Create a helmet. Innovative Helmet Design: Revolutionizing Head Protection in Sports and Beyond

How does the new helmet design by UC Berkeley neurologist Robert Knight improve protection against brain injuries. What are the key features that make this helmet more effective than traditional designs. Why is rotational force a critical factor in preventing traumatic brain injuries.

The Genesis of a Groundbreaking Helmet Design

In the realm of sports and outdoor activities, helmets play a crucial role in safeguarding athletes and enthusiasts from potential head injuries. However, not all helmets on the market today offer comprehensive protection against the complex forces that can lead to traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Enter Dr. Robert Knight, a neurologist from UC Berkeley, who has developed an innovative helmet design that promises to revolutionize head protection across various fields.

With 40 years of experience as an academic researcher and medical doctor, Dr. Knight has witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of head injuries on individuals’ lives and careers. His personal experiences, combined with his professional expertise, led him to create a helmet that addresses the limitations of current designs.

Key Features of the Revolutionary Helmet Design

Dr. Knight’s helmet design incorporates two critical improvements over traditional models:

1. Enhanced padding to better absorb direct impacts
2. An innovative outer shell that rotates to dissipate twisting forces

These features work in tandem to provide superior protection against both linear and rotational forces, which are equally dangerous to the brain.

Why Rotational Forces Matter

While many people focus on concussions resulting from direct impacts, Dr. Knight emphasizes that rotational forces can be just as harmful, if not more so. These twisting motions can tear brain fibers, leading to severe damage. The innovative outer shell of the new helmet design specifically addresses this issue by allowing for controlled rotation upon impact.

BrainGuard: From Concept to Prototype

To bring his vision to life, Dr. Knight founded BrainGuard, a company dedicated to developing and promoting this new helmet technology. Over the past eight years, the BrainGuard team has produced prototype helmets for various sports and activities, including:

• Football
• Hockey
• Baseball
• Cycling
• Motorcycling
• Snow sports

The versatility of the design allows it to be adapted for multiple uses, potentially benefiting not only athletes but also police officers, soldiers, and construction workers.

Real-World Testing and Feedback

The promising nature of Dr. Knight’s helmet design has not gone unnoticed in the sports world. Tim Feaster, UC Berkeley’s head football equipment manager, has had the opportunity to examine and test the prototype. His reaction was overwhelmingly positive, describing the technology as “incredibly fascinating” and unlike anything he had seen before.

Feaster’s experience with the helmet extends beyond personal testing. He has also facilitated trials with Cal football players, who responded favorably to the new design. This real-world feedback from athletes and equipment professionals provides valuable insight into the helmet’s potential impact on the sports industry.

Balancing Safety and Aesthetics

One challenge in introducing new helmet designs is the balance between safety features and aesthetic appeal. Feaster noted that players often prioritize the look of a helmet over its protective capabilities. However, he expressed confidence in the BrainGuard design, stating that he would “absolutely” offer it to his team once it receives proper certification.

The Global Impact of Traumatic Brain Injuries

Dr. Knight’s motivation for developing this innovative helmet design stems from the alarming statistics surrounding traumatic brain injuries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2014 alone:

• 2.9 million Americans were affected by TBI
• 288,000 TBI-related hospitalizations occurred
• 57,000 deaths were attributed to TBI

Even more concerning is the World Health Organization’s projection that TBI will become the leading cause of death and disability worldwide in the near future. These statistics underscore the urgent need for improved protective equipment across various sectors.

Expanding Beyond Sports: Potential Applications

While the initial focus of BrainGuard has been on sports helmets, the technology’s potential extends far beyond the athletic field. The company is actively developing prototypes for various industries and activities, including:

• Military applications
• Firefighting equipment
• Construction safety gear

This broader approach reflects Dr. Knight’s vision of improving quality of life by reducing the incidence and severity of traumatic brain injuries across all sectors of society.

The Science Behind Brain Protection

To fully appreciate the significance of Dr. Knight’s helmet design, it’s essential to understand the mechanisms of brain injury. When the head experiences a sudden impact or rotation, the brain can collide with the inside of the skull or undergo shearing forces that damage its delicate structures.

Linear vs. Rotational Forces

Traditional helmets have primarily focused on protecting against linear forces – direct impacts that can cause concussions. However, rotational forces, which cause the brain to twist within the skull, can be equally if not more damaging. These forces can lead to tearing of brain fibers and diffuse axonal injury, a severe form of brain trauma.

Dr. Knight’s design addresses both types of forces:

• The enhanced padding absorbs linear impacts
• The rotating outer shell mitigates rotational forces

The Vulnerability of Young Athletes

One crucial aspect of Dr. Knight’s research is the recognition that young athletes, particularly those in high school, are especially vulnerable to rotational injuries. Unlike professional athletes who may have developed stronger neck muscles, adolescents lack this natural protection against twisting forces.

This understanding has informed the design process, ensuring that the helmet provides adequate protection for athletes of all ages and skill levels.

Challenges in Helmet Adoption and Certification

Despite the promising nature of Dr. Knight’s helmet design, several challenges must be overcome before it can be widely adopted:

1. Certification: The helmet must meet rigorous safety standards set by various governing bodies.
2. Manufacturing scalability: Producing the helmet on a large scale while maintaining quality and affordability.
3. Athlete and team acceptance: Overcoming resistance to change and aesthetic preferences.
4. Education: Informing athletes, coaches, and parents about the importance of advanced protection against rotational forces.

Addressing these challenges will be crucial for BrainGuard as they move forward with commercialization efforts.

The Future of Head Protection Technology

Dr. Knight’s innovative helmet design represents a significant step forward in the field of head protection. As research continues and technology advances, we can expect to see further developments in this area. Some potential future directions include:

• Integration of smart sensors to detect and record impact forces
• Customizable helmet designs tailored to individual head shapes and sport-specific needs
• Development of even lighter and more durable materials for helmet construction
• Incorporation of augmented reality displays for enhanced situational awareness

These advancements could further revolutionize not only sports safety but also protective equipment in various high-risk professions.

Collaborative Research and Development

The success of Dr. Knight’s helmet design highlights the importance of collaboration between neuroscientists, engineers, and sports professionals. As research in this field progresses, we can expect to see more interdisciplinary approaches to solving the complex problem of traumatic brain injuries.

Universities, sports organizations, and private companies may increasingly partner to develop and test new protective technologies. This collaborative approach could accelerate innovation and lead to more rapid improvements in head protection across various industries.

The Broader Impact on Public Health

While the initial focus of Dr. Knight’s work has been on sports-related head injuries, the potential impact of this technology extends far beyond the athletic field. Improved helmet designs could have significant implications for public health, including:

• Reduction in healthcare costs associated with treating TBI
• Decreased long-term disability rates from head injuries
• Improved safety in high-risk occupations such as construction and emergency services
• Enhanced protection for recreational activities like cycling and skateboarding

By addressing the global challenge of traumatic brain injuries, innovations like Dr. Knight’s helmet design have the potential to save lives and improve quality of life for millions of people worldwide.

Changing Attitudes Towards Head Protection

As awareness of the dangers of TBI grows and new technologies emerge, we may see a shift in cultural attitudes towards head protection. Sports leagues, schools, and workplaces may implement stricter safety protocols and require the use of advanced protective equipment.

This cultural shift could lead to a greater emphasis on prevention rather than treatment, potentially reducing the incidence of TBI and its associated long-term consequences.

Economic Implications of Advanced Helmet Technology

The development and adoption of innovative helmet designs like Dr. Knight’s could have significant economic implications:

1. Market disruption: Established helmet manufacturers may need to adapt or risk losing market share to new, technologically advanced competitors.
2. Job creation: The growth of companies like BrainGuard could lead to new employment opportunities in research, engineering, and manufacturing.
3. Insurance industry impact: Improved head protection may lead to changes in insurance policies and premiums for high-risk activities and professions.
4. Healthcare savings: Reduction in TBI incidence could result in substantial savings for healthcare systems and individuals.

