Preview: 2023 Peak 88 and 98

[James]

The shaped titanal layers add more production steps and additional layer alignment requirements and almost certainly are not cost saving measures.

Yeah I agree. How is a plain sheet more expensive? You buy it solid, so any cutting adds expense.
Water jets, laser cutters take time and programming and labor. Anything shaped now also has to be indexed when assembling for pressing.

I also don’t get the “Bode is too optimistic” bit. You pay engineers to be wet blankets, and not too much or nothing gets made.

It’s not like he’s Elizabeth Holmes asking for millions. You get a pair of skis in exchange for your money.

 

[tomahawkins]

I'm interested in mostly-metal ski construction. Had to google sonic welding -- makes sense since I've seen friction welding in action. Speaking of which, wood friction welding to replace epoxy?

 

[AngryAnalyst]

Not likely. The M6 Mantra, for example, will start with the same size titanal blank as the similar Peak. The shaped titanal layers add more production steps and additional layer alignment requirements and almost certainly are not cost saving measures.

I disagree. I would expect using less material to reduce variable expenses per ski. Compare a full titanal sandwich construction in the same shape, obviously the shaped frame process puts less material in each ski. I am assuming that titanal is expensive enough the economic solution after you cut the blank is some form of recycling or that the segments are designed such that they actually tessellate with little blank wastage (basically each ski is a collection of titanal pieces cut out of different blanks or the same blank in different orientations - I can't find the pictures of the titanal frame cores to check whether they are all the same piece of material anymore and if they were I agree the tessellation is less likely).

The tooling and other costs are fixed over the life of the ski and what I am hypothesizing to be the variable ski cost lowering effects of less material needs to offset against the initial higher capex and production line expenses. Still, at scale my intuition is that the break even for those is a number of skis Volkl might be able to sell. I could be very wrong about that and if anyone has a lot of information on ski manufacturer cost structure in a scale factory I'd be interested.

Part of my intuition that more material is more expensive than more complicated manufacturing in this case comes from the big difference in "feel" between a Volkl or Blizzard or other mass market ski and a Stockli or Blossom other premium ski brand. I just kind of assume material cost is a big reason the premium ones feel better, despite having smaller scale manufacturing. It could be the material cost element is entirely like VDS rubber or Stockli's special unicorn horn epoxy or something else and has nothing to do with titanal layering, I don't know.

I also don’t get the “Bode is too optimistic” bit. You pay engineers to be wet blankets, and not too much or nothing gets made.

It’s not like he’s Elizabeth Holmes asking for millions. You get a pair of skis in exchange for your money.

My issue isn't him being pumped about his skis, my issue is him talking about revolutionizing ski manufacturing processes and "soft pitching" investors. See here: https://blisterreview.com/podcasts/...any-peak-skis-the-winter-olympics-more-ep-191

Time Stamp starts roughly 46:21 for the ski manufacturing thing that drove me crazy. He talks about his CIM at ~48 minutes and that segment ends at 48:40 or so.

I get that he's being entrepreneurial and those people tend to be super positive too. However, I have had a lot of meetings with entrepreneurial people who make crazy sounding claims. Few of the crazy claims or the people making them ultimately amount to much. Now, on the other hand some of them turn out to be Elon Musk and Tesla. So, yeah, if Peak is the Tesla of skiing I'm happy to buy a Model S in a few years, I just don't want the first Nikola truck.

 

[James]

Volkl Titanal Frame

So this uses two different thicknesses. 0.7mm on the outside and 0.3mm on the inside for the binding area.
I find it hard to believe that this is cheaper to build than just a 0.7mm sheet or 0.5mm the whole width.

Probably the only person here who would have knowledge on that would be @Swiss Toni .

Titanal Technology Völkl

The woodcore was and always will be the heart of every ski and a decisive factor to determine flex and power transfer. Other ski attributes like torsional stiffness or dampening are affected byundefined

www.voelkl.com

 

[AngryAnalyst]

Thanks! I couldn't find those for some reason.

So what I think is going on in the photos if you look is that there is a "front piece" of titanal frame on the edges, a rear piece for the edge and a middle piece (the big pic at the top shows the end of the front piece of titanal I think). My guess is they probably are getting multiple different titanal pieces from different blanks and putting them together for a ski, in which case the yield from a given amount of input is probably higher than it would be if they were using the blanks 1 per pair and cutting them to shape full width.

I am still open to revising this, but I really think my hypothesis that the titanal y-beam and frame concepts are at least partly about material and variable cost reductions remains consistent with available data.

