Helmet
One of the world's leading suppliers of high-performance plastic compounds, powders and resins has put its expertise to good use on the sports field, potentially revolutionising that icon of the British summertime - the cricket helmet.
A. Schulman in partnership with its Perrite division has announced its successful development of a PC/ABS compound that can replace fibre glass in professional cricket headgear. Perrite's Ronfalin C PC/ABS is the first thermoplastic material with the capacity to replace fibre glass in sporting applications and has been used in stead of the glass fibre in the shell of the professional Masuri cricket helmets.
BM Injection - the British tooling, manufacturing and CAD/CAM specialist - was provided not only with the material for the helmet's shell, but the glass-filled polyamide for its rim by A. Schulman to bring the finished product together after the Hampshire-based business was approached by professional cricket helmet manufacturer Masuri to develop the "next generation helmet".
Tim Combes, General Manager of BM Injection, said: "Masuri wanted the new helmet to use the principals of their proven double skin, fibre glass and polyurethane foam sandwich construction. We contacted Perrite, our long-term supplier of engineered materials, knowing that their technical teams could propose the right material to meet these challenging requirements."
Heinrich Lingnau, Vice-President and General Manager, EMEA, A. Schulman, added: "One of Masuri's wishes was to design a helmet which would exploit the impact and shock absorbing properties of our C PC/ABS material to produce a light weight, protective helmet. In fact, each component of the helmet was carefully designed using a material which could guarantee the maximum protection of the players."
Perrite stepped in to help BM Injection achieve the right colour for this ingenious sports product as well.
“This is colour matched to the four colours of the helmet’s cloth layer in navy blue, maroon, dark green and black. Originally, we purchased the nylon in natural and tried to masterbatch ourselves. However, being glass filled nylon, we really struggled to achieve a good consistent colour match of the rim to the cloth,” explained Combes. "We asked Perrite to help us and they now offer a colour compounded glass filled nylon grade which has significantly reduced our waste."
The result of the collaborative efforts between A. Schulman, Perrite, BM Injection and Masuri is a product that, according to the users, "looks and feels even better than the original helmet". Owzat!