Drang Boards deck building services, design, cnc etc

Okay, been riding electronic boards now for about 1 year. It is about high time I create my own skate deck with accommodations for battery components. With the CNC machine, it is very simple work. I plan to do this with a number of boards in the coming weeks. The Eskate market still doesn’t have a good kicktail longboard deck. That is what I want most. That being said we can build boards for anything. Let me give you a basic run down of what Drang is, and does. We are a shop with a business model that works VERY well for direct to end user sales, and great for shop sales, with a bit of doubt being cast on traditional OEM price structure where we need to cut the price down to 25-35% of retail price. That’s a bit of a stretch for us and must be planned well. I’d rather not do OEM however it’s the evil we can’t seem to escape. Don’t want to get myself in trouble saying that, but we do want to change the culture of this, because Factories really contribute SO much to this experience. Now, we have a very capable shop with the following equipment: (I am going to post pictures in this thread later, but with interest of time, I’m posting this now.)

6 pneumatic bladder presses capable of laminating at over 100 psi with either male female molds, or female only molds. This allows us to press new concaves with or without heat. We laminate with Bamboo, Maple, Carbon Fiber, Fiberglass, ect.

2 Hydraulic presses operational, and 2 more being built. (used for conventional lamination in male female configuration) Some boards must be laminated with M/F molds, because of steep deeep kicktails, or drops.

Fully modular female only molding system with accommodations for many types/depths of concave, rocker, drops, wheel flares, w concave, kicktails in any configuration, assembled by hand for one off or small group runs. Basically this means you can think up any concave configuration, and we can create it in an hour or so of assembly.

CNC build molds/CNC fixture hold down jigs for cutting/drilling/routing boards on the CNC table. We have between 20 and 30 molds ready for production. I’ll see about relaying info on these (screen shots of each mold) surface in design.

Full hand building tool set, Routers, Sanders, ect, for cutting decks using flat wood templates after drilling truck holes. Flush mount rig for any deck, Wheel well templates for many different wheel well designs.

Legit spray booth for coating boards with vertical exhaust.

DTG printer hacked to be able to print onto wood plies before they are pressed as decks. This allows for one off graphics or group runs.

Laser engraving services and grip tape cutting.

Vinyl stencil plotter

5’x8’x10" CNC router, (10hp motor) with vacuum suction hold down table. We cut boards in 4 different zone on the table.

Full design services, Rhinoceros 6 CAD capable

Full graphic design services, Adobe full suite available (Illustrator and Photoshop mostly)

Industrial glue spreader we don’t currently operate but we want to if we get into doing “mass production”.

More to add later.

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Really stoked to have you join us!

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Nice :+1:t2:

Be sure to add some photos of your work :slight_smile:

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Please keep in touch and update us as much as possible! I am currently working on starting a company building high performance boards part time and many others are already doing what I aspire to do. I would love to work with someone who could make custom decks in the future like @longhairedboy, but I really don’t want to have to press and cut decks myself or each individual build will just take too long. I currently am using a 38 Switchblade as the deck for my flagship build because I love the way it locks your feet in place in the drops but I want to make many designs.

@redemberboards is already in the game, but I think there is more than enough business to go around. Eskating is only gonna get bigger from here!

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I don’t want to do it much longer either. I need to find somebody else to press my decks.

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Id be all over a 34-36 inch deck with kicktail and cutout for battery. Something like a Nelson stingray or moonshine sidekick.

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moonshine contacted me talking about thier new waterproof process and i was like “take my mold and make me some decks” and they were like “bro, we’re not on that scale” and i said “don’t fucking bro me fine then don’t make thousands of the most awesome concave ever and profit from it while solving my issue” and then they started asking more questions.

i don’t know man, they bro’d me. not sure how i feel about those guys now.

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bro!

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Longhairboy what is your concave? And what is your issue?

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Honestly it’s frustrating to work with companies without any foresight. Just because the initial order might be small doesn’t mean that there won’t be a larger order in a few months. For example, tone I hear from local plastics companies when I ask to buy 4’x8’ sheets of ABS 1 or 2 at a time is ridiculous. When I tell them what I am doing they seem to think it’s some kind of joke.

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WOohoo!! Would love to see some Deck+enclosure All in ones!! Love all the shapes on the website!!

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@drangboards it’s great to see you on the forum. I think there’s many on here who see it your way. An Esk8 specific deck with a proper kick tail. Excited to see what you come up with!

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its a custom soft dome w-concave with a camber to the hump, nice deep gutters for the heel and ball of your foot and it lends itself nicely to several cutout shapes, some with snub tails. I’ve been told it slides well.

I’m looking for somebody to take my mold and press my shit for me and deliver nice 11" x 44" rectangular blanks i can stack up and carve whenever i’m ready into whatever i want. Or to carve them for me as well, that’s fine too.

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That sounds like up our alley, depending on all things obviously. I’d like to speak with you about it. Questions I’d have are is this a CAD designed mold? If so it would be easy for us to program to cut for you.

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Well the main point when discussing this board is this: E Skates have huge wheels, and tons of riser compared to most non powered boards. Most non powered boards already don’t have huge rudder style tails on the back, and what the ride height change does for boards with kicks is to demand the kicktail be bigger longer and slap a bit earlier. I recently put my dasher 36.5" deck on my funing electric, and it was OH SO MUCH FUN! That was with 70-75mm wheels and no risers, and it rode basically like a longboard which I loved. This was about a year ago, and I rode that set up into the ground, dragging tail and riding wheelies all over towndasher%20side Dasher%20complete%20render 2017%20dasher%20multishot 2017%20dasher%20p%20shot Dasher%20complete

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Gonna be doing testing to figure out what breaks. I’d love to see what some others have learned. We hand apply glue which means more of it stays between plies, instead of being squeezed out and I don’t care what anyone says about how squeeze out should happen, it makes a stronger board having more glue left inside the laminate obviously. So we’ll see what sort of routing can happen in an 8 ply, 9 ply, and then in composite laminates with FG or CF on the outsides of the deck. I’m sure our laminates can take much abuse, as we rarely see a broken deck.

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Do you have an electric skateboard already? Or are you completely new to the scene?

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I have the funing which has a broken charger so I need to get a new one, and then also a boosted v2 + which is fun, but I want double the speed and triple the range haha.

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Your at the right place honestly. If you want something bullet proof and good speeds and range you should build from scratch.

So what are you looking for here? Guidance on what deck you should make? Or just displaying your skills?

There are a few esk8 decks out there but none that have a kicktail that would be a good place to start.

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I want to put a board on the market. Obviously v1 will be what I ride for a while, and that’s my selfish interfacing, but I want to find a place in the industry where our business can thrive. E Skates has so much new stock for good reasons, (hills at the push of a button) so naturally I am drawn to it. I love riding, but I can’t be a hill rat, my life revolves around my work, and it is the best way to have fun between shifts. I want to get into advanced propulsion.

Step number one is to build myself a badass set up from scratch, and also to offer Drang’s services to the people in this thread.

IF I were to get what I want right now in a board, it would be 30mph, and batteries that can take me at least down town, and back maybe if I’m lucky, which is 8 miles away.

I’ve been talking to Adam0311 for a bit now, and building decks for some of his builds (one can be seen here https://www.electric-skateboard.builders/t/easy-custom-deck-options/49555/8 )

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