Old School, New School, Tech School

It’s not unusual to hear about a school program for pressing skateboards, but Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland, Oregon goes a few steps beyond that.  Skateboard Engineering is a half a year elective that also goes delves into 3D design, using CAD software to design trucks, 3D printers for prototyping, and their on-site foundry and machine shop for actually manufacturing trucks.  I’ve been visiting their open house for a couple years now, and each time I go they’ve added more to the program. The curriculum is evolving as the teacher learns more. He did not have a previous background in skateboarding, but rightly thought it would be something that students would be into.

Skateboard engineering stared out like most grade school and high school programs, focused solely on pressing skateboards.

There’s longboard on top, but the mold in this press is for regular sized skateboards.

New to my visit this time, they are using CNC routers to cut shapes out of the blanks they’ve pressed.

It could use a little more router action on the edges, but it’s a pretty good looking stick.

Some of the boards use one of their in-house CNC lasers.

Traditional screen printing on a skateboard.

CAD software used to design truck prototypes.

3D printing of the whole assembly, just for fun, and probably to make sure everything works.

Watch out for those plastic kingpins.

Washers, nuts, pivot inserts…

Somewhere on the interwebs there’s a video with someone actually skateboarding on 3D printed wheels. (Braille Skateboarding has a video on Youtube.)

This might be my favorite image.

Holy nuts! They made their own trucks!

This looks like a copy of an existing truck.

Rough casting.

Looks a little rough, but it’s only going to get better.

Semi-Finished baseplate after some machining. As of the last time I talked to someone there, they had not actually tried to ride any of their trucks yet.

Benson also has a digital design program, and some students designed deck graphics.