:: View topic - what is this gallium/electra you speak of?

So I frequently see ski companies list there base material as sintered, but it has to be 4000 Gallium or 4000 Electra or even (if you're lucky) Electra Gallium 4000! So the 4000 seems pretty obvious (4000 series - from Durasurf if sintered, from Iso if extruded/unspecified). Now what does the electra or gallium refer to? I dont think I have ever seen these phrases on any suppliers' sites. Is either referring to Durajet? I hope everyone else is similarly perplexed, because this would be on the first page of the book "101 Things you Wanted to Know About Ski Building but were too Afraid to Ask"

who and where do you see this listed like this? Links? My guess is if you ordered a couple miles of material from any of these guys you could call it whatever you want.

The first examples I can think of:

-Wagner: World Cup Base (Ptex 4000 Electra high-carbon base)

*its different than their Durajet option, so I guess that guess is out...

-Nordica Dobermanns: sintered graphite Electra Gallium

-Ridea: P-tex 4000 Gallium electra

thats just 3 of the first 5 I checked...but I promise if you flip through any Buyer's Guide you'll find plenty of others.

The use of Gallium is patented, so you can read all about it:

http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=5069803&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP

as for Electra, near as I can tell from a googling is it appears to be a brand name for sintered UHMW-PE with graphite added.

from http://www.tognar.com/base_repairs_tips_ski_snowboard.html

Very good find on the description...so what supplier makes gallium base?

You can buy the gallium ski base here:

http://snowboardmaterials.com/pages/base.htm

Looks to be the sintered base with galluim infused.

-S

So is this an isosport product? I've never come across "gallium" on isosport's site. Perhaps I'll have to ask Lindsay...

first off most of these different base names are for the most part bull shit marketing words. if you look at the crown plastics "a la carve" base you will see a whole list of additives you can add to the stock material line, all kinds of stuff. once the company has some unique (but not really) product you can call it super turbo awesome base if you want to. this applies to many other materials you find in a board/ski most major manufactures use common products weather its from iso/crown/vectorply etc..... but you will see them called a million different things

http://www.crownplastics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DuraSurfALaCarve.pdf

I never spotted that on Crown's site...that probably is one source (for companies that legitimately have gallium in their base...and arent just using the term carelessly). I think you hit the nail on the head with "marketing bs"...who doesnt want Super Turbo Awesome Base. I know I do.