Solid Concepts is one of North America’s large additive manufacturing service bureaus and fulfills prototyping and manufacturing for aerospace, architectural model making, automotive, firearms and medical applications among others. The company, which recently reached a deal to be acquired by industry giant Stratasys, has opened up another challenge to designers, 3D printing experts and newcomers to design a radical 3D printable deck for a skateboard. This probably comes off the back of success they had at the end of last year with the skateboard Mike covered. The two winners of this interesting competition will receive their skateboard deck 3D printed for free.
Those who enter will be judged by the Solid Concepts panel on how original their idea is and how unique and challenging the board is compared with traditional deck designs. As well as being just plain cool, this is a genuine design challenge, so there are parameters and specifications. The skateboard decks must be structurally sound, any use of far out 3D printed forms will need to be pragmatic as well as aesthetically eye-catching.
The skateboard decks must fit within certain design parameters:
The length cannot exceed 25.5”
The deck must be at least 0.475” thick
The skateboard decks will be printed with Nylon 12 PA.
The designs must be submitted to Solid Concepts by June 30th
Five finalists will have their awesome skateboard designs uploaded to the Solid Concepts Facebook Page to be judged by a panel of their peers. Even if you are not entering the competition this will be an interesting exercise to catch, especially given the required limiting parameters. The two designs with the highest amount of Facebook Likes will then receive functional Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printed versions of theirdecks, ready to roll.
