[BlackArcher101]

This guy reminds me of a lot of new manufacturers started up by new engineers using "new" techniques they just learned, but end up failing because they miss real experience.

It appears the main marketing points are that he uses FEA and he aligns the structures/grains using a new manufacturing process. All I have to say to that is LOL. He then admits in the forum already linked in this thread that he's unaware if other manufacturers use FEA.

First of all, FEA isn't the end-all-be-all of engineering analysis. If you don't have the proper training in using it and confirming the results, the graphs/diagrams it spits out can be pretty but essentially garbage. Hell, CAD packages now come with basic FEA built in. To use this with composites a lot of assumptions have to be made. Composites are still considered a new type of material and unless you can control things 100% (impossible) your results will always vary.

As well, none of this stuff is groundbreaking. I'm pretty damn sure that by now, FEA is used by other ski manufacturers after they peaked in their performance vs weight category. It's a key tool when you want to lower the weight of a product even further while still keeping performance equal or better. Yet the weight of his ski's are greater than the competitors, so I question if he's building a fudge factor into the design or if he's not using FEA properly. This thing about aligning grains to optimize strength? Carpenters have been doing this for thousands of years and is absolutely critical for woven composite fabrics and woods during manufacturing. There's just no way that the numerous other manufacturers haven't realize that by now.

But hey, good for him. It appears he'll make his goal and this will likely be a boost to his resume.