Just finished my Tower

Matteo · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 17 City: San Diego

It boating season starting this week for us!!! So I finally got around to having my tower powdercoated. Its been a long project for me, but well worth it.
If you want to see the whole building process, you can check it out at www.inboardtalk.com

Adam Greer · Posted: May 02, 2003 8:26 am Post subject:

that looks tight man!....did you just think about that and do it. Or did you draw them up.

Matteo · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 17 City: San Diego

Yes, many many weeks of thinking and planning. I have the whole thing in the computer in 3-d, including the boat.

west coast boarder · Addict Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 558 City: Nor Cal

that tower looks really nice. Great job.

STPHNSN23 · Guest

how much did that cost you?

Fishmaster · Posted: May 02, 2003 5:09 pm Post subject:

Matt,

That looks so awesome powder coated. You did such an incredible job on your tower. If you ever need lights or speakers let me take care of you & hook you up.

For anyone who has not checked out Matt's website, he probably did more engineering on his tower than most production towers. He did Finite Element Modelling for our tower and was a integral part of the team that developed our product as well.

Bill

doubleupboarder10 · Outlaw Joined: 09 Mar 2003 Posts: 169 City: arizona

that is sick. thinking of doing something similar

Matteo · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 17 City: San Diego

Bill,
Thanks for the kind words!!

Just got back from the river, it was epic. 85 Air, 66 water. Cool

Looking forward to a long boating season this year.

My friend just got a boat similar to mine and I hope to steer him to a ' www.monstertower.com '. Wink

Matteo · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 17 City: San Diego

Bill,
Thanks for the kind words!!

Just got back from the river, it was epic. 85 Air, 66 water. Cool

Looking forward to a long boating season this year.

My friend just got a boat similar to mine and I hope to steer him to a ' www.monstertower.com '. Wink

Fishmaster · Posted: May 05, 2003 9:14 am Post subject:

Damn that looks good Matt !
We were out Friday and yesterday and similar conditions. It's FINALLY that time again. This old man is one sore puppy thought. Good news is I'm already landing everything I was at the end of last season Very Happy

Bill

George · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 552 City: Chattanooga

Just courious do you add any extentions to your rope since the tower is really far forward on the boat?

Matteo · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 17 City: San Diego

Good catch on the location! It took lots of thinking about while designing.

No, don't make special provisions for the tower being farther forward. It is actually about 17" farther forward when the boat is not moving. Once the boat is going about 20mph the tower pull point is less than 9" in front of the standard pylon mount. Not many riders have asked for their 9" back. Laughing

I designed the tower with the idea of making it strong enough to climb up on and then jump off (while the boat is parked in deep water!!!). As the tow point moves back the force on the rear feet goes up. I wanted to keep the tow point as far forward as possible without making it look funny or sacrificing the primary function of the tower (to pull boarders, not to climb on).

grady · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 547 City: d-block

that tower looks so sweet...u did an awesome job my friend

projectely4 · Posted: May 06, 2003 2:24 pm Post subject:

who made the tower

MXman · Newbie Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 5

Who's red boat is that? That Ooga Booga is awesome!

Actually matteo is going to help me build a tower like this for the Ooga Booga.

Matteo · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 17 City: San Diego

MXman,
I was wondering if you would find this thread.
You like the picture of our boats?
So, when do you start on your tower?

I just noticed something about your tower; You don't leave much room above the front cup holder for our wifes extra large drinks. Laughing

lumpy19 · Criminal Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 97 City: Rochester

Matteo,

I've followed your custom tower project throughout, excellent job. I'm in the process of designing and building my own for a 2002 Glastron, my only problem is getting the boat into CAD. How accurately is your boat depicted in the drawings? I'm just a little nervous that if I don't get it in there exactly right the tower won't line up the way I want it to. Any suggestions? Also what FEA package did you use on the tower and how many revisions did you make to it before you came up with your final design?

Thanks!

Fishmaster · Posted: May 08, 2003 5:34 pm Post subject:

Lumpy,

Have you worked with any CAD packages? Not sure what your background is but we were in a similar situation a few years ago. SolidWorks is by far the one to go with for being everywhere you want to be. ProEngineer is even above that but not realisted for most of us unless your a Fortune 500 company ($25K/seat) BUT . . they now have a product called Pro Desktop Express which is FREE but unsupported. People are doing incredible work with this and natrually they want to go buy at least support at like $500/year but it's not required. There are some sites that are like this one for support of it though. Check out http://www.ptc.com/products/desktop/express/license.htm to download it.

We use Inventor by AutoDesk for the conceptual design work becuase it's a very productive environment where you can do a lot of "what if" real fast. It has it's limitations and all the hard core engineers prefer SolidWorks, as do most vendors you will use but it' like $3-5000 so way beyond most budgets.

There are also some great programs in the $3-500 range for basic stuff but I dont know enough to talk itelligently about those.

Bill

Fishmaster · Posted: May 08, 2003 5:36 pm Post subject:

They really need to add a spell checker on the board, my spelling is tearable!

Bill

DRAGON88 · Posted: May 08, 2003 7:29 pm Post subject:

MosnsterTower, it is quite tearible, beacuse it makes me cry.. Crying or Very sad

lol

Fishmaster · Posted: May 08, 2003 7:38 pm Post subject:

Go easy on me please, I are such an engine-ear! Seems like everything I ever put to text has 4th grade mistakes. It's sad when my kids correct my documents, but I'm thankful for them! I'm used to getting busted over this because I went to Univ. of Florida, so feel free to join in!
Bill

lumpy19 · Criminal Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 97 City: Rochester

Yup I'm running Inventor 7 here(just upgraded from 6). I also have ansys design space FEA integrated into the inventor. I have access to Solidworks and I love the program but I'm much more proficient in Inventor and for what I do I'll probably never hit its limitations. Our tooling engineers do much more intricate designs and they all use Solidworks. I can't really convert over to solid works because our entire data base is Autocad/inventor based.

Anyway thanks for the info and on a side note I love the design of the monster tower, if I wasn't building my own you'd have my money.

Matteo · Newbie Joined: 02 May 2003 Posts: 17 City: San Diego

Responding to some questions that were back a ways;

I did use SW as the CAD software. Cosmos for the FEA.
How accurate is the boat model? It is very accurate right at the points that I mounted the tower. I wanted to make sure that these areas were accurate, so I spent some time on them. The windshield angle and shape is also accurate. I needed the windshild angle and location for good tower looks and placement.

I did go through about 3 iterations on the FEA. I mostly changed the top angle tubes and side tubes to optimize. I also used it to convince me that it was not going to fail under heavy use.

boehnkew · Outlaw Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 112 City: Kennewick, WA

The tower turned out very nice. Your time on the modeling was well spent. Once you get the production line worked out Bill is gonna have some tough competition Laughing