Ski Machine

One of the early jobs at the consultancy was to design a skiing machine. The originator of the idea was an ex-Olympian skier and British Champion Tim Dudgeon. Tim skied in the Japanese Winter Olympics in the freestyle category and was used to radical skiing. His idea was to make a machine to help skiers develop their muscles and aerobic fitness prior to either ski holidays or for competition training. He had previously developed a machine with another company but as it weighed more than 3 tons, realised that it’s future was limited.

As an interim after his first effort, Tim had purchased a used running machine and widened it by altering the chassis and making longer rollers, fitting it with a belt made from Astroturf by a local carpet fitter. Our first involvement was to try and make this belt track without flying off the machine. Some fundamental engineering changes were made and the belt re-fitted. This was not a success as the belt was by no means made accurately enough. With Tim, we investigated the possibility of using trucks under the skis, similar to skate board trucks, and dispensing with the fluffy belt, replacing it with a properly made industrial belt with a PVC top facing. This was successful and we managed to make the machine work and learn the problems before starting to build a new machine from scratch.

We altered the dimensions of Tim’s machine slightly and designed a chassis to take an endless belt 1.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres between roller centres. The rollers were driven by an electric motor mounted at the front of the machine and the chassis was fitted with a jacking system to raise and lower the bed of the machine so that the descent angles could be changed along with the velocity of the belt. A console was designed – in the shape of a large pair of ski goggles – and this was fitted with numerous displays monitoring programme, speed, time, angle and heart beat.

During the development of the new machine, it became obvious that it didn’t have to be just for skiing. It could also be used for snow boarding and in-line skating (roller blading).

To use for snow-boarding, we needed a snow board with wheels. We didn’t realise that there was already an industry growing for out of season snow boarding and that there were several boards on wheels already available in the UK as well as the USA. BMW too had just developed a snow board of their own, with articulated suspension. We bought one of every type to find the most suitable. In the meantime, we changed the design to allow the bed of the machine to incline upwards so that in-line skating could be performed – different angles for different abilities.

After many months of development, a machine was finished and ready for test. Everything worked well but as some people are stronger on one leg than the other, we discovered that the belt would move either to the left or right and not return to the centre. We had followed all the rules for crowning the rollers and had belt manufacturers helping us with this subject but the side forces were so overwhelming that it was decided to fit a tracking system that would correct any movement of the belt.

Easier said than done; absolutely nothing available that was suitable for the job, for various reasons. So we came up with what we called the “differential tracking system” and immediately applied for a patent. This comprises of a linkage system attached to the roller fulcrums that changes the belt tension to make the belt move left or right. Sounds simple and the finished article was; good ideas always are. We needed to constantly monitor the belt movement so that we could immediately spot a change in trend. This was done with an electronic array of sensors that could watch the edge of the belt. If it moved one way or the other, it would decide whether or not to change the belt tension to correct the movement. Depending on how swiftly the lateral movement took place, it would apply a greater correction.

Having developed the first system, we put Tim on the machine and asked him to be as brutal as he possibly could and ski one-sided for all he was worth. The tracking system coped with this treatment with ease and Tim got very hot in the process.

To make the machine look pretty, we had the bodywork designed by a London design company, Iconic, and we made patterns and moulds to produce the bodywork in carbon fibre. This was the Rolls Royce of all exercise machines. Take a look at the pictures in our gallery.

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