Soft Moldable Energy Dissipating Urethane
Introducing Americule Impact Material (AIM™)
Americule’s new impact material, AIM™, is a unique, premium material with great impact reduction capabilities. Unlike other polyurethanes which utilize compression for reducing the energy created upon impact, AIM™ dissipates the energy throughout the molded product–similar to a rock impacting water.
AIM™ absorbs more than half of the force upon impact, making it an ideal candidate to absorb energy and prevent damage, loss or injury to you or your product. This ultra soft solid polyurethane measures in the mid-60s on a Shore OOO Durometer, yet it’s moldable and strong enough to withstand a fastball and a speeding bullet.
AIM™ has great stretch-ability and recovers over time. It was designed and is manufactured in the United States of America entirely of FDA-approved raw materials.
Think of the possibilities. What can Americule Impact Material (AIM™) do for you?
FEATURES
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Energy Dissipation
Absorbs half of force upon impact. -
Withstands Hundreds of Gs
Capable of taking an impact of more than 200 G-Forces -
Molding Shore OOO
Softest moldable urethane in the world -
Elastomeric Memory
Returns to original shape after elongation -
Sheet Stock
AIM™ stock sheets are available to you from Americule in the sizes you need for your application, from 1/4″ through 1″ thick and to 24″x24″ sheets. -
List ItemCustom Molded Shapes
AIM™ can be molded into any shape and size you need to solve your impact problems. Call 800.535.9007 to discuss options about your molded parts.
Reduction of Force
We recently put AIM™ through a series of tests to record the Percentage of Force Reduction in a variety of scenarios. In a certified lab, we fired ballistics and baseballs at various thicknesses of our impact material and measured the dent in the body clay behind it, and we used a special drop tower equipped with an energy measuring sensor.
Ballistic
As the AIM™ itself doesn’t have bullet stopping capabilities, we placed the impact pads behind a Type II soft body armor panel and fired 9mm rounds. National standards require the vest alone allow no more than a 44mm dent in the body clay. Our vest only shots resulted in dents up to 30mm. The dent with a half-inch pad averaged just over 10mm and with a quarter-inch pad it averaged 16.3mm.
Baseball
We compared various thicknesses of AIM™ pads against a leading chest protecting t-shirt with foam inserts that are supposed to protect the wearer’s heart. As these types of products are marketed from youth ballplayers to professionals, we used a canon to accurately hit our mark with 40 mph strikes all the way up to 120 mph strikes. Our AIM™ outperformed the competition significantly, even when using 3/16”. We chose to use body clay as a backstop again, illustrating the amount of damage a body would take upon impact. The heart sits 13mm behind your sternum.
Drop Tower
We’ve seen how AIM™ can dissipate energy and reduce a bowling ball’s bounce and reduce the dent in body clay behind speeding objects, but how much force is actually being eliminated by the impact pad? Using a specifically designed drop tower in a professional lab that drops a guided weight from specific heights, which computes joules, onto a sensor that reads peak force in Newtons, we simulated five force scenarios–a low, medium and high range as well as one that matches the amount of force used to test bicycle helmets and another that matches the force created by a 70 mph baseball. The various thickness of impact pads produced results that ranged from 19-40% reduction.
Americule Impact Material (AIM™):
Please review our TECHNICAL DATA PAGE for more specific product information.
For product safety specifications, please download the AIM™ SAFETY DATA SHEET.
We are looking forward to working with you to create profitable solutions to your impact absorption issues!
Please CONTACT US today with your custom requirements! Or call 800.535.9007 for pricing.
