You talking about ribs (rigid inflatable boat) or just palin inflatables?

just plain inflatables.I'm sure that airbed designers would be able to help too

From memory of camping trips early lilos used to have separate tubes, each with it's own valve.The ribs would be made fromthe same material, offcuts?, and I think this is how newer lilos are made. There are regularly spaced dimples over the surface.Just remembered something that a mate did.. He wanted to inflate a double lilo but didn't have a pump and didn't want to do it by mouth. So he used a dive bottle. Cracked the valve open and watched the whole thing blow up like a balloon, accompanied by the noise of the ribs tearing off one by one in quick sucession.These people may be useful for valves and the like:http://www.inflatable-boat-supplies.co.uk/Single point inflation and deflation resistance may be problematic.

choc-ice wrotejust plain inflatables.I'm sure that airbed designers would be able to help tooPVC - thermo welds for joints and valves. No fault tolerant pockets on any airbed I've tried but would be more important for a boat but would mean 2 or more valves.

Designing small inflatable boats --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Anyone know anything about them? A little. I have owned a couple of Avons and a Humber. I have also repaired and maintained other makes, all Hypalon. I have no direct experience of PVC boatsAre they moulded into shape or stitched? AFAIK they are all made by gluing sheet material, Hypalon or PVC, into the desired shape. Some ancilliary items, pockets etc. may be stiched but they are then glued to the air tube. No stitching is used on the air tubes directly Can you glue sections together? See above. The main glue I have used is Bostik 2402 (IIRC) two part contact adhesive.How do they mould the valves in? Bought in as unit and glued to the inside or the outside of the airtubeIs there a clever way of making 2 bits linked together so they're filled from one inlet, but if one section gets a leak the other one doesn't? Some sort of one way valve? You could do it by putting a valve between the two sections but only one section would be prevented from deflation. Some life rafts are made with a divider inside the tube ( Imagine two Ds back to back) Thes are inflated at the same time so if one if punctured you still have all the air from the other tube keeping you afloatTa for any help.ps, it could be motorbike related if it was to make a radical air-filled motorbike frame, or to.... alright it's nothing to do with bikes but there's quite a bit of knowledge on here so it's worth a shotHTHSomething that impresses me is that inflatable lifeboats, like the RNLI use, have no mechanical fixings holding the boat together. It is all done with glue and fibreglass

I suppose I could add ribs in the middle, these ribs could be fabric rather than solid so it would still collapse fully too? Good idea!How are airbeds done so they're like this in cross section?Is that done by moulding them in a tool?I think it needs to be a tough rubber material rather than plastic because it needs to be resiliant to tearing from stray objects and scuffing when it's dragged on the floor.The principal requirements are that it can be easily inflated from one point, if one section punctures the others are still ok, and it can be deflated so it's really small - so no rigid parts (other than valves) inside it.I've designed lots of parts before, plastic, sheet metal, castings, extrusions, fibreglass... but I've got no idea with this