 

[Tony S]

Does anyone know how much Titanal actually costs? It's basically sheet aluminum alloy, right? I mean are we talking $1.00 per ski? $10.00 per ski? There's not much quality control with the raw material either, I'd think; everything you receive from the supplier is probably "good to go." You're not throwing out 90% of it because it's not up to snuff.

Meanwhile getting really high quality consistent wood cores must be pretty expensive. The vast majority of the raw stuff must either end up as sawdust or get shunted into some kind of "seconds" bin for use in another product. It's a natural material with very high variabilty in all sorts of ways.

 

[Seldomski]

View attachment 167679
Volkl Titanal Frame

So this uses two different thicknesses. 0.7mm on the outside and 0.3mm on the inside for the binding area.
I find it hard to believe that this is cheaper to build than just a 0.7mm sheet or 0.5mm the whole width.

Probably the only person here who would have knowledge on that would be @Swiss Toni .

Titanal Technology Völkl

The woodcore was and always will be the heart of every ski and a decisive factor to determine flex and power transfer. Other ski attributes like torsional stiffness or dampening are affected byundefined

www.voelkl.com

I would guess that part of the shaping and splitting of metal pieces has to to with reducing scrap. It looks like you could probably nest the tail and/or nose sections on a single sheet and cut them without a lot of wasted material. If you instead take one sheet and punch holes in it, those holes are all scrap material. You are paying a premium to then junk a lot of the input material. All those holes have to be recycled.

 

[James]

My guess is they probably are getting multiple different titanal pieces from different blanks and putting them together for a ski, in which case the yield from a given amount of input is probably higher than it would be if they were using the blanks 1 per pair and cutting them to shape full width.

So the “frame” is two pieces, not one. Ok, yeah you could save material there.
Maybe AMAG cuts the complex shapes for the end user.

It would be interesting to see the numbers. I’m still not all that convinced that doing all that cutting and assembly is less expensive.

 

[Swiss Toni]

It looks to me like the Titanal band and the Titanal frame are laser cut from one piece. This is how Stöckli cut out their Titanal layers.



Aluminum is a commodity; the price varies from day to day currently it costs around 30% more than it did a year ago. The price of Titanal will also vary depending on how much you buy and whether you buy it in coils and decoil it into sheets yourself or buy it in sheet form.

There are different types of ski core, the most expensive ones are made from rotary cut veneers, cheaper ones are made of strips of wood. They arrive at the factories in the form rectangular blanks which have to be machined, there is lots of waste (maybe 50%) this is either used to heat the factory or made into pellets for household heating.

 

[nnowak]

This is the titanal layer for the K2 Mindbender 108ti. It does not look like the shaping would produce any significant reduction in raw material inputs.

 

[Swiss Toni]

The idea is not to reduce material inputs, but to place the Titanal where it’s needed and to remove it from where it’s not needed. CNC fiber laser cutting machines make this much easier than it used to be.

 

[GregK]

View attachment 167706
This is the titanal layer for the K2 Mindbender 108ti. It does not look like the shaping would produce any significant reduction in raw material inputs.

The idea is not to reduce material inputs, but to place the Titanal where it’s needed and to remove it from where it’s not needed.

Perfect illustration and description for explaining why the elaborate research and development of partial metal sheets from pretty much every manufacturer out there debunk the Keyhole design.

Every partial sheet out there use the same design principles as the Mindbender above. Solid sheet(underfoot in this case) for the highest rigidity and then using the split/no metal in the Center for a slight weight reduction while keeping longitudinal and torsional rigidity high. Less metal moving towards the tips with an open end to allow a natural flex decrease as you move towards the tip. If the end went full width again, the effect would be greatly reduced.
New Rangers use a similar technique with solid metal underfoot and a short Y section above and below that.

The K2 Mindbender tail uses a Center line of metal for a bit more forgiving longitudinal and torsional flex. Similar design used on the Rustlers series but used on both the tip and tail.

The new Rangers, Mindbenders or Rustlers would all have a reduction in longitudinal and torsional flex above the front of the bindings like Peak describes as well as any ski with metal sheets just under the binding area.

 

[James]

Perfect illustration and description for explaining why the elaborate research and development of partial metal sheets from pretty much every manufacturer out there debunk the Keyhole design.

Difference does not mean debunked.
Do we even know what the metal looks like in the Peak skis?
Personally, I think the keyhole technique doesn't matter as much as the whole package.

