Roughly 2 to 3 months depending on a few things: your location, the number of orders ahead of you and shipping schedules. The machines are built on the Gold Coast of Australia and shipped from there. Roughly 4 weeks to the US West Coast, 6 weeks to Europe and 4 weeks to Japan.

The Aku Shaper fits in a 20' container. The machine is sold ex-factory, which means shipping is to be taken care of by you. But we have experience with this so we're happy to provide assistance. We have sourced out a few freight forwarders and we have a relationship with one which has the best prices and very good customer service. We will provide them the information needed for the shipping, especially the information related to the Australian side. Its recommended that a local broker be obtained on your side to handle the local duties, customs clearance, etc.

The answer to this depends on how the machine is going to be used. If the machine is going to be used to shape a specific shaper's boards or perhaps a very small number of shapers' boards then we see. On the other hand if the machine is going to be used mainly to service a number of shapers as a profiling/shaping center then that person could get area protection as long as others in the area would not complain that their needs are not covered. This also depends on the area and is done on a case by case basis.

It looks like around $3500 USD to get the container to anywhere in the US and Europe, potentially slightly more for Europe. These prices seem to change frequently.

Right now we call those 85% boards "standard" The machine can do 4 per hour.

Most of this is done within the program and only a few variables change when you change the blank size. The positioning of the board within the blank and the creation of the tool path takes maybe 30 seconds. It takes about the same time to place a blank on the machine, position it and fix it. All that's left to do is press the "Start" button.

We are running two machines and an average of 60 boards a day and we use an average of 40 kilowatt hour (kWh) a day which amounts to $8 (AUD) per day in electricity. that is the whole factory with lights, computers, machines, compressor, vac system and so on. (This is for our factory on the Gold Coast, your electric bill is likely to vary. The point being is that running the machine won't limit you from doing other things that require electricity.)

It is possible to make mistakes but they are normally minor and the blank is still usable. And if the operator follows procedure it will not happen.

The Aku Shaper works different than other systems as we do not use a dust extraction at all. The machine is divided in 2 parts, the clean loading bay and the dusty machine part in the back. After about 12 boards we give the rear a quick sweep with the broom and at the end of the day we shovel the dust into a bag lined bin. This is the fastest and cleanest way to remove dust, much faster and cleaner than emptying a dust extraction system and filter. Trust us, we've tried it all.

Our experience with a dust extractor is that you'll spend more time on maintenance on the dust extractor than on the actual Aku surfboard shaping machine. 

The dust room must be cleaned out after 12 boards, this takes only a couple of minutes. After 40 hours of operation the machine needs a quick oil and grease and after 400 hours of operation the machine must be cleaned and routine checked. The spindle motor needs servicing after about 400 boards (less than 5 minutes). To change the spindle motor takes 5 minutes, to change the cutter 2 minutes. All bearings can be taken out for inspection and service, the machine does not have to be re-calibrated. The Aku Shaper is fully adjusted to the extreme environment she works in and the little bit of dust (tons!!) won't hurt her. The different axes work with different linear motion units, some Teflon coated ceramic bushes, some linear ball bearings. We have successfully integrated dust in our linear motion system, the key to trouble free operation.

We recommend to quickly blow off the machine and check for visual problems like loose cables, broken seals or things like that. We know it does not make much sense as there is not much to see but we were advised to recommend the routine check and so we do it. It only takes a few minutes anyway.

The speed of a surfboard shaping machine is not determined by its actual cutting speed, there are several more important factors to be considered. It takes the Aku Shaper just 7 seconds to complete a cut on a 6' 2" board. As the finish of the Aku Shaper cut is extremely clean, she would need a lot less cuts for a competitive finish. But what really counts is the number of individual boards that can be done in a certain time including blank preparation and blank setup.

You have to design them yourself. The easiest is to get a stringer, measure a series of points, put these points in the design program as guide points and pull the curves through. You only need the profile so it goes very quick. In some extreme cases you may need the full blank shape and you can use the ghost function within the program to determine how the board will fit with outline and slice view. You also can make a measuring stand, which can be used for measuring up boards. And yes, you can use laser or touch sensors.

This depends on what you cut. Thousands of normal boards is a conservative answer.

The machine is setup in a way in which the operator is in a separate room while the machine is running. Loading and unloading of the machine are done when the machine is not moving. All adjustment to the machine such as adjusting cutting speed on the fly (if desired, and not usually done) can be done from the control room. To have contact with the moving cutter would really require someone to go out of their way. So it is not dangerous to operate the Aku Shaper.

No. The Aku Shaper has been designed for easy of use for any type of user. It has been designed as a tool to help shapers make surfboards faster, easier and more accurately, not something that requires an onsite mechanical engineer at all times. Many of our happy machine owners have little to no formal technical training but are able to get exactly what they want out of the machine.

This has been achieved by running tens and tens of thousands of boards through our test/shaping center machines, while making the necessary improvements over the past 5+ years.

If we let you do this we have no way of knowing the profile curve you want from the center to the nose. It's a guessing game, but it puts you, the user, in more control or your design, and avoids us making bad guesses.Recently we have added a feature which makes nose and tail rocker changes easy by just using the arrow keys but still preserving the curve. Also, see the Rocker Adjustments tutorial on this page.

You have to design them yourself. The easiest is to get a stringer, measure a series of points, put these points in the design program as guide points and pull the curves through. You only need the profile so it goes very quick. In some extreme cases you may need the full blank shape and you can use the ghost function within the program to determine how the board will fit with outline and slice view. You also can make a measuring stand, which can be used for measuring up boards. And yes, you can use laser or touch sensors.

This is done by pulling the blue points on the lower rail down. We do not allow the blue points on the top and bottom of the stringer to be moved. Those affect the thickness which is changed in the top and bottom profile view. The video tutorial called Slices Concaves on the tutorials page.

This is because our site does not have something like Verisign. This what happens to sites that have not paid extra money for extra security. Because we do not take credit card orders over the we web, we are not likely to purchase this. It is good practice to only download programs from known sites.

The design program will be freely available for everyone over the internet. If you use the program while connected to the net it will automatically update to the newest version. The machine version of the program is confidential and carries the owners name. It is subject to the software license agreement as is the controller software. The only difference between the two versions is the ability to make the files for the machine, design wise, they are the same.

The program can do the wings and the machine can cut them easily. See picture

Why not? Also, there was no standard in measuring the volume of a surfboard in the industry when we wrote this software.

The whole package (software and machine) were designed with the custom surfboard in mind. So cutting a 6' board and then an 8' board requires about a minute changing struts on the machine. Essentially, the production of surfboards (custom or the same model) can be done very efficiently on the Aku Shaper Machine.