New way to texture climbing holds
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ธ.ค. 2021
- Here I present a 'new' way to texture climbing holds that creates a hold surface very similar to a typical molded hold, but without any mold investment.
Here I am using polyester gel coat from my local fiberglass supplier. It is important to a) buy from a well known source and b) do this process at 20°C or above for good longevity
since publishing this video several people have told me about this process being used many years ago which has been wonderful - it seemed so simple it must have been done before and of course there's nothing new under the sun!
Please drop me a line in the comments or on instagram if you have any questions or thoughts: / gbartonowen
/ giles_climbs
Files for some of the holds available here: www.thingiverse.com/thing:526...
Disclaimer: The information presented is for education only and I do not accept any liability if you choose to reproduce some or all of what is discussed. As always, climbing holds can cause dangerous situations, any hold or climbing equipment should be thoroughly tested and validated before use. I am not a certified engineer or route setter and therefore should not be considered a reputable source when discussing safety of climbing equipment. - กีฬา
Just FYI, This is the way we textured holds at Living Stone, or in fact from before that company was started in 1992. The first time I used it would have been around 1987. There were tens of thousands of these holds at many major climbing walls like the Castle, The Foundry, Undercover Rock, Glasgow Climbing Centre, Gloucester, etc. They often lasted for maybe 15 years before polishing, and were very resistant to chipping compared with cast holds. We also frequently used dual (or more ) textures as well. It is quite labour intensive, and one other problem we found was that the color tended to fade due to blooming if the salt or sugar was simply dissolved out by leaving the holds underwater for a while. Scrubbing them individually was too time consuming if you're making hundreds in a day. Nice to see the technique being rediscovered..
That's so cool to hear, thanks so much for sharing. Glad to hear they did well, we've had some in rainbow rocket in Cambridge for almost 2 years now and although the footholds are slightly chipped, they're mostly in great shape under heavy use, with relatively little polishing so far. So cool to hear the technique has such an august history! I'd love to see someone produce macros with innie texture rather than the ever present sand
Hey Crispin, I’d like to say thanks to you for your creativity “way back” in the early 90s. I can still remember being impressed by (and buying for £7.50!) one of your very first handmade skull holds (in 1991ish?). The early innovations such as Foundry walls influenced what we built at alien rock in Edinburgh thirty years ago- it’s still running! More modern holds look amazing, but they never match the uniqueness, durability and weight! of those early handmade ones! It’s been an interesting industry to be involved with (and to see grow so massively) over the decades. Thanks again for being such an inspiration. Reuben
At first I was thinking "cool, but not easier or cheaper compared to casting." Then you brought in 3-D printing, Genius!
Thank you! Definitely not a slam dunk cheaper for smaller holds in any quantity but for playing with shapes & 3d printing it's pretty cool
Great idea! Need to try that out on my climbing wall.
Awesome, would love to hear how it goes for you! Drop me a line if you have any questions
Awesome idea and video. Thank a million
Thank you very much for sharing this with us, great idea and the final result is amazing. Congrats dude!
Thanks for your kind words!
You are amazing!! I have been printing holds for my home wall for a wile now. Always the same issue. How do I make texture. Thank you for your solution to a huge struggle!!
This is great! I have just started trying to add texture to ninja warrior holds I've made from wood. I've been experimenting with sand, but I never thought of using a dissolvable material like salt or sugar.
Glad you liked it! Sand texturing works pretty well really, but is definitely less comfortable and harder on the skin
Mmf this guy looks familiar 🤔 great video, love the attention to salt width, keep exploring dude
I used to use caster sugar mixed with epoxy resin to provide deck grip on my home made windsurfers, some people preferred table sugar,,, great video..
Perfect use! I found the sugar I had had quite angular grains, and therefore packed too tightly and so didn't make great feeling texture, but I think it completely depends on the specifics of the salt or sugar available! Sugar seems less likely to interfere with the resin chemistry too
Certainly a great way to prototype holds. Creative thinking.
Thank you!
Great 💡!
This is a really cool way of doing that!
A buddy of mine did a similar think baking his 3d printed holds in salt.
PLA is not the best for wear resistance though
Yes I think the resin is definitely better, I have a video about the salt baking for holds and my conclusion is that it's so so. Hot salt corrodes everything so I'm not that keen to continue to use it
interesting thanks for sharing
I really love your Idea to create such nice texturing.
Considering the strength and longevity of your holds, maybe instead make molds using this texturing technique.
