3D on the Beach

Luke Diehl sands the interior section of a Blueprint Surf surfboard made out of recycled fishing nets. The interiors of the boards are made on a 3D printer. Photo courtesy Blueprint Surf Co.

Hand sanders, power sanders, clamps, rasps, fiberglass cloth, and epoxy resin are among the tools and materials that Mike Ballin uses when making surfboards. The most important equipment, however, is a 3D printer.

Ballin and his business partner, Luke Diehl, are developing a line of surfboards that they bill as the first of their kind in Maine and New England that are manufactured using a 3D printer. Furthermore, their boards are the first worldwide that are made out of recycled commercial fishing nets, they say.

Their company, Blueprint Surf Co. in Portland, is on a mission to manufacture durable and high-performing surfboards that are kinder to the environment than the traditional foam surfboards that have been in use for decades.

Ballin, 26, is in charge of the manufacturing process, first making different honeycomb configurations that comprise the core of the Blueprint surfboards on the 3D printer before assembling the pieces to create the finished product. Then—and here’s the fun part—he tests each board at beaches near Portland, Maine, to determine their strengths, their shortcomings, and whether they pass muster.

So far, he’s made about 40 surfboards, most of which haven’t made the cut and several that have broken. But Blueprint has sold about 10 or so boards and hopes to soon have them in retail surf shops in the Portland area. 

“We’re trying to perfect the product,” Ballin said while showing off some of his surfboards, “and also stay afloat as a business.”

A 3D printer is basically a device that creates three-dimensional objects from a digital model by layering materials on top of each other. Nowadays, the printers are used to make hundreds of different products, such as automobile and aircraft parts, consumer goods, industrial machine parts, and even large-scale products like boats and wind turbine blades.

Mike Ballin holds two surfboards he made in a small workshop in a garage in South Portland. Photo by Clarke Canfield Diehl got the idea for making 3D printed surfboards from a patient who had spinal surgery that used a spinal implant made out of titanium on a 3D printer by a company that Diehl had once headed.

The patient, who was a surfing enthusiast from Australia, asked if the same concept used for the spinal implant could be used for surfboards. “He said, ‘Wow that’s super cool. Can you make me one of these out of recycled fishing nets in the shape of a surfboard so I can surf it?’” Diehl said.

Diehl, a lifelong surfer himself, ran with the idea to see if it could be done. Now a partner in a firm that helps business start-ups with product development and seed funding, Diehl decided to start Blueprint Surf Co. with the aim of developing 3D printed surfboards and bringing them to market.

Diehl, 35, had known Ballin’s father for many years, from surfing in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He knew Mike was studying environmental science at Colby College, was a surfer, and had even made his own surfboards in the basement of the family home in Gloucester.

Shortly after Ballin graduated from Colby in 2021, Diehl approached him about taking on the venture together, and in 2022 they started the business. Ballin is in charge of manufacturing and product design. Diehl oversees the business development and financial aspects of the company from Boston, coming to Maine about once a week. 

The goal is to make a product that people will use and thus become part of the New England surfing community. And while they’re at it, their boards—free of foam—will be better for the environment. Ballin and Diehl estimate that each board results in about five pounds of plastic staying out of landfills.

“We don’t really feel like the world needs more foam boards,” Diehl said. “We’ve been making surfboards the same way since 1960. So it’s good to explore different options.”

Ballin lives in Portland and builds his boards in a workshop located in a two-bay garage in a residential neighborhood in South Portland. The garage is sectioned off with thick, clear plastic that hangs from the ceiling.

But the process begins with Blueprint’s large-scale 3D printer. The printer is kept at Northeastern University’s Roux Institute on Portland’s eastern waterfront, where graduate students also get to use the machine. There, Ballin links his laptop computer to the printer, which prints parts for the inner core of the surfboards using filament made out of recycled fishing nets. He buys the filament in large spools from a company that transforms recycled waste into sustainable materials for 3D printing.

When Blueprint started out, the company initially tried making surfboards out of recycled hospital trays, but those surfboards were too brittle and susceptible to breaking.

Now, Ballin uses recycled fishing nets, focusing on coming up with the perfect honeycomb configuration—with the right spacing and angles of each cell—for different sized boards. The printer typically runs seven days a week, and Ballin can monitor and control it virtually on his laptop or phone wherever he happens to be.

When the surfboard parts are printed, he takes them to his workshop, glues them together and sands them. He then covers the board with a sheet of fiberglass and applies a bio-based epoxy, dried drips of which are splattered on the floor of his workshop.

For now, Blueprint makes boards with names like Sea Mink, Screaming Gull, and Swamp Darter, ranging in size from 5 feet, 8 inches, to 6 feet, 10 inches. So far, Ballin has sold only a small number of boards, each in the $600 to $700 range. One of those buyers, Conor Larkin, lives in Portland and surfs various beaches in southern Maine.

Larkin, who attended Colby with Ballin, said it’s important that the board is made out of recycled materials, but that wasn’t the most critical reason for him to buy it. Rather, he was attracted by the performance.

“It is a cool use of the technology. It doesn’t feel like it takes the soul out of the board in any way because the care and attention from a human is still provided by Mike and his team throughout the entire process,” he said. “Even if they scale up, I don’t mind the use of a 3D printer because the process is so much more sustainable than traditional surfboards.”

Blueprint isn’t the only one using 3D printers to make surfboards. A company in France and another in California also use 3D printers to make their boards. But Blueprint is the only one using recycled fishing nets to do so, Diehl said. And whereas those companies are primarily making boards specifically for surfing conditions in their regions, Diehl hopes that Blueprint surfboards will earn a following among mainstream surfers across New England.

Mike Ballin personally tests each board at Higgins Beach in Scarborough, shown here, and at other beaches in southern Maine. Photo courtesy Blueprint Surf Co.

He points to Grain Surfboards in York in southern Maine, which makes wooden boards. Two friends started that company about 20 years ago in a rented home, making surfboards out of wood as an alternative to the fiberglass-over-foam boards that are common at beaches worldwide.

“Their products are kind of niche, they’re really special, and they’ve built themselves into a centerpiece of Maine’s surfing community,” Diehl commented. “They’ve earned a wonderful reputation for building something that has character, is beautiful, and works. That’s what we really want. We want to take our time, build up a strong and stable small business, and be sort of a long-term contributor to Maine’s surf and outdoor sports community.”

Blueprint boards can be bought online, but Diehl said they’ll be available this year at a handful of surf shops in southern Maine. From there, the company hopes to hire new employees, grow and, hopefully, become profitable.

“We’re as concerned with turning a profit as everybody in the surf industry is,” Diehl said. “We’re doing it because we love it, but if at some point we can’t afford to do it anymore, then so be it, we’ll have to stop. But right now we’re happy obsessing over it and going through the process.”

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3D printed surfboards

Surfboard lengths: 5' 8" to 6' 10"

Builder:
Blueprint Surf Company
blueprintsurf.com

Clarke Canfield is a longtime journalist and author who has written and edited for newspapers, magazines and the Associated Press. He lives in South Portland.