Why different structures need to be developed for ISANTIN?

In fact structures created with stone-grinding machines or manual rillers do not normally touch the snow surface. After the ski base is structured, it is normally cleaned chemically (to remove the cooling and greasing agent residues) and mechanically (to remove the grinding solid residues and unwanted hair) and hot waxed (to create protection film and modify ski base surface for respective snow and weather conditions).

Hot-wax-approach consists of several steps:

 1. wax is applied on the clean ski base surface (melted wax can be applied with wax applicator, solid wax can be rubbed on the ski base, wax can be melted on the iron and dropped as liquid on the ski base etc.), 

2. wax is ironed with recommended ironing temperature for recommended ironing time (normally from tip to tail with the target to make the wax penetrate to cavities inside amorphous ski base regions where wax molecules can be retained mechanically after ski base and wax cooled down to solid state), 

3. ski base with ironed wax layer is allowed to cool down for ca. 20 minutes at mediate temperature, 

4. excess wax is removed with scrapers first, from tip to tail, with sharp plastic scrapers carry-fully in flat ski base areas, 

5. after excess wax was removed from flat ski base areas, excess wax is removed out of water drainage gutter or gutters with oval plastic scrapers,

6. removing wax out of flat ski base areas with help of scrapers pushed more wax into grooves of structures which are now completely filled with excess wax which was compacted by scrapping,

7. grooves of the structure created with stone-grinding machines or manual rillers need to be restored, i.e. excess wax need to be removed out of the grooves, to remove excess wax out of the grooves brushes are used, normally fine steel or bronze brushes are used to remove excess wax out of the grooves,

8. fine steel or bronze ski brushes have normally hair 25 mm long, with bristles 0,1 mm thin which is bundled to bristle bundles with diameter of ca. 6 mm

9. if the grooves are 0,5 mm wide and ca. 0,05 mm deep (which is a middle fine structure pattern) it is quite obvious, that bristles 0,1 mm thin cannot reach the very bottom of the grooves, or in other words: remove all the excess wax out of the grooves,

10. it can be estimated that the lower 1/3 of the grooves remain filled with wax which is again compacted by the brush bristles

11. wax application makes the originally manufactured structures shallower and more rounded.

Unlike the hot-wax-approach ISANTIN covers the ski base surface with a very thin layer which is ca. 1 to 2 microns thin and thus copying the structure relief almost perfectly, in other words: after ISANTIN application the originally manufactured structure with help of stone-grinding machines or manual rillers remain more or less the same, only covered with an ultra-thin ISANTIN layer.

 

In fact the good performance of structures is tested and approved for waxed skis, not for plane = unwaxed skis which means the shallower and more rounded structure shapes after wax application are a part of the structure success.

 

If ISANTIN does not change the structures similarly to waxes, it is needed to change the structures in fabrication process = make them shallower and more rounded in stone-grinding process for ISANTIN.

How the wax application changes the ski base structure?

Especially competition skis are structured for better gliding performance. After the ski base grinding process has been highly automatised, the structuring is booming. There are various structures for any snow conditions and temperature range. Each parameter of the structure to be grinded can be set up, endless shapes, depths, pitches, angles are possible. Structures become more and more complex and highly specialized. Any detail, any parameter is important and counts...

Is it really true?

It is true that the modern grinding machines can produce almost any structure form and shape which you can even imagine. The grinding machines are extremelly precise and fast. Fine and high-quality stones are formed with diamant pins with accuracy to hundredths, pressure, feeding and revolutions can be controlled and regulated so precisely and stable that structures can be perfectly cut.

On the other side each ski base material is a bit different even if it was produced in the same production batch, but these differences are quite small.

After ski waxes - in multiple layers - have been applied on the structured ski base, a new story beginns to be written. Frist ski waxes and ski base material connect or are mixed on the molecular level to a new material which is a mixture of both wax and ski base material creating a new layer which can be called “gliding surface”. This new gliding surface is created on the molecular level chemically but in daily ski service reality it is created on macro or micro level. Thin wax layers in different forms are applied on the ski base, ironed, excess wax is scrapped off and brushed out of the structure...

Excess wax is brushed out of the structure, structure is restored by brushing, original grinded structrure is revealed again with help of brushing...

Is it really true?

Let us analyze a common case: grinded linear grooves with the pitch distance 0,5 mm which is normally called fine to middle coarse structure.

The pitch distance 0,5 mm which is 500 microns will correspond to ca. 50 microns deep structure, the ratio width / depth is ca. 10 due to technological reasons. Standard linear grooves are V-form grooves, the pitch distance between the tops amounting to 500 microns will correspond to a width amounting to few microns in the bottom (depth ca. 50 microns).

If excess wax is removed, it is first scrapped off by scrappers, later brushed out of the grooves (V-form of grooves is restored by brushing again. Which brush is used to restore the structure / grooves filled with wax?

Standardly steel or bronze brushes are used to clean the wax out of the structure. Both steel and bronze brushes consist of bundles of bristles. Bundles have normaly circle-shape with diameter ca. 5 mm. Each bundle consist of equally long and thin bristles. Standard steel and bronze brushes used to reveal structures have bristle length of ca. 20 to 25 mm and diameter of 100 microns (0,1 mm).

Let us have a look at the situation when the excess wax is brushed out of the grooves a bit more detailed: we have grooves 500 microns wide and 50 microns deep, we have brush with bundled bristles 25.000 microns long and 100 microns wide.

Conclusions: standard steel brush will remove the excess wax out of the upper half of V-shape grooves with pitch distance 500 microns. The bottom area of V-shape grooves with pitch distance 500 microns and depth 50 microns will remain “filled” with wax. In addition the bristles with the diameter of 100 microns will work as a rammer and will compact the wax inside the bottom area of the V-shape grooves resulting in shallower and more rounded groove forms.

Application of ski waxes does change the ski base structure, waxes make the structure shallower and more rounded compared to the status after fabrication.