10" Single Fin

A fin for my longboard

We had some expired 3D printing materials in the lab at work, so instead of letting them go to waste, I thought I would make a new single fin for my longboard. While expired RPU is not up the snuff for work applications, I thought it would work just fine for dropping bombs at the point.

I snagged an airfoil profile online ( the Eppler EA 8(-1)-006) and generated three different cross sections of the profile in matlab. These cross sections would act as the sketches I lofted between in Creo. Check them out below:

I imported these curves into Creo, and put them on reference planes, and parameterized them so I could modify the fin easily for different performance characteristics if I ever wanted to print multiple​. I didn't render and fancy images, so here is a crappy screengrab:

The fin turned out pretty sick, and I added those little triangles for aesthetics, paying no mind to the voids and stress risers that I added into the structure. But, I did fill the space with epoxy so it wouldn't snap like a twig.

I'll post a photo of the fin in my board sooner or later. And that's how to not let 3D printing resin go to waste.