DURETHAN RESIN Skates To Success In New Hockey Skate Blade Holder

A manufacturer of hockey skate components has something to crow about since it shot and scored with an impact-modified Durethan polyamide 6 resin from Bayer Corporation. Almanac Marketing Services' new Crow Blade* can be found on the skates of more than 300 professional hockey players worldwide.

The Crow Blade consists of a custom alloy steel blade - also known as a runner - and a nylon blade holder that connects the blade to the skate boot. After evaluating numerous materials that included high-impact polypropylene, nylon resin from DuPont and a urethane-based polymer, Almanac Marketing Services selected Bayer's Durethan BC 402 resin for the blade holder.

A skate's blade holder really takes a pounding, and any material we selected had to stand up to things like cold hockey pucks traveling at 115 m.p.h. or a slashing from another player's blades, said Terry Rowland, Vice President for Almanac Marketing Services. We selected the Durethan resin because it gave us everything we needed, such as high impact resistance at low temperatures, stability, consistency and high strength. We believe it's the best material on the market today.

Backing that belief are durability tests performed by Almanac Marketing Services on the Durethan resin. According to Rowland, the Durethan resin would not break, even after Almanac staffers continually beat the blade holder with a five-pound sledgehammer.

Several other skate manufacturers also have found that the Durethan resin outperforms existing materials on the market and have opted to use the Crow Blade over competing products. These companies include Flite, Ferland, Tour, Riedell, Rawlings Hockey and USA Intersport/Eurosport.

The Shooting Process

Almanac Marketing Services provides the Crow Blade for 13 different skate sizes. The blade holders range from six inches long for the smallest to 14-_ inches long for the largest. The runner for each skate size is _ inch longer than the respective holder.

The nylon blade holder, which comes in both black and white, is shaped wider in front and tapers back to the rear. Thickness varies, but the average is about 3/16 inches. The steel runner, which rests in a groove molded into the blade holder, firmly attaches to the holder through the use of two mechanical fasteners that slip through molded-in holes. The tolerances for the blade holder are less than a thousandth of an inch.

Automatic Plastics Inc., molds the blade holders using three different mold bases to make the 13 sizes. Cycle times average 70 seconds.

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About The Author:

Ashton Kapa is a successful author and publisher of http://www./. Find hockey apparel, bags, gloves, gear, sticks, skates, training aids and much more.

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DURETHAN RESIN Skates To Success In New Hockey Skate Blade Holder