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How to transition your bump helmets to higher-performing composite materials

How to transition your bump helmets to higher-performing composite materials

Durable, reliable bump helmets are crucial for ensuring personnel safety. Your bump helmets should be lightweight, offering wearers the maximum comfort and flexibility, while ensuring comprehensive protective coverage.

Traditionally, bump helmets have been made of plastic or metallics. While bump helmets made of composite materials offer significant advantages, composite bump helmets have been cost-prohibitive for many industries. However, advances in material technology and manufacturing automation have brought the cost of bump helmets made from composite materials down significantly. Composite material bump helmets are now cost competitive with bump helmets made from traditional materials.

But why are composite materials the best choice for bump helmets? In this article, we’ll discuss the advantages of thermoplastic composites for protective gear, and explain how to transition your bump helmets to composite materials
 

Advantages of thermoplastic composite bump helmets

At Re:Build Oribi Composites, we’ve revolutionized the thermoplastic composite manufacturing process to be able to mass-produce thermoplastics at a cost competitive with traditional materials–which means thermoplastics are poised to disrupt bump helmets and many other protective equipment industries.

In mission-critical environments, it is vital that every part performs to its highest potential to ensure personal safety, equipment reliability, and operational success. Thermoplastic composites offer significant end-user benefits and are increasingly being adopted by the military and first responders to provide substantial weight savings, reduced part cost, and higher performance in demanding environments.

Benefits of thermoplastic composites for bump helmets include:

• Toughness: Thermoplastic composites are inherently tough and durable to protect what matters in the most demanding applications.
• Lightweight: Reducing part weight, while maintaining performance, reduces user fatigue, increases range of operation, mobility, and capacity for carrying essential equipment.
• Thermal stability: Designed to perform in extreme environments, thermoplastic composites are thermally stable, ensuring performance across a wide range of temperatures.
• Non-corrosive: Thermoplastic composites deliver outstanding solvent resistance, including fuel and hydraulic fluids, reducing infield maintenance, and increasing part life and reliability.

How to transition your bump helmets to higher-performing composite materials to thermoplastic composites

Considering transitioning from traditional materials to thermoplastics? There are four main steps:

1. Select the right manufacturing partner

Before you begin your transition to composite materials, you’ll need to identify the right thermoplastic composite parts manufacturing partner. There are several key elements to consider when making this decision:

• Do they have experience with high volume composite part manufacturing? Do they have the robust processes and capacity to fulfill the size of your order in a timely manner
• How automated are their manufacturing processes? If they don’t use automation effectively, their time and labor costs are likely higher than they need to be.
• Do they use thermoset or thermoplastic composite materials? There are advantages and disadvantages to each–check out our page to learn more.
• Do they have experience specifically with bump helmets and protective gear? More so than other industries, protective gear requires extensive testing and comfort fits, so make sure your manufacturing partner has industry-specific expertise.
• Do they offer customization options? You want a manufacturing partner with an in-house engineering team that will work with you and tailor the product to your exact specifications.

1. Select the right materials

Selecting the right materials is crucial for optimal performance. Carbon fiber composites are widely recognized for their high strength-to-weight ratio, making them an excellent choice for bump helmets. In some cases, you may want to consider hybrid materials that combine carbon fiber with other fibers like Kevlar or glass. Your manufacturing partner can help you determine the best materials for your specific project and specs.

1. Optimize your design

Composite materials not only deliver higher performance, but they also allow designers and manufacturers to create part designs that were not possible with traditional materials. If you’re considering transitioning, meet with a composite part manufacturing expert to determine how to optimize your part design for thermoplastics.

1. Prototype and test

Any application where personal safety is at stake requires extensive and robust product testing. Start by creating a prototype with your selected material and composite-optimized design. Then test that prototype extensively, for impact resistance, abrasion resistance, comfort, and more. Use the results of those tests to refine and further optimize the design and manufacturing of your helmets.

Ready to get started?

The team at Re:Build Oribi Composites has extensive experience with thermoplastic composite bump helmet manufacturing, and we’d love to work with you to revolutionize your processes and performance. Contact us today to get started!

How much does it cost to manufacture carbon fiber composite parts?

How much does it cost to manufacture carbon fiber composite parts?

For decades, traditional materials such as metals and plastics have been the go-to materials for part production in industries ranging from aerospace to sporting goods to transportation. While parts made of composite materials such as carbon fiber have significant advantages over parts made from traditional materials, up until now they have been prohibitively expensive for many industries. That is all changing due to advances in materials, manufacturing technology, and automation. The result is that composite carbon fiber parts are now cost competitive with traditional materials.

This article will explain the advantages of carbon fiber composite parts, the factors that drive their costs, and how to determine the price of manufacturing composite parts.

Advantages of carbon fiber composite parts

• Toughness: Thermoplastic carbon fiber composite parts are extremely tough and more durable than traditional materials. 
• Lightweight: Carbon fiber composites are 70% lighter than steel, 40% lighter than aluminum, and 15% lighter than fiberglass composites. Carbon fibers are very light, rigid, and strong, making them ideally suited for weight-critical performance products and parts.
• Corrosion resistance: Carbon fiber composites perform very well in acidic or corrosive environments.
• High modulus of elasticity: Carbon fiber has a high modulus of elasticity, which means it is very stiff in relation to its weight. This makes it ideal for applications where rigidity is important, such as in the frames of high-performance bicycles.
• Thermal conductivity: Carbon fiber composites have high thermal conductivity, which means they can dissipate heat effectively. This property can be beneficial in applications such as electronic devices.
• Fatigue resistance: Carbon fiber composites have excellent fatigue resistance properties compared to most metals, making them suitable for applications where the material is subjected to frequent and cyclic loading.
• Design flexibility: Carbon fiber composites can be molded into complex shapes and configurations, providing high design flexibility. This allows for innovative designs and optimization for specific use cases.
• X-Ray and radiation transparency: Carbon fiber composites are transparent to X-rays and other forms of radiation, making them useful in medical and scientific applications where imaging is required.
• Coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE): The CTE of a composite determines the change in material size in relation to a change in temperature. Carbon fiber composites have a negative CTE, meaning they will expand slightly when the temperature lowers. This effect is offset by the positive CTE of the plastic, resulting in a near-zero CTE for the part as a whole.