These economic factors may play a crucial role in driving further innovation and adoption of advanced helmet technologies.

Potential for Technology Transfer

The principles behind Dr. Knight’s helmet design could potentially be applied to other areas of safety equipment and protective gear. For example:

• Automotive safety: Incorporating similar rotational absorption technology into car headrests or airbags
• Fall protection: Developing advanced hardhats for construction and industrial workers
• Personal protective equipment: Enhancing body armor for law enforcement and military personnel

This potential for technology transfer could lead to a wave of innovation across multiple industries, further amplifying the impact of Dr. Knight’s initial research.

Ethical Considerations in Helmet Design and Usage

As advanced helmet technologies like Dr. Knight’s design become more prevalent, several ethical considerations arise:

1. Accessibility: Ensuring that these potentially life-saving technologies are available to all, not just elite athletes or those who can afford them
2. Mandatory usage: Determining whether the use of advanced helmets should be required in certain sports or professions
3. Data privacy: Addressing concerns about the collection and use of impact data if sensors are incorporated into helmet designs
4. Risk perception: Balancing improved protection with the potential for increased risk-taking behavior due to a false sense of invincibility

Addressing these ethical concerns will be crucial as the technology continues to develop and gain wider adoption.

The Role of Education and Awareness

Alongside technological advancements, education and awareness campaigns will play a vital role in reducing the incidence of traumatic brain injuries. Key aspects of these efforts may include:

• Educating athletes, coaches, and parents about the importance of proper helmet use and fit
• Raising awareness about the dangers of rotational forces and the benefits of advanced helmet designs
• Promoting a culture of safety in sports and other high-risk activities
• Providing training on recognizing and responding to potential head injuries

By combining technological innovation with comprehensive education programs, we can work towards a future where traumatic brain injuries are significantly reduced across all sectors of society.

New helmet design can deal with sports’ twists and turns

Helmets are essential for athletes and outdoor adrenaline junkies, but not all helmets on the market today provide good protection. UC Berkeley neurologist Robert Knight came up with an improved design that will help protect all helmet-wearers from forces that twist and snap the head and could damage the brain. (UC Berkeley video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally)

As a neurologist, Robert Knight has seen what happens when the brain crashes around violently inside the skull. And he’s aware of the often tragic consequences.

Throughout his 40 years as an academic researcher and medical doctor, the University of California, Berkeley, professor of psychology and neuroscience has known students and friends whose lives and careers were derailed by head injuries from bicycle and car crashes. He’s held in his hands brains destroyed by accidental blows to the head.

Not surprisingly, he cringes when he imagines his young grandchildren falling off a bike and hitting their heads.

So, Knight invented a better helmet — one with more effective padding to dampen the effects of a direct hit, but more importantly, an innovative outer shell that rotates to absorb twisting forces that today’s helmets don’t protect against.

His design is flexible enough to provide protection for football and hockey players — who receive the most severe and most frequent blows to the head — as well as police, soldiers, snowboarders and anyone who wears a helmet or hard hat. And yes, cyclists, too.

Most people think that a concussion — a bruise to the brain — is the most dangerous type of trauma, but a twisting motion is just as bad, because it can tear brain fibers. While beefy linemen develop strong necks that can withstand a limited amount of torque, children and adolescents — including most high school football players — do not.

“A direct linear impact to the head certainly is not good, but in addition, there are rotational forces that twist the brain. It’s like in boxing, where one roundhouse punch comes in, the head turns, and they are out,” Knight said. “That’s because the brain is just not designed to take rotation; you end up with damage to critical connecting fibers in the brain.”

BrainGuard

Eight years ago, he founded a company, BrainGuard, to develop the new helmet design and attract interest from major helmet manufacturers. So far, he and his four-person team have produced prototype football, hockey, baseball, bike, motorcycle, sports utility and snow-sport helmets.

BrainGuard’s line includes improved helmets for baseball, cycling and hockey in addition to football. The company is developing prototypes for all sports as well as military, firefighting and construction. All incorporate a rotational shock absorber to reduce damage from torques to the head. (Photos courtesy of Robert Knight)

“Because I am a neurologist, I would like to see something out there that improves the quality of life of people by diminishing traumatic brain injury and its resultant effects on the brain and emotional and cognitive and behavioral function,” said Knight, former head of UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. “That is my hope.”

UC Berkeley’s head football equipment manager, Tim Feaster, first tried on the helmet a year ago, when he was assistant equipment manager with the Oakland Raiders, and subsequently helped Knight get it onto the heads of a couple of Cal players, who liked it, Feaster said.

“I think the technology is incredibly fascinating,” he said, adding that he would “absolutely” offer the football helmet to his team once it’s certified. “I have never seen anything like it: an outer shell that moves over the inner shell was intriguing to me. It was so inventive, it made sense the way it moved. I thought they might actually have something here.”

Feaster admitted that a player’s choice of helmet — currently Cal football players can select from more than 15 styles from four manufacturers — is often more about esthetics than safety. And concussion is the main concern.

“But I am all for getting guys to at least try it, if I believe in it,” he said. “Any way that a new technology can at least limit the damage, I am all for it.”

TBI, world’s leading cause of death and disability

Knight quotes startling figures on the extent of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked 2.9 million Americans affected by TBI in 2014, primarily from falls and motor vehicle crashes. While most of the injuries were mild concussions, the total included 288,000 hospitalizations and 57,000 deaths. The World Health Organization estimates that TBI will be the leading cause of death and disability in the world this year.

Robert Knight, who normally studies basic brain functions like memory and treats patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, invented a new type of helmet in order to prevent brain injury from head trauma. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

Yet, these figures don’t account for many sports-related concussions that don’t result in an ER visit but force a player to sit out the rest of the game. The Brain Injury Research Institute estimates there were 135,000 sports-related concussions in individuals ages 5 to 18 between 2001 and 2005. While concussion symptoms — headache, nausea, fatigue, confusion or memory problems, sleep disturbances and mood changes — typically go away, the cumulative effect of repeated mild concussions could be grave.

“Most people think that the inside of the skull is a nice smooth container, like an eggshell, holding the precious brain,” he said. ”It’s not true. The inside of the skull is filled with all kinds of bony ridges that can be quite destructive, similar to if I hit you in the arm, and you get a bruise. But if you bruise the brain, the blood kicks off a cascade of reactions that actually kill brain cells.”

When bruising happens again and again, even without a concussion, a person can get chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition that has sparked controversy over the past decade and was the subject of the 2015 movie Concussion that starred Will Smith.

Especially in football linemen, CTE has led to an epidemic of early dementia, mood alterations and even suicide among retired professional players. In one study of 202 former football players whose brains were donated after death, 3 of 14, or 21% of those who had played only in high school, showed evidence of CTE. Of those who played football in college, 48 of 53, or 91%, had CTE. Of NFL (National Football League) players, 110 of 111 had CTE.

“That is the big gorilla in the room for the NFL and the NHL (National Hockey League),” Knight said.

The brain of a person who died from a brain hemorrhage after head trauma. (Photo courtesy of Robert Knight)

Yet, while contusions and blood clots in the brain are a big problem, equally damaging are the tears that occur when brain fibers are wrenched and twisted.

“The brain operates by one cell sending on its connecting fiber through an axon to signal another cell,” he said. “When you get these complex twisting and rotational forces, you get compression, tension and shearing, and you can actually mechanically damage and tear your connecting fibers.

The best helmets today, including those used by the NFL, include padding that does a decent job absorbing energy from a direct head collision and preventing the full force of the hit from reaching the brain. But they don’t account for hits that snap and rotate the head. The outer shell of Knight’s football helmet is able to rotate about an inch relative to the inside shell, which is strapped to the head; this absorbs the dangerous torque that can cause permanent brain damage. More spherical helmets, like those for bikes and snowboarders, could rotate about an inch and a half, absorbing even more rotational energy, he said.

