EJOT provides a solution for world-leading mountainboard unique fastening challenge

EJOT UK has supported Trampa Boards, one of the world’s most highly regarded manufacturers of lightweight mountainboards, to meet the unique fastening challenge of attaching key plastic components to a special flexible composite material that makes the boards virtually unbreakable.
 

The Design Challenge

The goal of the design team at Nottingham-based Trampa, who are renowned for high-performance electric mountainboards, offering custom, hand-assembled and robust equipment, was to achieve a secure attachment to the decks of three of its products without compromising numerous other design goals.

The Open Belt Drive, Pro Belt Drive and Spur Gear Drive electric mountainboards are three of its best-selling boards, which are sometimes referred to as all-terrain boards (ATBs), all offering extreme durability and high speeds plus varying degrees of customisation. And, with a strong reputation for quality, the design team at Trampa was keen to ensure that any fasteners it selected to provide these attachments would match the performance of the machined bolts used elsewhere in the mountainboard construction.

Specialised Material Requirements

EJOT UK was approached to help with two specific applications. Both required a small screw capable of performing an important role in maintaining the robust construction of the mountainboards during routine use in demanding environments. The key challenge was to ensure a secure hold could be achieved in the multi-layered material used to form the decks on which riders stand. This composite material combines maple and poplar with carbon at the inner core, with outer layers of fibreglass.
 

Application One: Enhancing Deck Ergonomics

The first requirement was a fastener to secure the ‘wings’, which serve a number of purposes, including routing electrical cables from the battery box in the middle of the deck to the motors at the rear. The wings are more than just a cable management solution, however. They play an important role for riders too, enabling the deck width to be increased from 9″ to 10″ with a comfortable ‘W’ shaped concave feel underfoot to provide an ergonomic place to stand.

Each mountainboard was designed in a way that required 28 screws to fix the wings to the composite deck. After discussing this application with the industrial fastener specialists at EJOT UK, the EJOT DELTA PT® dome-headed thread-forming screw was recommended with a 3.5mm diameter and a length of 12mm.

 

Application Two: Securing the Drivetrain

The second challenge was to securely attach the motor mounts, which turn the wheels. Their versatile design allows the Trampa team to be able to adapt the equipment to make a virtually unlimited number of other products, including karts, trikes, bikes and buggies.

Here, six screws were needed to attach a cage, which protects the motor, to the board. The solution came in the form of 10mm length DELTA PT® fasteners, also with a 3.5mm diameter, but this time with a Torx drive in two versions – a countersunk head for the Open Belt and Pro Belt Drive models and a dome head for the Spur Gear Drive.
 

Durability & Corrosion Resistance

In addition to ensuring the DELTA PT® could provide the high clamp load required, the design brief also demanded a high level of resistance to corrosion, given the all-weather conditions that Trampa customers will ride their mountainboards. For this reason, EJOT was able to offer all types of DELTA PT® screws in grade A2 stainless steel (AISI 304), which offers excellent corrosion resistance.
 

Client Perspective

Richard Marsh, Technical Assembly & Custom Builds at Trampa Boards, commented:
“We were looking for specialist parts to connect our custom-made products together. The challenge came with our special composite material, which is very flexible, so finding a small, strong screw capable of providing a secure attachment in this substrate was really important. We contacted EJOT to explore how they could help us here, and we were really impressed with how their DELTA PT® screws have met the brief and how the team supported us to arrive at the most effective solution.

“EJOT’s guidance was valuable here because, as almost all of our parts are aluminium, we almost always use machined bolts. However, we knew our virtually unbreakable decks required a different approach to join the composite materials in a way that would thread themselves into the softer plastic and composite parts.”
 

The DELTA PT® Advantage

One of three fasteners in EJOT’s world-leading PT screw range, DELTA PT® is one of the company's most widely used fasteners. It is suitable for all kinds of assemblies in applications ranging from automotive, where the product has been used extensively for several decades, to consumer electronics, to general industrial and specialist products.

EJOT DELTA PT® is designed for reliable and easy direct assembly into thermoplastics. The screw offers major benefits, including a high load capacity and fatigue strength for use in the most demanding assemblies. And the optimised thread geometry minimises radial stress, improves material flow and prevents the risk of materials cracking during installation. The screws also deliver excellent clamp load retention, vibration resistance and high torsional and tensile strength, ensuring long‑term joint reliability even under thermal or dynamic loads.