’t disagree that things can go wrong, but I’d offer this perspective - a novice operator is far more dangerous on a manual machine than a robot (at least a Wintersteiger one). We also are directly involved in almost re-sale situation for robots, of which there aren’t that many, so the dropped maintenance ball doesn’t roll far there either.

@Toddski13 Completely agree with all your points. At the end of the day a great tune shop has experienced staff who know what they are doing along with well maintained equipment. Unfortunately as you will hear from many on this forum great tune shops are a scarce resource these days and I think all of us have stories of tunes gone wrong. To be clear this not one of those "don't hate the player, hate the game" scenarios. Every bad tune I have ever had is the result of a poor operator, luckily as @markojp steated we have some tune shops in the Seattle area who do a great job, but per you list no one in our area has the new Wintersteiger Jupiter machines

 

[Toddski13]

@Toddski13 Completely agree with all your points. At the end of the day a great tune shop has experienced staff who know what they are doing along with well maintained equipment. Unfortunately as you will hear from many on this forum great tune shops are a scarce resource these days and I think all of us have stories of tunes gone wrong. To be clear this not one of those "don't hate the player, hate the game" scenarios. Every bad tune I have ever had is the result of a poor operator, luckily as @markojp steated we have some tune shops in the Seattle area who do a great job, but per you list no one in our area has the new Wintersteiger Jupiter machines

Totally understand Dovski. It’s a sad state of the world for sure when it comes to finding good help and it’s not getting better. We’ll keep pushing to improve our education for operators and to get a Jupiter in your area.

 

[dovski]

Totally understand Dovski. It’s a sad state of the world for sure when it comes to finding good help and it’s not getting better. We’ll keep pushing to improve our education for operators and to get a Jupiter in your area.

And to be clear I am a big fan of the Jupiter and the high end Montana machines, you can do some amazing things with a structure on both that are simply not possible with manual machines. That said as great as these machines are the shop I go to has phenomenal staff who finish the edges by hand for an exceptional tune.

 

[markojp]

@Toddski13 Completely agree with all your points. At the end of the day a great tune shop has experienced staff who know what they are doing along with well maintained equipment. Unfortunately as you will hear from many on this forum great tune shops are a scarce resource these days and I think all of us have stories of tunes gone wrong. To be clear this not one of those "don't hate the player, hate the game" scenarios. Every bad tune I have ever had is the result of a poor operator, luckily as @markojp steated we have some tune shops in the Seattle area who do a great job, but per you list no one in our area has the new Wintersteiger Jupiter machines

A new Jupiter machine IS NOT required to provide an excellent tune.

 

[Swiss Toni]

@Toddski13 many thanks for taking the time to reply to my comments, much appreciated.

If you look at the 10th photo in the OP you can clearly see that the 1st module is a stone grinding module as the grey end plate is visible. In the photo the 2nd module doesn’t appear to have an end plate, hence my comment “as far as I can see”.



In the mean time I have found a video of a pair of SkiTalk skis being tuned on your Jupiter X-SSDP https://m.facebook.com/wintersteig...ke-city-office-retailersind/323185539730333/ which clearly shows the 2 stone grinding modules. I assume that the first one is a V04-V1 grinding stone that is used for pregrinding and the 2nd one is a V04 all-purpose grinding stone that is used for applying the structure. As snow temperatures are generally colder in the US than they are here in the Alps I’m a bit surprised that you are using a stone that creates courser structures. If my understanding is correct a course structure has a better drainage effect and reduced capillary action due to the deeper grinding grooves whereas a fine structure prevents small and angular snow crystals from catching on the ski base, reduces the real contact area with the snow and increases the production of water.

Is there a reason why both the stone modules are installed before the disk module on your Jupiter X-SSDP and not either side of it as with the H und N Sports machine in the video I posted above?

It’s good to know that V-edge can be tuned off, unfortunately as most of the ski tuning machines in the region where I live are primarily used for tuning rental skis there is a lot of push back if you ask for a tune that involves changing the settings. Hopefully at some point in the future we will be able to generate are own Q-codes that will enable us to talk directly to the machine.

I thought the article and the thread were about the Winterstiger Jupiter so I find it strange that there are photos of skis in the OP that weren’t tuned on a Jupiter. Strictly speaking the marks on the edges are not striations, the term striation is mainly used in geology, it means any of the parallel scratches or grooves on the surface of a rock caused by abrasion resulting from the passage of a glacier, motion on a fault etc. I don’t think striations on ski edges would be desirable.

I concluded that V-edge was mainly a gimmick after listening to what Christoph Bründl said at the Austrian launch. Christoph Bründl is CEO and self appointed Visionary and Magic Moment Manager for Bründl Sports. Bründl Sports is the largest ski rental operation in the Alps, they have 15,000 pairs in their rental pool and were a launch customer for the Jupiter. At the launch Bründl said that V-edge “löst Stories auf” which literally translates as creates stories so I take that to mean that they can tell potential rental and ski service customers a story i.e. V-edge will create magic moments! I think this St Anton Stories V-edge video bears this out, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UBcMTG-Zu4 it talks about emotions, freedom, magical moments etc. I think reality is somewhat different.

Thanks very much for your offer, unfortunately as I live in Switzerland this might be difficult to arrange. There only seems to be one shop in my area that has a Jupiter, if the machine is configured in the same way as the Discovery it replaced it will only have 1 stone grinding module, a disk module and a finishing module, which seems less than ideal to me. There is however a very good shop in north eastern Switzerland which is also a Wintersteiger Technology Center, their website (unfortunately only in German) is very informative https://www.wintersteiger.tc/ unfortunately they’re a long way from where I live.

 

[Toddski13]

@Toddski13 many thanks for taking the time to reply to my comments, much appreciated.