 

[GregK]

When you compare the Enforcer double sheets vs a single partial sheet and there’s almost no difference in longitudinal and just some torsional flex difference, it debunks the thought that a single hole within a continuous sheet will make any discernible difference.

Have to be open ended or separate sheets to do what they are describing.

 

[ScottB]

I don't agree with some details of what's said above about the metal sheets. Although I am nit picking. The point I would like to make is Bode was trying to make an inflection point in front of his binding. Doesn't make complete sense to me, but I do agree if your tip is experiencing a lot of force from the terrain, especially at high speeds, a torsional and longitudinally stiff ski will translate that to your foot and any slop in your boot will be a loss of precision. My slalom skis at high speed try to turn themselves from the tip in rough terrain. I have to "un-turn" them when going really fast. So he wants to "disconnect" the tip forces from transmitting back to your boot. OK, a key hole will probably do that. Now what are the other consequences of disconnecting the tip? Well my speculation is loss of the ski pulling your tip across the fall line, but the ski will turn like a much shorter ski (hence you can decrease side cut to increase turn radius). That all makes sense. Bode talks about the Pressure point of the ski being consistently at the inflection point. I guess if the front part of the ski is doing everything else is needs to do, then its good. I have not sorted it out in my mind, but Bode sure knew what he wanted the ski to feel like and it sounds like they hit his target with these skis. So now, I ask myself will I like his target?? I don't know and suspect I won't, but I have no confidence in my ability to judge without a better understanding of what was done to alter the skis behavoir. I don't really like the turtle shell effect Stockli has created with their S cuts, and I sure can feel that.

Technically won't a hole keep the torsional stiffness up (metal on the edges) and soften the ski longitudinally?? (no metal in the middle)

As for the cost discussion, as Swiss Toni says, the titanal is laser cut on a machine and the cost is a formula of raw material cost, nesting of forms (sheet utilization), machine set up cost, and machine operating hourly cost, and # of parts made per hour. Its how machine shops (sheet metal) price out jobs (if bending is required, have to factor that in too, probably not required for skis). I have been through this a lot as a mech. design engineer.

I think the driving factor in shaping the titanal is weight reduction. I think it may increase costs in general, unless it is going from a full width sheet to a shorter narrower width sheet.

 

[GregK]

Technically won't a hole keep the torsional stiffness up (metal on the edges) and soften the ski longitudinally?? (no metal in the middle)

The metal on the edges would keep the torsional rigidity very similar to having a full metal sheet and even though it’s reduced in width, will do very little to longitudinal flex as it’s continuous.

They claim it reduces both longitudinal and torsional flex in that spot and it would but to such a small degree it would be hard to notice.

Any ski with a sheet or sheets of underfoot metal that end after the bindings would experience this but to a much larger degree. Your CT 3.0 would experience this phenomenon and your CT 1.0 with it’s 2 metal sheets, even more.

Think I would have hyped up the ski as having weight savings in their lighter core and it’s “tailored metal sheet” and skipped the extra details. Would have far less doubters then.

 

[David Chaus]

I agree with the overall construction being more important than a particular design feature. I mean they could be outstanding skis with or without the keyhole.

Opinions aside, we could just wait a while until we get a chance to actually ski the Peaks to voice an opinion about whether the keyhole makes a discernible difference compared to a similarly shaped ski of similar quality of construction.

 

[Andy Mink]

I mean they could be outstanding skis with or without the keyhole.

I've often wondered about skis with interesting "tech". Would a Moment Deathwish without triple camber ski the same as one with? Or would an Elan Wingman 86CTi without Amphibio ski any differently than one with? Any Renoun without HDT/Vibestop? I guess we'll never know!

 

[tomahawkins]

I've often wondered about skis with interesting "tech". Would a Moment Deathwish without triple camber ski the same as one with? Or would an Elan Wingman 86CTi without Amphibio ski any differently than one with? Any Renoun without HDT/Vibestop? I guess we'll never know!

I owned a fun pair of Head iSLs. I was tempted to drill a hole in one of the KERS to see if I could notice the difference.

I wish a company would come out and make really great skis with the basics, and then as a advertising campaign, blatantly lie about and exaggerate the underlying ski tech. I want products made from nitrotrinadium.

 

[ScottB]

I agree with the overall construction being more important than a particular design feature. I mean they could be outstanding skis with or without the keyhole.

Opinions aside, we could just wait a while until we get a chance to actually ski the Peaks to voice an opinion about whether the keyhole makes a discernible difference compared to a similarly shaped ski of similar quality of construction.

I hear you and we should wait, but Bode beat us to it