To allow this helmet rotation, Knight places compact plastic struts between the inner and outer shell. The struts allow the outer shell to slide relative to the inner shell strapped to the head — essentially a rotational shock absorber.

Retrofitting today’s helmets

Knight and BrainGuard CTO Ram Gurumoorthy, who has a Berkeley Ph.D. in engineering, say that their design adds no extra weight or thickness to a football helmet, and that many helmet models today could be retrofitted by adding the new outer shell and struts. The design, which also includes a lighter, carbon-fiber face mask, can be adapted to any sport or recreation: climbing, off-road and all-terrain sports, as well as baseball, lacrosse, rugby and water polo, one of the most dangerous sports for concussions. The same inner shell with an interchangeable outer shell also works for industrial helmets and for firefighter and military helmets.

Knight and his BrainGuard team built a state-of-the-art testing machine to see how their new helmet design withstands direct and glancing blows to the head. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

“The beauty of the helmet is that it is a modular platform, which means the innards — the inside attached to the head — remain the same or quite similar, and the outside shell alone can change, depending on the sport,” Knight said.

BrainGuard’s football helmet passed the mechanical performance requirements as specified in National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment in November, a first step toward offering it to high school, college and professional teams. The company is now setting up a small manufacturing line to produce about 1,000 football helmets — enough to test the design with a few high school and college teams, once the manufactured helmet has been certified — and looking for investor money to pay for injection molds and manufacturing lines for bicycle, motorcycle and snow-sport helmets.

“I want to emphasize that the football helmets on the market today are effective. What we are trying to do is make them more effective,” Knight said.

One standard test of helmets it to drop a weight directly on the helmet to see how it absorbs the force of a direct impact. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

At their company’s garage in an industrial park in Point Richmond, California, Knight and Gurumoorthy have built a state-of-the-art helmet testing machine to compare BrainGuard with commercial helmets. Knight says that the new design is 25 to 50 percent better than any on the market, in terms of damping rotational forces. Their design is particularly effective for frontal hits that contribute to CTE, which starts in the frontal lobe, Knight said.

“Our helmet can reduce the rotational force by up to a half, but you don’t eliminate it. This is not a panacea; we are reducing the influence of blows to the head,” he said.

More effective means of reducing traumatic head injuries would be to ban tackle football for kids under age 13 — many play in the Pop Warner Little Scholars Inc. leagues — and to change the way older players use their heads during practice and play. Unless contact sports are banned, which is unlikely, a better helmet will at least reduce the number of concussions, the damage from repeated subconcussions and the chances of developing CTE.

Knight’s greatest fear is that better helmets would encourage more violent and dangerous behavior.

“I am most worried that if you put out a better force-reduction helmet, people are not going to pay attention to other things they should be doing to reduce force to their heads, like reducing or eliminating helmet-to-helmet contact,” he said. “My dream is that someday, my 8-year-old granddaughter is going to be wearing a bike helmet that is well designed, so the one time she falls off her bike, she is going to get a dramatic decrease in the chance of her getting a serious brain injury.”

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Football helmet prototype earns second-place prize in NFL’s ‘1st and Future’ competition » Liberty News

Ph.D. research fellow Tate Fonville (left) and engineering student assistant William Dean set up a model helmet for testing at the NOCSAE twin-wire drop tower at Liberty’s Center for Engineering Research & Education. (Photos by Ellie Richardson)

>> Note: This story was updated after the Tuesday, Feb. 2 awards presentation.

Dr. Mark Horstemeyer, Dean of Liberty University’s School of Engineering, and his team of Ph.D. research fellows and undergraduate students have developed a football helmet that advanced as one of four finalists in the NFL’s sixth-annual “1st and Future” pitch competition, created to spur innovation in athlete health, safety, and performance. The Liberty work is associated with Genesis Helmets, Inc.

The winners were announced Tuesday, Feb. 2, on the NFL Network, as part of Super Bowl LV Week in Tampa, Fla., with $150,000 in awards and research grants on the line. The Liberty team’s entry in the Innovations to Advance Player Health and Safety category of the competition was named the runner-up prize winner and awarded $25,000, which Horstemeyer said would be used to further develop the project in preparation for the NFL Helmet Challenge this summer. The other three finalists were start-up businesses based in Houston (Go2 Devices/PEEP Performance, LLC), Massachusetts (Nix, Inc.), and New York (Organic Robotics Corporation, the $50,000 grand prize winner).

Using an approach trademarked at Liberty University that he calls “Creationeering,” Horstemeyer has incorporated properties found in nature to design a football helmet that is twice as effective at preventing concussions as those currently used by the NFL.

By analyzing shock absorptive properties found in the rack of a bighorn sheep and the beak of a woodpecker, the team has worked to design a safer helmet — and potentially more protective car bumpers.

Dr. Mark Horstemeyer, dean of Liberty’s School of Engineering, models a prototype of the helmet he and his students have developed and plan to enter into the NFL Helmet Challenge in July.

“I asked God, ‘Why do these rams or American buffalo, when they hit each other hit right on their foreheads, or woodpeckers when they peck, not get headaches or concussions?“ said Horstemeyer, who helped revolutionize safety testing for motor vehicles as chair of Mississippi State University’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS). “God gave me that insight in revelation. He had His way of designing something with this impact-resistant material. They all had the same design, which argues for the same Designer.”

With assistance from Tate Fonville and Paul Savas, two of Liberty’s first engineering Ph.D. students enrolled since the school launched master’s and doctoral programs last spring, the team has developed a shock-wave-mitigating helmet that better protects the brain from concussions and encephalitis, which have ended the careers of many professional football players, resulting in life-altering consequences and, in some cases, death.

Helmets are essential for athletes and outdoor adrenaline junkies, but not all helmets on the market today provide good protection. UC Berkeley neurologist Robert Knight came up with an improved design that will help protect all helmet-wearers from forces that twist and snap the head and could damage the brain. (UC Berkeley video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally)

As a neurologist, Robert Knight has seen what happens when the brain crashes around violently inside the skull. And he’s aware of the often tragic consequences.

Throughout his 40 years as an academic researcher and medical doctor, the University of California, Berkeley, professor of psychology and neuroscience has known students and friends whose lives and careers were derailed by head injuries from bicycle and car crashes. He’s held in his hands brains destroyed by accidental blows to the head.

Not surprisingly, he cringes when he imagines his young grandchildren falling off a bike and hitting their heads.

So, Knight invented a better helmet — one with more effective padding to dampen the effects of a direct hit, but more importantly, an innovative outer shell that rotates to absorb twisting forces that today’s helmets don’t protect against.

His design is flexible enough to provide protection for football and hockey players — who receive the most severe and most frequent blows to the head — as well as police, soldiers, snowboarders and anyone who wears a helmet or hard hat. And yes, cyclists, too.

Most people think that a concussion — a bruise to the brain — is the most dangerous type of trauma, but a twisting motion is just as bad, because it can tear brain fibers. While beefy linemen develop strong necks that can withstand a limited amount of torque, children and adolescents — including most high school football players — do not.

“A direct linear impact to the head certainly is not good, but in addition, there are rotational forces that twist the brain. It’s like in boxing, where one roundhouse punch comes in, the head turns, and they are out,” Knight said. “That’s because the brain is just not designed to take rotation; you end up with damage to critical connecting fibers in the brain.”

BrainGuard

Eight years ago, he founded a company, BrainGuard, to develop the new helmet design and attract interest from major helmet manufacturers. So far, he and his four-person team have produced prototype football, hockey, baseball, bike, motorcycle, sports utility and snow-sport helmets.