You'd get the same chance to create interesting textures and texture variations, but you can test multiple casted materials to assess their longevity and strength.
Especially bigger holds in a climbing gym receive extreme abuse, which I'm sure 3d printed solutions won't survive without sufficient strengthening through other means.
Certainly an option! My more recent batch made with a fresh batch of resin and in warmer curing conditions is holding up much better though so it's less of a concern. Time will tell though, they're now in the normal hold set so they'll be tested thoroughly. The resin used (PE) is what normal holds are made of so it should theoretically hold up well
Dude I was just talking with my setters today about whether 3d printed holds could print proper texture. This looks like a great option
I think so, definitely better than any other 3d print method without moulds I've seen
This salt idea was being done nearly thirty years ago, by Crispin Waddy of Livingstone walls who built part of the Foundry in Sheffield. alien rock used it for handmade holds in the mid 90s
Yeah he actually commented on this video! Awesome stuff! In hindsight I was being a bit bold with my claims of complete novelty but was not something I could find googling before making the video, so was new to me. You've also sort of got to play the TH-cam game too
Neat idea!And,would love to see an update on 3d printed holds
Thank you! What sort of topics would you like to hear about?
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 Well,since it was quite a long time ago,would love to hear how much wear is there on them(if those were in use lol),and maybe there were few improvements to this method
Alas my friend hasn't set them very much since I made them. I think one conclusion we reached was that the screw holes were the biggest weak spots, it's very easy to over torque a screw and pull through the hold. Since then I've taken to putting washers in holds and volumes like I've got in this video. I never resolved the voids problem I was getting with them but Im pretty sure I needed more salt pressure above. I quite like the sand textured holds, we have used those a few times, they're not that nice on your skin but great foot holds.
I think it's still a great way to make shapes though, hence using them here!
Not sure if you have seen it already but I wanted to mention it here as you might be able to try it. People have been using very finely ground salt to pack around 3d prints, then reheating them in an oven to get a more homogeneous part. During the process it gives the parts the surface finish of the finely ground salt particles. You could try a similar process for this application using the larger salt grains you sifted out. Maybe only submerge the exposed gripping face to the salt, then bake it. The advantage here would be that because the texture is melted in the plastic it may be stronger than using the resin.
Not sure if I can link the video, but I know CNC Kitchen made a video on it.
I actually have a video about doing that very thing for climbing holds. Kept having issues with voids in the parts and the texture wasn't as good but it's definitely an area worth exploring more at some point. This technique is heavily inspired by the thought process behind that :)
Very nice 👌
Also I feel your pain...resin casting in the UK..🥶😅
Absolutely, had no idea how much of a difference in strength the temperature would make! After this video was made the difference between even the first batch (resin mixed at 20, cured at 0) and the second (in the video, mixed and cured at 4) was extremely clear.
This is rad!
Thanks!
I'm pretty kean to give this a try sometime!! I'll definitely let you know how I get on.
Please do!
Hey! Great video. I'm looking to start 3d printing holds and I had a few questions. Do you think directly printing holds is viable and safe or Is it better to print a cast or a mold and go through the normal process from there? I wanted to try dual texture holds, do you have any info on how to create that texture?
Safety is a tricky one, it depends on mainly shape and print strength (itself a compound of layer adhesion and plastic type). I think mine are strong enough, and I've tested them in approximately the same way as real holds.
A hold failure during climbing shouldn't be dangerous except if it causes sharp edges, as we have to be ready as climbers to fall whenever. Key to this is avoiding the resin chipping off the printed base, the fuzzy mode works seemingly quite well for that.
If you're going to cast them, I'd suggest modelling the holds in foam as I think modelling in 3d of forms that feel nice is a real challenge.
In terms of dual Tex with this technique, I did a handful of holds in my last batch where I did the textured part first, washed the salt away then did the smooth part second with no salt. It worked pretty well but didn't get a super flat surface, I was a little disappointed but people seemed to like them a lot. You can also do it in one by only applying salt in certain places for an interesting gradient effect but this is a lot more prone to a messy result. I might be tempted to combine the two approaches as it's hard to get the coating thickness in a single coat when you're not using the salt.
Incredibly interesting approach. Major props for coming up with this. I've been working through some ways to try to add coatings of sand on top of very thin applications of resin over PLA holds as well (though I later go on to create a traditional mold around those before pouring the finished product). Your approach has a special appeal though of generating "holes" rather than "bumps" like mine does. I worry about the longevity of the bumps under high traffic.
