Carbon Zeus Speed Skating Plate

Introducing the new Bont Carbon Zeus roller speed skating plate. Bont pioneered the use of carbon fiber in skating equipment way back in 1989. We recently invested in new equipment to produce inline frames and roller skate plates from carbon fiber. The investment was more than $250,000 in this new machinery. The first product that we made was the Bont Supercell inline skate frame. This is the most advanced inline speed skating frame ever made. Now, we introduce the Zeus Carbon roller skate plate. 

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Design

Speed roller skating is a sport based around nostalgia and heritage. I wanted the carbon Zeus plate design to retain the classic retro plate look and feel but modernize it with carbon fiber. This would dramatically lighten and strengthen the plate over the aluminum version. In this regard, the design was fairly easy because the aluminum Zeus had already been made and the design was already very good for carbon fiber. All we needed to do was to work out how to get the plate out of the mold which was a fairly simple task. 

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Testing

Strength testing was done on the computer to compare the strength to the aluminum version before we opened the tooling. Once the first prototype was made we did some real work stress tests with our machine that breaks objects and tells us the load needed to break it. Everything checked out so we moved to real-world testing where we had skaters in Australia, USA, and Korea all test the plate. 

Plate Sizes

The first plate is 165cm and now that the testing was successful we are opening the molds for 145cm, 155cm and 175cm. They should be ready around the end of November 2020.

The Bont Carbon Zeus plate is available in the following sizes: 145mm (5.7"), 155mm (6.1"), 165mm (6.5") and 175mm (6.9"). This measurement is taken from the center of the axles. 

Weight

I know, this is what you have all been wanting to know, how much lighter is it? 

The Carbon Zeus plate weighs only 85g or under 3 ounces. That is 60 grams lighter than the aluminum plate. Total weight with trucks is 333g or 11.7 ounces.

Kingpins

The front kingpin is made of steel and the rear kingpin is aluminum. 

About the author:

Alexander Bont has been skating since the age of two years old. He was part of the Australian national short track team for 7 years. He has also competed on quad roller skates, long track ice skates, and inline speed skates. Alexander has won a number of Australian national titles including national records in short track and state titles in inline speed skating. He is the owner and CEO of Bont Skates and has a passion for skate design.