BrainGuard’s line includes improved helmets for baseball, cycling and hockey in addition to football. The company is developing prototypes for all sports as well as military, firefighting and construction. All incorporate a rotational shock absorber to reduce damage from torques to the head. (Photos courtesy of Robert Knight)

“Because I am a neurologist, I would like to see something out there that improves the quality of life of people by diminishing traumatic brain injury and its resultant effects on the brain and emotional and cognitive and behavioral function,” said Knight, former head of UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. “That is my hope.”

UC Berkeley’s head football equipment manager, Tim Feaster, first tried on the helmet a year ago, when he was assistant equipment manager with the Oakland Raiders, and subsequently helped Knight get it onto the heads of a couple of Cal players, who liked it, Feaster said.

“I think the technology is incredibly fascinating,” he said, adding that he would “absolutely” offer the football helmet to his team once it’s certified. “I have never seen anything like it: an outer shell that moves over the inner shell was intriguing to me. It was so inventive, it made sense the way it moved. I thought they might actually have something here.”

Feaster admitted that a player’s choice of helmet — currently Cal football players can select from more than 15 styles from four manufacturers — is often more about esthetics than safety. And concussion is the main concern.

“But I am all for getting guys to at least try it, if I believe in it,” he said. “Any way that a new technology can at least limit the damage, I am all for it.”

TBI, world’s leading cause of death and disability

Knight quotes startling figures on the extent of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked 2.9 million Americans affected by TBI in 2014, primarily from falls and motor vehicle crashes. While most of the injuries were mild concussions, the total included 288,000 hospitalizations and 57,000 deaths. The World Health Organization estimates that TBI will be the leading cause of death and disability in the world this year.

Robert Knight, who normally studies basic brain functions like memory and treats patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, invented a new type of helmet in order to prevent brain injury from head trauma. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

Yet, these figures don’t account for many sports-related concussions that don’t result in an ER visit but force a player to sit out the rest of the game. The Brain Injury Research Institute estimates there were 135,000 sports-related concussions in individuals ages 5 to 18 between 2001 and 2005. While concussion symptoms — headache, nausea, fatigue, confusion or memory problems, sleep disturbances and mood changes — typically go away, the cumulative effect of repeated mild concussions could be grave.

“Most people think that the inside of the skull is a nice smooth container, like an eggshell, holding the precious brain,” he said. ”It’s not true. The inside of the skull is filled with all kinds of bony ridges that can be quite destructive, similar to if I hit you in the arm, and you get a bruise. But if you bruise the brain, the blood kicks off a cascade of reactions that actually kill brain cells.”

When bruising happens again and again, even without a concussion, a person can get chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition that has sparked controversy over the past decade and was the subject of the 2015 movie Concussion that starred Will Smith.

Especially in football linemen, CTE has led to an epidemic of early dementia, mood alterations and even suicide among retired professional players. In one study of 202 former football players whose brains were donated after death, 3 of 14, or 21% of those who had played only in high school, showed evidence of CTE. Of those who played football in college, 48 of 53, or 91%, had CTE. Of NFL (National Football League) players, 110 of 111 had CTE.

“That is the big gorilla in the room for the NFL and the NHL (National Hockey League),” Knight said.

The brain of a person who died from a brain hemorrhage after head trauma. (Photo courtesy of Robert Knight)

Yet, while contusions and blood clots in the brain are a big problem, equally damaging are the tears that occur when brain fibers are wrenched and twisted.

“The brain operates by one cell sending on its connecting fiber through an axon to signal another cell,” he said. “When you get these complex twisting and rotational forces, you get compression, tension and shearing, and you can actually mechanically damage and tear your connecting fibers.

The best helmets today, including those used by the NFL, include padding that does a decent job absorbing energy from a direct head collision and preventing the full force of the hit from reaching the brain. But they don’t account for hits that snap and rotate the head. The outer shell of Knight’s football helmet is able to rotate about an inch relative to the inside shell, which is strapped to the head; this absorbs the dangerous torque that can cause permanent brain damage. More spherical helmets, like those for bikes and snowboarders, could rotate about an inch and a half, absorbing even more rotational energy, he said.

To allow this helmet rotation, Knight places compact plastic struts between the inner and outer shell. The struts allow the outer shell to slide relative to the inner shell strapped to the head — essentially a rotational shock absorber.

Retrofitting today’s helmets

Knight and BrainGuard CTO Ram Gurumoorthy, who has a Berkeley Ph.D. in engineering, say that their design adds no extra weight or thickness to a football helmet, and that many helmet models today could be retrofitted by adding the new outer shell and struts. The design, which also includes a lighter, carbon-fiber face mask, can be adapted to any sport or recreation: climbing, off-road and all-terrain sports, as well as baseball, lacrosse, rugby and water polo, one of the most dangerous sports for concussions. The same inner shell with an interchangeable outer shell also works for industrial helmets and for firefighter and military helmets.

Knight and his BrainGuard team built a state-of-the-art testing machine to see how their new helmet design withstands direct and glancing blows to the head. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

“The beauty of the helmet is that it is a modular platform, which means the innards — the inside attached to the head — remain the same or quite similar, and the outside shell alone can change, depending on the sport,” Knight said.

BrainGuard’s football helmet passed the mechanical performance requirements as specified in National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment in November, a first step toward offering it to high school, college and professional teams. The company is now setting up a small manufacturing line to produce about 1,000 football helmets — enough to test the design with a few high school and college teams, once the manufactured helmet has been certified — and looking for investor money to pay for injection molds and manufacturing lines for bicycle, motorcycle and snow-sport helmets.

“I want to emphasize that the football helmets on the market today are effective. What we are trying to do is make them more effective,” Knight said.

One standard test of helmets it to drop a weight directly on the helmet to see how it absorbs the force of a direct impact. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

At their company’s garage in an industrial park in Point Richmond, California, Knight and Gurumoorthy have built a state-of-the-art helmet testing machine to compare BrainGuard with commercial helmets. Knight says that the new design is 25 to 50 percent better than any on the market, in terms of damping rotational forces. Their design is particularly effective for frontal hits that contribute to CTE, which starts in the frontal lobe, Knight said.

“Our helmet can reduce the rotational force by up to a half, but you don’t eliminate it. This is not a panacea; we are reducing the influence of blows to the head,” he said.

More effective means of reducing traumatic head injuries would be to ban tackle football for kids under age 13 — many play in the Pop Warner Little Scholars Inc. leagues — and to change the way older players use their heads during practice and play. Unless contact sports are banned, which is unlikely, a better helmet will at least reduce the number of concussions, the damage from repeated subconcussions and the chances of developing CTE.

Knight’s greatest fear is that better helmets would encourage more violent and dangerous behavior.

“I am most worried that if you put out a better force-reduction helmet, people are not going to pay attention to other things they should be doing to reduce force to their heads, like reducing or eliminating helmet-to-helmet contact,” he said. “My dream is that someday, my 8-year-old granddaughter is going to be wearing a bike helmet that is well designed, so the one time she falls off her bike, she is going to get a dramatic decrease in the chance of her getting a serious brain injury.”

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Football helmet prototype earns second-place prize in NFL’s ‘1st and Future’ competition » Liberty News

Ph.D. research fellow Tate Fonville (left) and engineering student assistant William Dean set up a model helmet for testing at the NOCSAE twin-wire drop tower at Liberty’s Center for Engineering Research & Education. (Photos by Ellie Richardson)

>> Note: This story was updated after the Tuesday, Feb. 2 awards presentation.

Dr. Mark Horstemeyer, Dean of Liberty University’s School of Engineering, and his team of Ph.D. research fellows and undergraduate students have developed a football helmet that advanced as one of four finalists in the NFL’s sixth-annual “1st and Future” pitch competition, created to spur innovation in athlete health, safety, and performance. The Liberty work is associated with Genesis Helmets, Inc.