Is there a reason you wouldn't do this same process just using the PLA pieces after texturing as positives in a mold? Seems preferable for drastically reducing the work required for a duplicate, plus you could use much stronger and harder, typical polyurethanes for your finished pieces. Genuinely curious what you find to be the downside to this approach. You're the first person I've ever seen/heard report any success using 3d printed thermoplastics directly on the wall.
Thank you! The main reason not to use it as a mould positive is to avoid having to make moulds, and the cost and bother associated with that. If you want to produce any quantity, I'd definitely use a mould system, although I'd probably hand shape in foam as modelling holds digitally is definitely not easy to get absolutely perfect, and the resin process I outline can often have small imperfections.
From my understanding of the material properties of the tough pla I'm using, these holds are likely to be plenty strong enough, and this method allows me to use polyester resin for the surface, which is significantly more wear resistant than PU, and feels better in the hand. PE is the main resin used in Europe and in my opinion is vastly superior for texture, but is brittle and less good structurally. This approach creates a hold that has hybrid properties between the two (or so the route setters told me)
I believe cosmic holds and a few other companies are making holds via printing, texturing, moulding, casting as you describe and it seems to work well for them, definitely worth a shot if you want very precise shapes that would be a challenge to shape in foam
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 Very interesting. Had no idea PE was still widely in use. Personally I'm preferential to 3d printing as opposed to foam sculpting just because I have a decent level of skill and experience in modelling and less than 0 in foam sculpting so it's a lot easier to get the complex shapes I want on a computer. Translating it to a usable final product with texture and strength has been the real challenge though. I'll check out cosmic holds for sure.
Love to see new ideas like this though. I will have to give this a try. Thanks for the video and responses.
Definitely when you're comfortable in digital modelling vs physical modelling.
I think mimic holds are also worth looking at, both are very cagey about their texturing process (understandably) so it's nice to be sharing some process stuff
Thanks lets see if it works out i will let you know how it went!
Please do!
This is quite fascinating. But I wonder how this could work to save costs.
3d printing and epoxy coating holds still feel like they would be expensive per hold, when compared to molding fully in resin.
I tried shaping masters in floral foam, making a silicone negative and then filling the negative with epoxy, and that proved to be a good texture all around, and I calculated the silicone was the most expensive part.
Do you have ideas on how to scale this up sustainably?
Definitely not a cost effective method for mass producing small holds, I'm using it for prototyping, small batches and functional testing. I think it would be good for wooden or fiberglass larger holds where the silicone molding process starts being untenable (not quite sure why to be honest but over about 1m everything seems to be sand)
There's a possibility too of refinishing old holds or even old anything into a climbing surface but that I don't think would ever be cost effective
Thank you. Been wondering how to use 3d prints but struggling with texture.
Awesome, if you give it a shot I'd love to see!
My only possible flag on the technique is my prints are very textured. Unsure if I can can the resin to apply smoothly enough. Will send when I try and thanks again
I actually switched to fuzzy skin mode for my later holds to increase the bonding between the resin and the hold, it helps the resin wet evenly to some extent
Neat! How does it hold up to impact? Like if someone hit one while falling from the top of a boulder?
Hopefully a fall wouldn't result in a hard impact, but I tried hitting one of them with a hammer and the surface coating was damaged for sure, it produced some small chips and dust but did not become sharp or cracked so shouldn't be dangerous
ah rainbow rocket! nice :-)
Интересная идея.
Ещё можно поиграться с несколькими текстурами на одном макросе.
Hi Charles. Do you know how the Hold Companies make the Dual Texture Holds. Specifically I’m trying to figure out how they achieve the smooth finish on the foam before casting the foam in the silicone. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
This is actually something I'm planning to work on at some point and publish a video on because it seems like a lot of companies make a big deal about proprietary info. I think careful masking, a slight inset on the to-be-smoth area, bondo or some other filler, glossy spray paint. They then cast the foam into silicone. The technique I outline can be used to do dual tex (I recommend two separate resin applications) but I've not yet perfected it. - Giles
this is fucking awesome dude!
Thanks!
How do you think the adherence will be to existing (but polished) PU holds? I am looking for an effective way to retexture some quite polished moonboard holds as they are expensive and take a long time to ship.
Honestly not sure, I think there's a couple of factors and solutions. Firstly chemical bond: I'd guess that PE doesn't stick that we'll to PU but I've not really any idea. Best thing for that would be some testing. Id probably use thickened epoxy or PU directly. The surfaces need to be cleaned and roughed up thoroughly. Some patents point towards slightly hairy surfaces having good bond (wire wheel seems to be a good tool here). You can also make thin cuts or scores into the holds to get a mechanical lock between the hold and the new shell. Overall I think it'd work to do a bit of a hybrid of both.
