gravelthere are already so many good reasons in this thread why inserts wouldn’t work, what did you think?
ignoring screw pattern issues, bindings take 8 screws per ski. if you made enough inserts for multiple boot sizes and mount points you’d easily have 20-40 holes in your ski. way easier to snap. increases construction costs. increases weight. then you’d be skiing around with a bunch of exposed insert holes happy to rust and eventually get moisture into your core.
binding plate would suck, we’re not racers anyway and we need the full flex. and i’m not advocating for center mount like you guessed early, but even -3cm back would have interference issues with wherever ski manufacturers would put inserts for standardized mount points.
Look not everyone has to agree. There were people who didn’t think pcs would replace type writers. There are still people who draft drawings and concepts by hand and not by computer (Adrian newey and chip foose).
im just painting a picture of how good life could be if some brand were to pursue a tech like this.
saying it won’t work is laughable. The whole idea of developing a system or product is to solve an issue. You design it so it does work. Having people point out possible flaws is good.
snowboards have 20-40 inserts per board. They are SS so they don’t rust.
they are cast/laminated into the board and make a seal so moisture doesn’t get in.
SS inserts would not make a difference in strength at the middle of the ski, if anything the compressive and tensile mod of steel would make them stronger. I could probably do the load simulations to prove it. I think we could get away with just two screws per binding piece, but three would also reduce the number of inserts required.
weight is a valid concern. I approximate each inserts weighs about 2 grams. But you are also removing material to put them in. Could be 50-200g per ski more. But it wouldn’t increase the swing weight by much since in the middle of the ski.
the way I see it the following sucks about how skis are currently mounted:
-not being able to change up your stance as you please
-not being able to swap in different bindings without drilling
-not being able to put any boot size into any ski (within reason of course)
-bindings tearing out
-drilling to mount is permanent and can interfere with other binding patterns.
-mount patterns and geometry are basically proprietary like apple chargers.
there are products in the market to solve these issues. Like quiver killer demo bindings marked schizo race plates etc.
if manufacturers or a third party company like gripwalk would agree on a standard and innovate such a tech, it would be dope.
Once again, it doesn’t have to be on every single ski manufactured.