The winners were announced Tuesday, Feb. 2, on the NFL Network, as part of Super Bowl LV Week in Tampa, Fla., with $150,000 in awards and research grants on the line. The Liberty team’s entry in the Innovations to Advance Player Health and Safety category of the competition was named the runner-up prize winner and awarded $25,000, which Horstemeyer said would be used to further develop the project in preparation for the NFL Helmet Challenge this summer. The other three finalists were start-up businesses based in Houston (Go2 Devices/PEEP Performance, LLC), Massachusetts (Nix, Inc.), and New York (Organic Robotics Corporation, the $50,000 grand prize winner).

Using an approach trademarked at Liberty University that he calls “Creationeering,” Horstemeyer has incorporated properties found in nature to design a football helmet that is twice as effective at preventing concussions as those currently used by the NFL.

By analyzing shock absorptive properties found in the rack of a bighorn sheep and the beak of a woodpecker, the team has worked to design a safer helmet — and potentially more protective car bumpers.

Dr. Mark Horstemeyer, dean of Liberty’s School of Engineering, models a prototype of the helmet he and his students have developed and plan to enter into the NFL Helmet Challenge in July.

“I asked God, ‘Why do these rams or American buffalo, when they hit each other hit right on their foreheads, or woodpeckers when they peck, not get headaches or concussions?“ said Horstemeyer, who helped revolutionize safety testing for motor vehicles as chair of Mississippi State University’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS). “God gave me that insight in revelation. He had His way of designing something with this impact-resistant material. They all had the same design, which argues for the same Designer.”

With assistance from Tate Fonville and Paul Savas, two of Liberty’s first engineering Ph.D. students enrolled since the school launched master’s and doctoral programs last spring, the team has developed a shock-wave-mitigating helmet that better protects the brain from concussions and encephalitis, which have ended the careers of many professional football players, resulting in life-altering consequences and, in some cases, death.

Fonville helped launch the helmet performance lab at Liberty’s Center for Engineering Research & Education (CERE), where researchers use two test apparatus — a National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) twin-wire drop tower and a linear impactor — to study the helmets’ safety threshold.

Fonville is currently involved in the optimization of the project, focusing on integrating the facemask and form-fitting polyurethane foam-lined interior into the helmet’s design.

“Our helmet facemask is different in that the geometry was optimized to minimize damage in the brain,” he said. “Our helmet liner is different in that it uses a new proprietary patented auxetic foam that protects a player from a range of impacts, … is superior at impact absorption, and offers longer life than conventional foams.”

Savas, a grandson of Liberty’s founder, Jerry Falwell Sr., is redesigning the helmet’s exterior.

“Our helmet shell is different in that is it very stiff and nearly frictionless to reduce impact exposure duration,” Fonville said.

The Liberty team produced 20 prototypes of the helmet design and sent them to Genesis Helmets, Inc., a manufacturing facility in Florida for testing.

In mid-November, the team produced a first-generation prototype of the Yobel Helmet and tested it against the best in the industry, including the Riddell Speedflex, the No. 1 helmet being used by the NFL and NCAA today. In a front-impact study at 10.9 mph, the Yobel Helmet produced a g-force rating of 50, exactly half of that of the Riddell model’s 100 gs, which is sufficient force to cause a concussion.

“We’re getting close to finalizing the second revision, which should be done in about a month or so,” said Fonville, who is assisted by three undergraduate assistants, engineering students William Dean and Stelwin Brown and mathematics major Rebecca Colpetzer.

They currently are applying their research into Genesis Helmet technology, sending several models tested at CERE to the Tallahassee, Fla.-based company that will manage and assemble them.

“We’re in the investing phase, trying to get backers for our helmet prototype,” Fonville said. “Genesis Helmets has partnered with us to turn our research efforts into a product using the Creationeering model.

Dean and Fonville set up a model of the helmet for testing purposes at the CERE lab.

“We are all Christians who acknowledge God as Creator, taking our inspiration from God and letting Him steer our research projects with the understanding that the products and research will be implemented into a real-world product and real-world business,” he added.

Horstemeyer said the same principles used in the football helmet can also be applied in other sports helmets, ranging from baseball and lacrosse to equestrian and hockey.

“When we put our idea into hockey helmets, we were five times better, not two,” he said. “But for the business sense, the next idea is to make equestrian helmets because nobody likes their baseline now.”

The team also plans to submit an updated version of its helmet design by July 14 into the NFL Helmet Challenge, a $1 million competition to stimulate development of a new helmet that outperforms, based on laboratory testing, all models currently available to NFL players.

Helmet safety: Inside the complicated equipment industry

Illustration by Sinelab

Welcome to the most innovative and complicated corner of the sports world. To a market that’s morphing in ways both impactful and uncertain. To a space that is more focused on safety than ever before . . . and yet, insiders insist, not as safe as some might suggest. Welcome to the football helmet industry, where even the highest executives can sympathize when, say, Antonio Brown is unable to make sense of the changing landscape. Where the CEO of one company says, “I’m not aware of another industry like it.” Where the NFL’s vice president of health and safety policy assesses, yes, there have been gains, “but there’s substantial room for improvement.” Where a qualified outsider—an expert on traumatic brain injuries—scoffs: “I don’t like to talk about helmets, because it’s such a f—– up market.”

SI spoke with 15 people from inside and outside the industry, ranging from helmet manufacturing CEOs to experts with backgrounds in TBIs, bioengineering and neuroscience. And based on that reporting, today’s helmet industry, after a decade defined by outrage over the havoc football has been exposed to wreak on brains, can be summed up by two contradictory observations. The first: There has never been more innovation, leading to advancements in helmets and related technologies, all of it aimed at enhancing player safety. That growth has been spurred by competitive forces, including new entrants into the market; by partnerships with top doctors and scientists in related fields; and by an influx of cash from organizations, including the NFL.

The second: There have never been more unproved, misleading claims about effectiveness in the marketing and selling of these same helmets. (One could argue there was never enough public concern in the past to necessitate such claims.) Of the industry leaders who spoke to SI, 10 agreed that many of the assertions about helmet safety thrown around by today’s manufacturers overstate the supporting science. They believe helmet makers have taken what they see as, essentially, a medical device and peddled it more like a consumer product, often positioning certain models as degrees safer than others without acknowledging that in fact they’re dealing in shades of unsafeness, that football will always be violent. The more passionate experts in that group compare the helmet industry to the sport of football itself, where safety has been and forever will be secondary to what matters most. Profit.

A quick primer: The bulk of all helmets, across all age levels, are manufactured and sold by one of four major companies. Schutt (on one end of the spectrum, founded 101 years ago), Riddell, Xenith and Vicis (on the other end, founded less than a decade ago). The field has dwindled in recent years, mostly due to a shrinking pool of buyers and to concerns over liability, but also because of existing barriers to entry and economies of scale. Any new entrant would need to be comfortable with the public backlash over football-related head injuries; know that each year fewer and fewer people are playing the sport at youth levels; and muster enough capital to confront impediments that have long hindered competition throughout the market.

Why would anyone wade into that morass? 1: Safety. Everyone says this. 1A: Money, of which there has never been more at stake. Models that cost $150 a decade ago now start closer to $350, with high-end versions approaching $1,000. According to a study by 360 Research Reports, the helmet market will grow by $10 million over the next five years, to $150 million, even as participation declines. (A separate study, by BCC Research, has that figure much higher, at $280 million.) And that doesn’t include the selling of the parts that go into helmets—liners and padding and related technologies—all of which can be licensed and sold in other industries to reduce the impact of collisions. In the end, becoming the “safest” provider of helmets and their parts could net any one company hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.