For polished PU holds epoxy resin or fresh PU would be best, I think. Maybe clean them with acid first (vinegar or Climbclean or the like) then sand/score for better bonding.
Hi, great video!. I have a question. Do you think i could use epoxi resin instead of the PE?. Also im thinking of printing holds, then adding texture and finally make a silicone mold for fast reproduccion. Think this will work?. Thanks for sharing
Epoxy should work fine as long as it's not too runny. The effect relies on being able to paint on a 1.5-3mm film over the print and so you need it to be a thick wall paint consistency, some epoxys will be fine but not a casting focused resin. It's very easy to thicken epoxy with glass microbeads you can buy from any supplier so those could work well.
Printing, texturing and casting could work well, not tried it myself but there's a good few companies doing such things so it must work
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 all right, i will try that. Thanks!!!
I've taken some inspiration from your videos about this, and I might try this surface texturing method as part of my overall process, which while it also involves 3D printed holds, my idea is a bit different;
I intend to print holds with a moderately dense infill (gyroid) pattern, and with 0 "bottom" layers, so that the infill structure is exposed from the back of the hold. Then, I'll use your technique here to give the outward surface of the holds a texture, and secondarily to seal the surface and make it "watertight" so to speak. The final step is to flip them over and fill the holds with some kind of resin/epoxy (trying to find casting PU locally). I haven't actually done this yet but it seems like it should make for extremely strong holds. What do you think, have you tried anything similar?
I haven't but I've definitely had similar thoughts to this for sure, including backing the print not just with resin but fiberglass, for larger holds.
The thing that worries me is if the bond between the plastic and the resin is not great, I think gyroid infill may separate the resin into sort of columns rather than one continuous block and may not be as strong as you want. Might experiment with infills which don't make such defined walls but who knows, it's definitely worth a try
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 Thanks, yeah good observation, I'll have to experiment. I also thought about using some other filler or backing.
Neat idea! Seems a little heavy on the manual labor, so maybe not best for mass production except for really special holds. I could see doing some really wild dual texture designs - or even "fading" in the texture from "none" to, "some" (one pass of your salt) to "some" (two layers)
I think in terms of labour they're not dissimilar to other sand textured holds, hopefully, except the wash out step. I've generally needed less coats which has saved a lot of time, but in a larger scale who knows how.itll shake out.
In terms of fades and stuff, it would.be so.cool,.looking forward to.experimenting more for.sure! Planning some dual Tex for my next batch
You could try out the salt remelt process of CNC Kitchen, with larger grain size salt
I have a video about exactly this, I never managed to get it working reliably without voids and I don't think pla is wear resistant enough for climbing holds. Thanks for the suggestion though!
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 thanks for the fast reply, imma look at the video, maybe other plastic works or outside facing sand. Imma try a bit out. edit: just found out, that you tried sand already
Hiya, looking to make a hold set for my climbing gym soon. I'm particularly curious how this texture feels compared to traditionally casted holds. I am tempted to use your process to create silicone molds for casts, but i wonder if the silicone will be able to fill all of the pores to capture the depth of the texture.
In terms of the texture feel, I'd say these were much closer to cast foam texture than sand for sure, I'd say at least 80% so. I've had climbers say it's pretty kind to skin while being grippy which is great to hear.
I think casting should be fine, it's topologically very similar to foams surface, unless there's some weird surface tension effects
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 Only one way to find out! I'll definitely try a few other methods as well and see what works best. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
I'm very biased but I think it's second only to perhaps good foam casts. Hope it goes well!
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 I'll let you know what we find out! If I end up making a video on our setup I'll be sure to credit you.
Could you list the resin you used in your video? I am using an epoxy resin but it seemed very thin and liquid making the coat uneven.
I say in the video I'm using polyester gel coat. It's a thick resin product used as paint. Epoxy paint or epoxy thickened with a bit of ground glass powder or something would also work I think but I've not tested it. It needs to form a 2ish mm skin on its own really
I wonder if you could pre texture the prints at the modelling stage to assist resin adherence
Yes I did this with a wire brush and in subsequent versions I used the fuzzy texture feature of prusa slicer (most slicers have it) which significantly increased adhesion
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 I haven't watched your other videos sorry - what .. plastic do you use. Plus the baking ofc
Looking to build a climbing volume. You mentioned in your volume video you would make one on templates etc, have you got any templates you could share ? Thank you!
