Surfers gear up to catch 3D wave

Surfboards are made of foam and fibreglass but 3D ones can use lighter materials. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Surfboards are joining the wave of products being produced by high-tech 3D printers.

Bondi-based Disrupt Surfing is developing prototypes of a 3D-printed surfboard, hoping eventually to enable surfers to design and personally make their own customised board.

"People are used to going into shops and buying surfboards that are mass produced," says Disrupt chief executive Gary Elphick. "We think you need to be able to customise the boards to a person's exact skill and personal preference in design."

3D technology is being used to make everything from jet engines, car parts, body parts, shoes, firearms and mining equipment. The process of constructing a three-dimensional object involves the production of minute successive layers of material under computer control.

A 3D printer then acts as a type of industrial robot that heats the material and distributes it through nozzles like a cake icer.

Disrupt hopes it can have a 3D-printed surfboard ready within two years.

Traditionally, acquiring a custom-made board would require a customer to visit a surfboard shaper and explain their level of ability and aims.

The shaper would draw something up and make the board out of a foam block and finish it with fibreglass.

Elphick says 3D printing can take the process further by incorporating even lighter, more economically friendly materials instead of foam and chemicals.

- AAP