That financial carrot is precisely why so many people working in the field believe that any claims of innovation should undergo more rigorous and scientific scrutiny. “If a company wants to build [helmets] the right way, how do they distinguish themselves from all the noise out there?” asks David Camarillo, an assistant professor of bioengineering who studies brain injuries at Stanford and serves on a board for helmet safety regulations. “And for those who aren’t doing it the right way, where’s the mechanism to rein that in?”

* * *

Toward the back of Vicis’s office in downtown Seattle is a workshop-like space known as the Smash Lab, where a small army of engineers seated nearby tend to wear noise-canceling headphones at their desks while helmets are raised and dropped, again and again, onto the concrete floor. Or are tumbled—crack, crack, crack—in a cement mixer. Or are frozen (recreating Lambeau Field in January) and placed upon a mannequin, whose head is bashed repeatedly with a mechanical arm, all in the name of science.

The cofounder and CEO of Vicis, Dave Marver, knew from the outset that he would have to be forceful in order to break into an industry long in need of a shake-up. Some obstacles he anticipated, such as the mounting evidence that football causes head injuries, leading parents to steer their children toward less violent sports. (The latest data from the National Federation of State High School Associations showed an almost 10% drop in participation over the last decade.) He knew he would have to fight, too, against less demonstrable perceptions, such as the idea that helmets will never prevent concussions. And he knew that when he said all he wanted to do was make football safer, people outside his building would roll their eyes. But other obstacles he never saw coming.

Vicis

Vicis opened shop in 2013. They brought in Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach and the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers as investors, formed an advisory board (including an epidemiologist, a four-star Army general, two neurosurgeons, an NFL team doctor and a mechanical engineer) and built a separate “coalition” of advisers (Seattle QB Russell Wilson, 49ers great Jerry Rice). Even then, it would be four years before a player wore a Vicis helmet in an NFL game. In ’19 the company says 125 players, about 7% of the league, wear its product.

SI spoke to one high-ranking industry insider who summed up the challenges that an upstart helmet company like Vicis faces in breaking into what he calls “one of the most complex and unusual environments one could imagine.” That world, the helmet insider tells SI, and many in the industry agree, is built largely around long-established contractual relationships between helmet companies and teams, universities and organizations. From 1989 through 2013, for instance, the NFL held a sponsorship deal with Riddell, and while players could wear other companies’ helmets, most stuck to the league-affiliated brand. Today, many youth organizations—Pop Warner, USA Football and the American Youth Football Association, among others—still have similar arrangements, some of them exclusive. And that exclusivity can restrict the likes of Vicis from reaching a massive number of middle schools and high schools, where 360 Research Reports suggest 81.9% of all helmets are sold. At conferences and trade shows for these organizations, only exclusive helmet partners can present.

Vicis struggled, too, to break in with equipment managers, who serve as power brokers when it comes to deciding which helmet a team will embrace, at any level. “The relationship between those managers and the big helmet companies is one of the most important and, at times, insidious features of this industry that no one really understands,” says SI’s industry insider, suggesting, too, that “companies’ relationships with these guys can create all sorts of means to influence their decisions.” The insider points out, for instance, that helmet sales reps often have open access to the equipment and locker rooms of the teams they’ve partnered with. In a more regulated world, those reps would pitch instead to team physicians and athletic trainers. (SI ran this general characterization by three equipment managers who currently make helmet decisions for college or pro football teams, and they all agreed, echoing the sentiment articulated by one such team employee: “The equipment manager cartel needs to be broken up.”)

Vicis

SI’s insider found it strange that teams would leave these decisions solely to equipment personnel with no medical or scientific backgrounds, when those same franchises employ neurosurgeons and trainers with educations in science and medicine. Without the expertise to inform decisions about changing helmet providers, many of those managers worry about the potential fallout of veering from an established brand. Imagine the scrutiny if, say, a team’s starting quarterback were to suffer a concussion wearing a newer model.

Bigger picture: Such long-standing relationships with equipment managers position established helmet companies to sell bundled goods and services to teams, upping the scale of business. Such a package might include helmets and helmet reconditioning (a process in which used helmets are retested and recertified following each season), as well as other equipment, such as knee and shoulder pads. And if a company, like Vicis, isn’t positioned to bring in all of those extras, there’s no opportunity for a price break. Capitalism in a nutshell.

“But what,” asks the industry insider, “does any of that have to do with safety?”

* * *

Stefan Duma had a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and was studying how to protect people in car crashes and from IED explosions when he got a call in 2009 from the equipment manager for Virginia Tech’s football team, who wanted Duma to test every helmet on the market. Duma signed up and realized quickly, “Wow, there’s a big difference [between helmets].” And yet, he says, “everything was sold as equal, when that wasn’t the case.”

Over the next two years Duma developed a battery of 120 tests, which he distilled down to a digestible rating for a given helmet, between one and five stars. To kick things off, he bought one of every model on the market. The first time he plugged those helmets into his test, one model failed to even register on the scale, and only one achieved five stars. (For context: Duma tests for, among other things, the lessening of g-forces. And here the five-star helmet cut them below 50 g, whereas the starless helmet was closer to 100 g. A “dramatic” difference.)

Eventually Duma developed similar rating systems for youth football, flag football, hockey and bicycle helmets, and he published his findings in peer-review journals, choosing not to align with any company or product. (The NFL, meanwhile, put his findings on posters and hung them in locker rooms.) His ratings gave helmet makers a system to work within and benchmarks to strive for, and they led to seemingly safer models, including, today, 18 different five-star-rated helmets.

Critics, though, point to the reasonable possibility that a range exists within any star rating. (What if the 18th-best five-star helmet was significantly worse than the best five-star one? Camarillo asks. Wouldn’t consumers want to know the difference?) They also suggest these ratings can be—and are—manipulated to portray a helmet as significantly more safe than what science can verify. With such sizable profits at stake, it’s not surprising to hear rival helmet makers accusing one another of designing products with the purpose of passing such tests—but accuse they do.

Six separate helmet-world insiders point to the same example of a five-star-rated model that was built so large that no football player would ever actually wear it on the field. (One can only guess what sort of marketing goal that would achieve.)

“These tests are really good,” says Marver, but “they can be gamed.” SI’s anonymous insider relays the story of one manufacturer who took a three-star helmet, made a few tweaks in the lab and emerged in two hours with a five-star-worthy model. “It was not less safe, but it wasn’t 40% or 60% better.”

Camarillo points to a test created by the NFL and the NFLPA as today’s best differentiator between helmets—but even there he’s wary. “The first year [that test was around] the fine print said something to the effect of, ‘None of the helmets in the top-performing group have any statistically significant difference,'” he notes. That language has since changed, “but the NFL still [claims some models are] better than others.”

To many on the inside, these safety rankings are emblematic of an industry that aspires to be better, and in most cases is better—but not as much as helmet makers suggest. Which leads to the so-far-insurmountable hurdle scientists in this field continually go back to: While science can verify the reduction of impact forces on a helmet, no scientific study has yet shown that a helmet can reduce impact forces on the brain contained within. Any suggestion otherwise, to use a phrase shared by three experts in the field, requires “creative marketing.”

One helmet manufacturer, for example, claims to have “the most advanced absorption system” for one of its models, which scientists tell SI would be impossible to prove. Another company flat-out declares one of its models “the most advanced helmet in the game.” That model does not top either of the prominent ratings systems.

In the end, says Scott Anderson, COO of the neurotech company SyncThink and the head athletic trainer at Stanford from 2007 to ’17, all helmet producers are “pretty similar. They’re sales and marketing machines, with various forms of science, credibility and backing.”

Count Camarillo among those who think change here has to be drastic—like treating helmets as medical devices and handing over regulation to the Food and Drug Administration. “If the FDA were involved,” he says, “there’s no way they would permit companies to market helmets [the way they do] with the current level of evidence.”

Confusion, at least, is a widely shared sentiment in the field. “I can’t tell what’s safer,” says the expert on traumatic brain injuries. “That’s one thing I’ve accepted.”