Unfortunately I don't as they were all hand drawn from sketchy cad (blender -> export as paper model -> inkscape) to paper, which was subsequently lost. Can give you some pointers but I think cardboard is the best way to go for pattern making, or foam board
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 no worries. Have some ideas of shapes in my head, just finding it hard to work out the angles of the bezels where two bits meet. Does blender provide this sort of capability?
It sort of does, with the edge angle viewport overlay, but it's definitely worth sanity checking by both comparing it to an estimate and maybe even lining the view down the edge and measuring the screen (!) With a protractor. I'm not sure if I'm especially bad at the angles thing because I've had a lot of my more complex patterns end up with wrong angles. Then you have to either divide that angle by 2 or so (180-x)/2 depending on if it's outside or inside angles to get the angle to cut with the saw (assuming butt joints). I get the feeling everyone in the industry uses SketchUp which I think makes measuring angles a bit more intuitive with the protractor tool. The blender measureit add-on is quite good but you'll probably have to add the odd bit of geometry (extra edges) to actually measure what you're after
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 interesting, okay thank you. Will have a play with it and see how I get on! If I manage anything interesting will post on here.
Please do!
I wonder if this would be useful in adding texture to wood holds
I think so! I haven't experimented with how well the resin sticks to the wood straight out though, may need priming.
Hi, very creative approach man! From a first look it seems very labour intensive but there is some good thinking in your idea. I'd be up to talk to you about your idea as a manufacturer. Do you have any mail to contact you in private?
I think not miles away from sand texturing other than salt processing and the wash out but in my mind a much nicer result. Drop me an email at giles@treo.co.uk
Sorry that email was down for a bit, should be back working now
Any particular STLs to print? I’d like to give this a shot for my 5 year old who’s not going to put as much pressure on them as an adult would.
So far I've only made quite challenging holds (small crimps, and slopey crimps) that would be hard for even a novice adult to hold. This is partly because of the print time/plastic being hugely less for smaller holds. I was thinking of doing a video on modelling holds, not sure if that would be of interest? Some of my previous hold designs can be found here: www.thingiverse.com/gbartonowen/collections/climbing-holds
I've added my favorite series here: www.thingiverse.com/thing:5267829
I wonder how some of the engineering filaments would work for climbing holds.
The critical factor in filament selection, I think, is working out what one actually wants property wise. PLA isn't very tough, but it is extremely strong, basically only PC convincingly outpaces pla in strength. We don't need particularly tough parts, but I think a modified pla adds some nice toughness. PLA has a major advantage however in cost, it's half the price of any engineering filament and can be printed on a stock cheap machine well, without wearing nozzles or making nasty smells. I print mine on a stock X1.
I could see wear resistance being very helpful for texturing directly like my other printed holds video.
I'm always tempted to upgrade a printer to print engineering filaments but it's hard to see a super convincing argument for most of them tbh.
What sort of properties were you thinking?
@@gilesbarton-owen6783 wear resistance was the main one. Perhaps increased strength could allow for printing fins or other fun/non-standard holds. My local gym has a holds that are busts of famous individuals. It'd be neat to print holds like that.
For sure! Not sure how close the holds I made were to failing, I suspect one could do a lot more with pla than I tried!
Have you tried the previous tactic of putting the hold in the oven for 1 hour, before applying the resin?
I've not tried combining the two concepts but I could never quite get the salt baking to work flawlessly, it always resulted in small voids. With the resin shell I'm not worried about strength really, these holds are incredibly robust (used commercially for 2 years now at a busy gym and still in okay shape)
Your process doesn't surpass what can be achieved with foam masters on an industrial level currently. People have been adding sand on their master for decades, but your extraction method is interesting. Also your shapes look pretty good. Talk to Green Holds, they seem to need a designer.
100% this isn't a good replacement for foam hold processes except for experimentation and small batches (and cool novelty). I think refined there's scope to use it for variable texturing. I think it would be competitive with sand textured macros which I really dislike personally, I am planning to try this when I have a bit more space
No mould investment, just expensive 3D printing????
Each of those prints is about £3 of plastic at the absolute maximum and I print them on a machine that cost £400 5 years ago. It's not free but 3d printing is not expensive. I would never claim this is a technique for mass manufacturing of holds, but for less than 5 holds of each designs this is likely cheaper than making molds from silicone