For decades, people have shaped surfboards out of plastic foam. But 3D printing could change that. A Santa Cruz startup is printing surfboards out of recycled hospital trays.
In his Santa Cruz garage, Patricio Guerrero watched as his homemade 3D printer laid down rows of clear plastic filament. Next to the printer was a rack filled with finished surfboards. He pulled one out of the rack.
“This was the first board that kind of sparked the drive for everything else,” said Guerrero.
It’s translucent with a diamond-shaped pattern running through it. Guerrero started printing surfboards in his garage in the fall of 2022 and tested the first one at the famous Santa Cruz surf spot Steamer Lane.
“I was super nervous,” said Guerrero. “I was like, ‘man, maybe I'll just jump in the water and the whole thing will like, just break right under me, or like it'll start filling up with water or something.’”
But the board worked. Guerrero surfed for two hours. From there, he started printing more boards using recycled materials and founded a startup called Swellcycle.
Surfboards are an estimated $13 billion industry. Tens of millions of boards are sold around the world each year, and they’re not exactly eco-friendly. Most surfboards start as a plastic foam block, called a blank, with a thin piece of wood in the middle.
For almost 40 years, Vince Broglio has shaped surfboards using a planar and hand-sanding.
“Hand-shaping a blank will take me about two hours,” he said. After lots of sanding comes the fiberglass. While in his Westside Santa Cruz shaping room, Broglio explained the process:
“When you're laminating a board or glassing, you're putting the fiberglass and resin on the board and putting out a finished product,” he said.
The foam cores in most surfboards are not easily recycled, and they don't biodegrade. Old or broken surfboards usually end up in landfills, where they crumble into smaller and smaller pieces that can pollute water and soil.
But 3D printed boards don’t need foam. They’re mostly hollow and can be made from recycled materials.
For Swellcycle, Guerrero started ordering filament made from recycled hospital trays from the Netherlands.
“We are primarily printing with PETG, which is a material that is used in hospital trays or plastic water bottles,” he said.
Soon, he recruited a business partner to design the boards and sent them to local surfboard shapers for the final fiberglassing. Vince Broglio was the first to glass one.
“It looked really cool when it was done… see-through board and all that,” said Broglio.
He says it can be hard for surf culture to accept new things, but printing is just another tool.
“I know there's going to be guys that say, ‘oh my God, the soul of it’s gone,’" he said. "But you’ve got to have somebody that knows surfing that's been shaping and all that to design the board in the first place."
Since Guerrero's first garage prototype, Swellcycle has designed new boards. Big wave, former pro-surfer Tyler Fox tried one in the water and says the boards catch people’s eye.
“Like midday, where the sun’s shining right through it on a green wave, it just glows. It's like you're on a hovercraft — like this glowing hovercraft,” Fox said.
On a sunny morning at the lighthouse next to Steamer Lane, people gathered around a display of the printed surfboards. Curious surfers commented on the translucence of the boards and asked questions about the materials.
“It feels great,” said Antonio Ramirez, who had just tried surfing one of the demo 3D-printed boards in the water. “I love it. It was smooth, fast and loose."
Bob Pearson, who founded Pearson-Arrow Surfboards in the 60s, compared 3D printing to when he started using a computer numerical control — or CNC — machine. At the Pearson Arrow Factory on the Eastside of Santa Cruz, he remembered how people criticized him for not doing everything by hand.
“I was one of the first guys to have these in the world," he said, gesturing to the CNC machine. "And I got all kinds of crap for having a CNC machine, because people didn’t know what the hell was,” Pearson said. People told him it takes the soul out of making surfboards.
“Everyone was badmouthing it.” he said. “And it's amazing how people who were badmouthing it are now utilizing them.”
Pearson glassed one of the Swellcycle boards and said he thinks there’s a place in the market for them.
“I was stoked. Stoked from day one,” he said. “Great idea. 3D printing a surfboard: unreal.”
He compared it to the current process at the factory.
“We do them out of polyurethane and EPS — expanded polystyrene — and there's a lot of waste. That waste goes to the landfill. That's not a good thing,” he said. “And so potentially this is less waste, so it's a great idea.”
The Swellcycle team just moved into a solar-powered warehouse. Now, they’re looking for surfers to try out the boards and provide long-term feedback. It’ll be the first real test of whether the surfing community is ready for something new.