* * *

Ultimately, the problems faced by the helmet industry may not be solved by a helmet company at all. It could be that safety hinges on, say, the way a helmet attaches to a head. Tomorrow’s version could look the same, but be safer on the inside, in its parts.

Enter someone like Shawn Springs. Of the “several” concussions he suffered over 13 years as an NFL cornerback, he most vividly remembers the aftermath of the one in Washington, against the Eagles, on a Sunday night in 2004. He describes waking up on the field, barely breathing, teammates standing over him. “I got hit so hard they didn’t even put me on Jacked Up,” he jokes of the old ESPN lowlight reel. “It was bad, man.”

Springs’s experience in the helmet safety field: 13 years as an NFL cornerback.

Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Five years later, out of football, Springs decided he wanted to help make the game safer, and he started by studying the helmet industry. He tried to understand why the technology had changed so little in the previous decades—his father, Ron, had played running back in the NFL from 1979 through ’86 with pretty much the same helmet Shawn did. “Think about how much a Honda Accord has changed in 30 years,” he says. “You wouldn’t even recognize it. Seat belts, air bags, back-up cameras—all better, in the name of safety. These helmets, they look the same.”

The more closely Springs studied the landscape, though, the more disconnect he saw between the scientists who wanted helmet safety and the manner in which helmets were being marketed. Instead, he found the most promising work was happening outside of the industry—in military and auto tech—and being applied back to football equipment. Which is how Springs came to enter a problematic market through a side door, creating not a helmet company but, essentially, a parts company (“applied science,” he says) called Windpact.

Springs hired engineers, scientists and even a Hollywood costume designer who worked on Black Panther and Thor, and eventually Windpact’s products won multiple grants at the NFL’s Tech Challenge contest—a glorified science fair, essentially, backed by tens of millions of dollars in the league’s Head Health Initiative. One of those products, an impact liner system called Crash Cloud that uses restricted air flow and foam in helmets across various sports (as well as in other protective gear), has since been licensed by Schutt for its Air XP Pro Q10 helmet, which retails for $500.

The hope for Springs—and for others in the helmet space but not necessarily in the helmet industry—is that with better ingredients football safety can advance much in the way car safety has, improving as bumper or seat-belt tech moves forward. Bolstered by NFL grants and by deals like the $600,000 Department of Defense contract that Springs recently cut to develop padding for combat helmets, companies like Windpact can innovate from the outside, largely sidestepping a market suffering from conflicting capitalist and medical motivations.

One can imagine, someday, an ideal scenario (or at least something far less messy than the current landscape) where innovations geared toward far-off battlefields or operating rooms are showcased on Sunday afternoons. Where football helmets are regulated with more scrutiny, subject to rigorous clinical trials. Where they’re marketed with claims backed by science.

Where safety is a goal, not a marketing tool.

Cricket Helmet – Lens Studio by Snap Inc.

The Cricket Helmet Template lets users create a customizable cricket helmet. This template is a great starting point to easily feature your own 2D artwork in a Face Lens. It comes with a configurable 3D cricket helmet which you can recolor and decorate with any image you like. 

The template also features Face Mask Effects you can recolor and replace. This guide covers how to customize the cricket helmet and face mask effects, as well as how to import your own custom logo and face mask patterns.

Download

Download the Cricket Helmet Template

Guide

To customize the cricket helmet, select the Cricket Helmet Controller [EDIT_ME] object in the Objects panel and adjust its settings in the Inspector panel. The sections below walk through each of the customizable settings.

Changing the Logo

You can replace the logo on the cricket helmet by changing the Logo Texture property to the texture of your choosing.

The template includes a few example logos you can try out. You can find them in the Resources panel under the “Logos” folder.

To bring in your own image as a logo, select + -> Import Files in the Resources panel. Alternatively, you can drag and drop any image from your computer to the Resources panel.

Adjusting the Logo

You can adjust the logo size using the Logo Size slider.

You can adjust the logo position using the Logo Offset X and Logo Offset Y sliders.

You can also adjust the logo’s appearance by changing the Logo Blend Mode dropdown. Available blend modes are Normal, Screen, and Multiply.

Coloring the Cricket Helmet

You can edit the cricket helmet ‘s color in the Inspector panel by changing the Helmet Cap Color and Helmet Cushions Color properties.

Toggling the Face Paint

You can turn the face paint effect on or off by checking the Show Face Paint checkbox.

Recoloring the Face Paint

You can change the colors used in the face paint by adjusting the Primary Face Paint Color and Secondary Face Paint Color properties in the Inspector panel.

Changing the Face Paint Patterns

You can change the Face Paint pattern by selecting a default pattern from the dropdown labeled Face Paint Pattern.

Creating Custom Face Paint Patterns

You can use your own textures to create a Face Paint pattern by unchecking the box labeled Use Default Pattern.

To bring in your own image as a face paint pattern texture, select + -> Import Files in the Resources panel, or drag and drop any image from your computer to the Resources panel.

You can replace the face paint pattern textures by changing the Primary Face Paint Texture and Secondary Face Paint Texture properties.

Toggling the Cricket Bat Animation

The template include a 2D Animation which can be trigger to play when you open your mouth by default.

You can also change the animation trigger by changing the Animation Trigger dropdown.

You can choose time in seconds before the event can be triggered again by changing the Trigger Disable Time.

Previewing Your Lens

You’re now ready to preview your Face Lens. To preview your Lens in Snapchat, follow the Pairing to Snapchat guide.

Related Guides

Please refer to the guides below for additional information:

Football Helmet Drawing – How To Draw A Football Helmet Step By Step

The football helmet is an essential gear when playing football. It is designed to protect the head of the football player to prevent any form of injuries.

If you love sports and drawing, then you’re in the right place! Learning how to draw the essential sports equipment is the key to drawing much more complex sports drawing.

Who knows? You might be able to draw an entire football field with players passing the ball around soon!

We have created a step-by-step tutorial in how to draw a helmet, summed up in 9 quick and easy steps.

Each instruction comes with an illustration to make the steps a lot easier for you to follow. What’s fun about this tutorial is that it allows you to customize the football helmet as much as you like!

Have fun and use your artistic skills!

Step 1

Start by drawing the body of the football helmet (or what is called the shell).

Draw an irregular circle shape to represent the body or the shell of the helmet.

It is time to add the face mask of the football helmet.

Draw various curved, horizontal, diagonal lines to represent the face mask.

Step 3 — Attach the Holder of the Faceguard at the Bottom Part

This time, we will add the holder of the face mask and the remaining parts of the face mask of our football helmet.

Use curved and diagonal lines to do so.

Step 4 — Finish the Faceguard by Adding More Curved and Diagonal lines

The football helmet is taking shape! It’s time to make it more realistic by adding more details of the football helmet (like helmet outline, face mask mounting clip, and face mask holder).

Use curved and diagonal lines to achieve this.

Step 5 — Complete the Football Helmet by Drawing the Peak and Cheek Pad

This is a continuation of the previous step. Add more details to the football helmet by drawing the outline of the helmet or cheek pad on the left side of the helmet.

Use curved lines to achieve this. Feel free to use the illustration as a guide to make sure you’re doing it right!

Step 6 — Add Another Cheek Pad on the Opposite Side

Repeat the previous step on the opposite side of the football helmet. This forms the cheek pad on the right side of the football helmet.

The football helmet is almost complete—keep going!

Now, we will add more details inside the football helmet.

Add more pads or linings by drawing curved lines to represent these.

In this step, you will start adding customization to the football helmet.

You will add a curved line connecting the backside of the helmet shell and the face mask mounting clip.

Step 9 — Afterwards, Add Any Design You Prefer at the Shell

This is a continuation of Step 8.

We will add a fairly big star shape to further customize the shell of the football helmet.

Now, it’s finally time to make the football helmet come to life by adding various colors!

