Why OBO chose not to use D3O

A little over 7 years ago, a radical new protection polymer called D30 was offered to OBO

A little over 7 years ago, a radical new protection polymer called D30 was offered to OBO. Because we are always trying to improve our products we were excited by the potential of D30 so our designer made a special trip from New Zealand to England to meet with the creators of D30. He returned home with lots of information and some samples which we tested in the purpose built OBO impact lab … The O lab.

Our impact lab testing showed that while D3O weighed more than two and half times the OBO polyethylene and EVA foams, it provided significantly less protection when dealing with the high speed and highly localised impact encountered with a hockey ball.

Have a look at the results on the following impact graph (the horizontal axis is speed, the vertical transmitted force)

OBO D30

While we are sure D30 is an excellent material in certain usage situations, on the basis of our laboratory testing results, we decided not to use D30 in our hockey protection products.

If you are really interested in all learning more about this, please drop us a line at info@obo.co.nz

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