If you look at the 10th photo in the OP you can clearly see that the 1st module is a stone grinding module as the grey end plate is visible. In the photo the 2nd module doesn’t appear to have an end plate, hence my comment “as far as I can see”.

View attachment 182530

In the mean time I have found a video of a pair of SkiTalk skis being tuned on your Jupiter X-SSDP https://m.facebook.com/wintersteigerUS/videos/wintersteiger-jupiter-x-ssdp-in-action-at-our-salt-lake-city-office-retailersind/323185539730333/ which clearly shows the 2 stone grinding modules. I assume that the first one is a V04-V1 grinding stone that is used for pregrinding and the 2nd one is a V04 all-purpose grinding stone that is used for applying the structure. As snow temperatures are generally colder in the US than they are here in the Alps I’m a bit surprised that you are using a stone that creates courser structures. If my understanding is correct a course structure has a better drainage effect and reduced capillary action due to the deeper grinding grooves whereas a fine structure prevents small and angular snow crystals from catching on the ski base, reduces the real contact area with the snow and increases the production of water.

Is there a reason why both the stone modules are installed before the disk module on your Jupiter X-SSDP and not either side of it as with the H und N Sports machine in the video I posted above?

It’s good to know that V-edge can be tuned off, unfortunately as most of the ski tuning machines in the region where I live are primarily used for tuning rental skis there is a lot of push back if you ask for a tune that involves changing the settings. Hopefully at some point in the future we will be able to generate are own Q-codes that will enable us to talk directly to the machine.

I thought the article and the thread were about the Winterstiger Jupiter so I find it strange that there are photos of skis in the OP that weren’t tuned on a Jupiter. Strictly speaking the marks on the edges are not striations, the term striation is mainly used in geology, it means any of the parallel scratches or grooves on the surface of a rock caused by abrasion resulting from the passage of a glacier, motion on a fault etc. I don’t think striations on ski edges would be desirable.

I concluded that V-edge was mainly a gimmick after listening to what Christoph Bründl said at the Austrian launch. Christoph Bründl is CEO and self appointed Visionary and Magic Moment Manager for Bründl Sports. Bründl Sports is the largest ski rental operation in the Alps, they have 15,000 pairs in their rental pool and were a launch customer for the Jupiter. At the launch Bründl said that V-edge “löst Stories auf” which literally translates as creates stories so I take that to mean that they can tell potential rental and ski service customers a story i.e. V-edge will create magic moments! I think this St Anton Stories V-edge video bears this out, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UBcMTG-Zu4 it talks about emotions, freedom, magical moments etc. I think reality is somewhat different.

Thanks very much for your offer, unfortunately as I live in Switzerland this might be difficult to arrange. There only seems to be one shop in my area that has a Jupiter, if the machine is configured in the same way as the Discovery it replaced it will only have 1 stone grinding module, a disk module and a finishing module, which seems less than ideal to me. There is however a very good shop in north eastern Switzerland which is also a Wintersteiger Technology Center, their website (unfortunately only in German) is very informative https://www.wintersteiger.tc/ unfortunately they’re a long way from where I live.

Hi SwissToni,

Sorry for the delayed response.

The machine in Salt Lake was not set up with a V04-V1 and then a V04, but rather two V04’s. That machine was set up in the Wintersteiger demo room, where we also have skis from the Atomic race room on display, hence the pictures of structures not from the Jupiter.

The Jupiter has a feature called Sequence Shift or Lane Change that allows an operator to split the stone and impart multiple structures on a ski by first running it over the front half of any stones and then switching it to the back half. So, with a two stone machine you can dress four different structures and go rough-medium-fine-finish. Given that most skis require 10-12 stone touches at a minimum but only 3 or 4 disc passes, we chose to set up the machine stone-stone-disc so that we could minimize the travel time/distance over the stones

H&N is clearly using one pattern to parallel flatten, redressing, reloading the skis one-by-one, then blanking and edging before finish structuring. It’s another way to do things, and if you want to load the skis twice into the machine then it makes sense to go stone-disc-stone because it shortens the distance of travel required for the flattening and edging work.

Your question about the stones is fair, but the diamond is much more of a factor in determining the coarseness of the structure. The V04 is a very universal stone that can produce structures appropriate for all conditions and it holds up very well to metal edge contact. The V06 brown stone on the H&N machine will provide slightly more consistent and barely finer structures (again, the diamond is more critical there than the stone itself), but it requires redressing more frequently when edges touch the stone.

I’ll also offer that geology and metallurgy aren’t that far apart, so striation is widely accepted, in the US at least, to describe the uniform, parallel lines of finish left when a ski is disc edged.

I couldn’t agree more that the European introduction was lacking technical substance and the Stanton pieces tell a compelling story, but don’t connect the technical innovation with the emotion mentioned.

Hopefully we place another Jupiter closer to you soon. In the meantime, trying even the V-Edge should be a very interesting experience for you.

 

[Swiss Toni]

Hi Toddski13

Thanks very much for taking the time and the trouble to respond to my comments in detail, its much appreciated!

If one of my local shops installs a Jupiter with 2 stones I will certainly give it a try.

 

[TooNice]

Sorry for the bump, but I think this is the best thread to ask. Basically, the semi-local and most accessible tuning shop where I am (Niigata, Japan) happens to have a Jupiter.

Cost vary depending on what you want them to do (the details are here, but it is in Japanese: https://www.xraeb.co.jp/xraebsport/tuneup).

What I note is that they have three options for stone grinding. "Quick", "Standard", and "Flat". I am going to assume that "Flat" is self-explanatory, but would anyone know (perhaps it is a common preset) or hazard a guess what "Quick" or "Standard" are?

Also, does the structure shown on the page looks like presets offered by the machine, and if so, does anyone know how coarse they are?

Thanks.