The cost of carbon fiber composites is decreasing

For decades, carbon fiber composite parts were considered prohibitively expensive to manufacture in most industries. Thanks to technological innovations pioneered by Re:Build Oribi Composites; however, the cost has decreased significantly in recent years. New advances in manufacturing technology have radically reduced labor cost, and Re:Build Oribi Composites’ groundbreaking automation has allowed us to mass-produce carbon fiber composites priced competitively with traditional materials.

Factors that determine carbon fiber manufacturing costs

There are a variety of factors that will contribute to the overall cost of your carbon fiber composite parts. These include:

• Design complexity: Parts with intricate or complex designs are more difficult to mass produce, leading to higher manufacturing costs.
• Volume: The number of parts produced can significantly affect cost. Larger production runs can spread the fixed costs of mold creation and setup over more parts, reducing the cost per part.
• Material: The price of carbon fiber materials fluctuates based on market conditions. Additionally, different types of carbon fiber and resin can vary in price. The binding polymer can be epoxy, polyester, vinyl ester, nylon, or a variety of other thermoset and thermoplastic polymers, which also influences the final cost. In some applications, additives like silica, rubber, or carbon nanotubes are added to the binding matrix as well.
• Labor: Carbon fiber manufacturing can be labor-intensive, especially for parts with a more complex design. Oribi’s automation innovations have significantly decreased labor costs over the last several years.
• Finish option: Carbon fiber is commonly identified by the traditional “weave” look of woven cloth. Several coatings/finish options are available for carbon fiber composite parts that require a certain surface quality or aesthetic.
• Quality control: Especially for high-impact industries or parts that are used in high-risk environments, quality control is extremely important and may affect your manufacturing cost.

How to determine carbon fiber composite manufacturing costs

Start by using our free part cost estimator tool – simply upload your part drawing (or enter measurements manually), and the tool will immediately generate an estimated price. If you have more in-depth questions, reach out to our expert team and we’ll help you find the best (and most cost-effective) way to manufacture a part to meet your needs.

How Sporting Goods Companies Can Gain a Competitive Edge: Onshoring Composite Solutions

The sporting goods market is incredibly competitive. No matter what specific products you manufacture or what specific sector you operate in, you face intense pressure to differentiate your products from your competitors and keep your customers coming back for more.

But how can companies in the sporting goods industry gain a competitive edge? Before the last few years, the only way to stay cost-competitive was to offshore all manufacturing to low-cost (and often low-quality) companies overseas. This solution, however, can create many problems of its own, especially when it comes to distribution issues, supply chain delays, high setup costs, communication barriers, and more.

Instead of offshoring your manufacturing, there’s a better way for sporting goods companies to gain a competitive edge: creating higher-performing composite solutions and producing them stateside. In this blog post, we’ll explore the advantages of thermoplastic composites for sporting goods products, and how you can leverage domestic production to stay one step ahead of your competitors.

Advantages of thermoplastic composites for sporting goods

Continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites offer significant advantages such as durability and impact performance. The bottom line? Composite manufacturing results in lighter sporting good components with much higher performance at a competitive cost.

Re:Build Oribi’s composite manufacturing solutions can be applied to a wide variety of sporting goods products, including climbing helmets, protective helmets, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, wheels, oars, decks, and more. Thermoplastics are:

• Tough: Thermoplastics are highly durable and resistant to in-service wear and tear, improving the reliability and longevity of your products. This makes thermoplastics especially appropriate for products like hockey and lacrosse sticks.

• Vibration dampening: Thermoplastics provide excellent vibration-dampening properties, leading to better product performance and user experience.

• Lightweight: Lighter structures allow athletes to go faster, further, and longer. Thermoplastics can optimize performance and minimize fatigue.

• Recyclable: Unlike traditional materials, composite solutions are recyclable and contribute to a more sustainable supply chain.

Cost and efficiency of composite manufacturing

Why have sporting goods companies not already adopted thermoplastic composite solutions? Until recently, the technology did not exist for efficient mass production of composites, making them prohibitively expensive for most industries.

Now, however, Re:Build Oribi Composites has mastered the art of high-volume composite sporting goods manufacturing, allowing us to create thermoplastics at a cost that is competitive with traditional materials. Through our innovative and highly automated manufacturing processes, we’ve unlocked the potential to manufacture cost-effective composite sporting goods that radically outperform traditional materials.

Transitioning to domestic production

Re:Build Oribi Composites’ advances in composite technology and manufacturing make it possible to mass-produce composite sporting goods domestically, meaning no more offshore manufacturing. With global turbulence and frequent supply chain disruptions, this means you’ll be better able to deliver excellent solutions to your customers: on time, every time.

And our expert team is here to help: from material selection to production, we tailor our process to meet your needs, without the high prices typically associated with composite manufacturing. We’ve worked with dozens of sporting goods companies to transform their product offerings and smoothly transition production back to the United States.

To learn more, get in touch today!