With the open hull platform, the only space available for interfacing the steering handle was on the seat. I began by designing a part that would be mounted with hardware to the seat frame. The steering handle would slide and lock via spring-loaded pin onto the mount.

Steering Mounts were first prototyped with our in-house 3D printed. We later sent out for production printed parts testing glass fiber nylon 6/6 vs pure nylon 6/6.

A tool for injection molding was purchased after the approval of the 3D printed prototypes. The design was optimized for injection molding with side-to-side action, plus 1 slide.

Our seat vendor molds the parts in-house for easy transfer to the seat assembly.

This part would fix the seat of the kayak. The seat mounts were spec’d to be permanently secured to the kayak hull. The seat would “snap” into the mounts giving the user feedback for a secure fit.

I refined this part over eight months refining the “snap” fitting. I used our in-house 3D printer to test the design and fit. A bungee loop, knotted internally on the part was added to provide a secondary locking action on the seat.

Injection-molded tooling was purchased once the design was finalized. Samples of the seat mount were sent to our inflatable vendor to be adhered to the hull during the sampling of the hull.

This part was chosen to be molded by at factor with close proximity to our inflatable vendor to easy transfer of the part. The part was molded with CG10 pigment to match with the kayaks colorway

On the other end “pun intended”, the rudder would slide and lock into a mount glued and permanently secured to the stern of each kayak model. The rudder would lock similar to the steering mount with the same spring-loaded pin.

Prototypes were made with our in-house 3D printer. This part decreased in size due to the vulnerability of the position mounted on the kayak. The part is susceptible to damage in the folding process and needed to be optimized for strength.

Following the same procedure as the Seat Mount and Steering Mount, once the design and prototypes were working well in 3D printed form, a tool for injection mold was ordered. Samples were sent to our inflatable vendor to be installed on second round hull samples.

The part was chosen to be molded at a factory close to our inflatable vendor to decrease lead times or bottlenecks when building inflatable hulls. Our injection molder has met terms and works well with the inflatable vendor without conflict. CG10 color was added to the part to tie into the kayaks colorway.