Telemark Talk / Telemark Tips Forum

I started free-heel skiing on a pair of Freeride bindings in 2018, and I liked the concept of swapping the binding between multiple skis. To be honest, I only had one pair of skis, but I liked the IDEA of binding swapability. About a year ago, I became interested in the tech toe NTN bindings — first the Lynx (L) and then Medjo (M). After skiing both the Lynx and Meidjo, and drilling inserts into numerous skis I realized that even with threaded inserts the L and M bindings are not as easy to swap on add off as the Freeride. The Freeride binding slides onto a plate and is secured with two screws — simple enough for a 5-minute swap in the back of a car. To contrast, both tech bindings require at least partial disassembly and in case of M binding necessitates unscrewing the spring nuts and thus loosing the binding preload setting. In addition, the L and M tech bindings each use 6 or 10 screws respectively. My goal is a design that would allow easy binding swaps of L and M without binding disassembly and minimizing the number of screws I need to turn.

I want to share this idea here and perhaps get feed back from the more experienced skiers and tinkerers. Perhaps this idea was already developed by someone in the past unbeknownst to me. I should mention, I have seen shift plates and the like that save drilling many holes into the ski but my motivation is swapability without binding disassembly.

The design builds on the existing Rottefella pink rail used for the Freeride (I already had them available for experimentation). The binding is assembled on an aluminum (AL-7075) plate that snugly fits the Rottefella pink rail. This plate has M5-threaded holes spaced for the binding load-bearing mounting screws, and excludes the red bar and claw mechanism to save weight.

Binding Plate The T-shaped front cutout allows for a replaceable plastic insert (PETG 3D print) to act as a front stop and can ultimately be used to adjust fore and aft binding position (not by much though, maybe 10 mm).

Front Insert The rear of the aluminum binding plate is secured by another plastic piece (CF-PETG and PETG 3D prints) which secures the binding plate to the pink rail using 2x M5 bolts (these are the only bolts that need to be loosened to swap the binding). This rear insert also provides the mounting surface for the M red bar plate with appropriately spaced heatset stainless inserts. I built this rear section from two parts due to the anisotropic nature of 3D prints and print stability. I anticipated the black section (CF-PETG) is loaded in the fore/aft direction because it provides clamping onto the pink rail. Whereas the red section is a platform for M red-bar and takes much less stress.

Rear Insert The binding is assembled on the aluminum binding plate, and the M red-bar guide is assembled on the rear insert. The whole plate-binding assembly slides onto the pink rail, and is clamped by the rear insert using the 2 bolts.

Assembly This plate adds 12 mm of stack height to the binding, plus another 1-2 mm from the pink rail, making a total stack height increase of ~14 mm. The original Freeride heel plate works well, but I also made a similar rail-plate combo for heel plates which is can be moved from ski to ski.

I have yet to ski this as this was my spring/summer project, but I’ve carpet tested enough to convince myself it will not explode immediately and is safe for a real trial. With that said, I have only limited experience and would love to hear input, critiques or suggestions from anyone inclined to share.

Best,
Leon

Here are a few more photos of the binding with a boot. I made a plate for 22D Lynx but now it’s being used as a frankenbinding. You can also see the 22D heel on a red PETG rail-plate combo which is secured by 1 bolt in the back.

Leon,
Thank you SO MUCH for posting this!

BRILLIANT! ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT! Definitely my favorite post of 2021!!!

The 14mm height sounds perfect to me... Especially for groomers... Just one thing though... Personally, the main reason why I'm a harcore moving-plate-enthusiast is not because of the swapping capabilities, but much more for the fore/aft adjusting option. I just can't believe your AMAZING plates are not on the market yet! You mention 10mm of possible adjustment, which is really, really cool. The +1.5cm / - 1.5cm range of the Freeride is very nice, but I have been dreaming of a +3/-3 adjustment for over a decade! I'm sure you could do it with your plates? Even if they exceed the pink plates a bit...?

SUPER exciting! Please let us know how they ski...!

Oh, and what about the weight?

OMG. I LOVE this.

I have 2 sets of meidjos now since switching to NTN. Id love the ability to switch them to more skis, and especially my old rock skis.

Amazing bindings. But for $500+ they ought to be able to move around more easy

Johnny, I wish something like this was available to purchase, it would save me a lot of time and money (and sleepless nights given my compulsion to make these). The weight for a single plate and all the plastic parts and bolts with the M3 bindings mounted is 731.4 g. Sorry, I did not want to take the binding off for the weigh-in. Assuming the Meidjo advertised weight of 492 g per binding is correct, then each plate is 239.4 g and 479 g for the pair. Not exactly light, I admit. Obviously, I am limited to manufacturability and cost constraints of iterative design modifications -- I think a reputable shop can make something lighter and no less sturdy.

Weigh In As currently designed, the distance between the rear insert and the binding plate has to be maintained. This is especially true for the M binding. Thus, fore/aft adjustment would require removing the plate-binding assembly from the pink rail, replacing the plastic front and adding spacers within the rear insert to shift the plate with binding. I think this is too cumbersome. I did not consider the utility of fore/aft adjustment when I designed these, and I think a redesign that allows accurate repeatable fore/aft adjustment without removal from pink rail would be best. Like a setscrew on each plate. I am happy to alter the design to accommodate this, but the real expense is manufacturing prototypes. I do not have access to, nor experience using a CNC mill, so my current production models have been small batch manufacturing orders which cost about as much as a new binding. If you know of anyone with a metal machine shop that can make prototypes that would really help, or better yet convince a binding manufacturer to make and improve this concept... I am ready to buy.

Awesome... Totally awesome!!!

The idea here is not to create a perfect commercial product... But to bring new ideas and keep pushing things forward... In a word, make things happen when nobody else can! Who knows where it will lead... Without a doubt, into the future!

Beauuuuuutiful!

This is so cool! How did they work? Are you making these for others? Thanks!

kj-ice. I modified the design last winter to have fewer parts. Now the design is just one solid aluminum binding plate and slightly modified Rottefella FreeRide pink plate on the ski. I skied the plate with the stock Meidjo 3.0 binding 15 days last year, and I swapped them between two pairs of skis. So far they worked as intended: easy swap between skis without binding disassembly and no failures thus far. I intend to continue skiing on them, but I also started to play around with TTS bindings and plates: Meidjo toe-Vice springs and heel bail and TR2 toe-Voile hardwire bail. You can see the photo. I will trial the TTS plates this year. I have not made any plates for others.