As you can see in the illustration, we added white, red, and various shades of gray to make the football helmet colorful!

You can opt to color the football helmet according to your favorite football team or create a unique football helmet with customized colors. Either way, we’re sure the colors will turn out beautifully!

Have fun playing with colors and watch as the football helmet ultimately comes to life!

Hopefully, you had fun drawing a football helmet with this step-by-step drawing tutorial. Now that you can draw a football helmet, perhaps you can draw a football player wearing a helmet next?

If you want to draw that, go ahead and check out our tutorial on how to draw a football player.

All of our drawing tutorials are completely free for you to use as references or learning materials.

Don’t forget to keep checking back to continuously enjoy brand-new drawing tutorials as we are regularly updating our “How to Draw” catalog.

Let us know what you would like to draw next and we’ll try to create a drawing tutorial for it!

Completing a football helmet drawing is an achievement, so you should feel proud of yourself for finishing a masterpiece!

Make sure to show off your artwork and share it on our Facebook page and on Pinterest. Don’t be shy! We’re sure it looks awesome!

We would love to see your realistic football helmet drawing!

FAQs – NOCSAE

Following are frequently asked questions and answers concerning NOCSAE policies and procedures, adoption and enforcement of the standards, and issues related to safety and specific sports athletic equipment.

NOCSAE welcomes questions and encourages you to reach out to us directly for additional information. Please email NOCSAE Executive Director, Mike Oliver.

NOCSAE General 

Recertification

Concussion Information 

Commotio Cordis – Protector Performance Standard for Commotio Cordis

Football

(For questions about concussion risks and protection, see previous section.)

Lacrosse

Baseball/Softball

Other Sports

NOCSAE General

What is NOCSAE?

The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment or NOCSAE (pronounced “noxey”) is an independent and nonprofit standards development body with the sole mission to enhance athletic safety through scientific research and the creation of performance standards for athletic equipment. Since its inception in 1969, NOCSAE has been a leading force in the effort to improve athletic equipment, and to reduce injuries through robust standards for athletic equipment.

NOCSAE was originally formed in response to a need for a performance test standard for football helmets. In 1973, the NOCSAE Football Helmet Standard was developed and new helmet models were first tested to this standard in 1974. The first baseball batting helmet standard was published in 1981, and helmet models were tested to this standard beginning in 1983. The baseball standard has since been designated as the baseball/softball batting helmet standard. In 1986 a performance test standard was published for lacrosse helmets and face guards, and in 1987, a standard for football face guards was released.

Today, NOCSAE has 49 performance and test standards for a wide range of sports and continues to investigate other athletic equipment to determine the feasibility or necessity of establishing additional standards. NOCSAE standards are constantly being updated to reflect the latest science, technology and medicine.

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What is NOCSAE’s role?

NOCSAE develops voluntary performance and test standards for athletic equipment that are available for adoption by any athletic regulatory body. Numerous national and international regulatory bodies for sports require NOCSAE standards, including the NFL, NCAA, National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), International Federation of American Football, USA Football, US Lacrosse and the United States Department of Defense Education Activity which oversees and regulates military base athletic programs for the children of military families around the world.

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Who is NOCSAE?

NOCSAE’s board of directors represent a diverse and passionate group of sports and medical professionals that have joined forces for the common goal of reducing sports-related injuries. Serving without compensation, NOCSAE’s board of directors is comprised of representatives from the American College Health Association, American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, American College of Sports Medicine, American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, Athletic Equipment Managers Association, American Football Coaches Association, National Athletic Equipment Reconditioners Association, National Athletic Trainers Association, Sports & Fitness Industry Association. Non-voting members of the board include the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).

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How is NOCSAE funded?

NOCSAE is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization funded primarily through licensing fees it charges to equipment manufacturers that want to have their equipment certified or recertified to NOCSAE standards.

Approximately 75 to 80 percent of all revenue collected from these license fees is reinvested into education and research to advance the science and safety of athletes. Manufacturers and reconditioners are obligated by contract license agreement with NOCSAE to maintain detailed quality control and quality assurance programs which include testing randomly selected helmets during production to make sure they meet the NOCSAE standards.

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How does NOCSAE create and set standards?

NOCSAE standards are created, revised and approved by the NOCSAE Standards Committee, which serves as a consensus body in accordance with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) due process requirements for standards development bodies. The NOCSAE standard is an objective pass/fail standard, not a comparative standard. NOCSAE standards are constantly being updated to reflect the latest science, technology and medicine.

The makeup of the NOCSAE Standards Committee is inclusive of all materially affected interests that may be impacted by its standards. The requires that a balance of interests always be maintained on the Standards Committee, and these requirements prevent any single interest from dominating the Standards Committee or the development, promulgation, or revision of a standard.

NOCSAE invites anyone who may be impacted by a standard to be involved in its development, including those who represent the sports and medical communities, manufacturers, parents and others. Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments, suggestions, objections or other responses to any standards under consideration or existing standards. This openness and invitation to participation in the standards development process complies with ANSI due process guidelines.

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How can I get a copy of a standard?
The current standards and any proposed revisions or modifications are available in the NOCSAE Standards section of our website.

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How are products certified to the NOCSAE standards?

NOCSAE sets performance and test standards for athletic equipment. NOCSAE does not certify or approve athletic equipment. Safety Equipment Institute (SEI) oversees the certification of athletic equipment to NOCSAE standards.

Since 2015, NOCSAE has required third-party certification of compliance with NOCSAE standards. Third-party certification enhances the integrity of all NOCSAE standards, giving athletes confidence that their athletic equipment has been tested by a neutral, independent body to meet the highest performance standards. This is the most stringent and unbiased way to determine standards compliance, as the third party cannot have any connection to manufacturers or products they certify. NOCSAE is the only athletic equipment standards development organization that mandates independent third-party certification of compliance, in accordance with ANSI/ISO 17065 international guidelines. Learn more in the Certification section of our website or at the SEI website: www.seinet.org

Both the manufacturer and SEI as the certifying body have the right, under the NOCSAE standards, to declare a certification void if the certified product is altered after certification and made available for sale. A model is certified in the condition and configuration it is offered for sale to the public. An alteration or addition to that configuration after sale may change the performance characteristics.

Manufacturers seeking to certify their products to NOCSAE standards will need to submit necessary testing fees, product testing samples, product labels, quality program manuals and other required materials to SEI. Manufacturers also will participate in a quality audit and review protocols for responding to customer complaints regarding product performance.

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How are NOCSAE standards enforced?

NOCSAE does not possess a surveillance force to ensure compliance with the standards. The standards are voluntary and are available for adoption by any equipment manufacturer, user group or athletic regulatory body. However, if a firm affixes the NOCSAE seal to its helmets, it accepts the responsibility that all of those helmets meet the appropriate NOCSAE standards. Likewise, it is the responsibility of a reconditioner to recertify that all helmets to which the firm affixes its seal of recertification meet the NOCSAE standard applicable at the time the helmet was originally manufactured. If a helmet with a NOCSAE seal attached is found deficient, notice should be given to the NOCSAE board of directors or to the executive director.

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How can I determine if a product meets the NOCSAE standard?

Look for the NOCSAE logo. The “Meets NOCSAE Standard” logo confirms that a sports equipment product meets the latest science, technology and medicine criteria, providing the best possible protection for that athlete. The logo indicates that compliance with the NOCSAE standard has been independently certified by Safety Equipment Institute (SEI). All athletic equipment products that meet the NOCSAE standard are certified by SEI and a complete list of certified products is available on their website at www.seinet.org.

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Does the NOCSAE logo have to be embossed on equipment such as helmets and face guards?

The NOCSAE standards require that the logos and warnings be “permanent” as that word is defined in document ND001-17m17b:

“Permanent (Label/Marking) – A label, or similar marking, that cannot be readily (1), removed without leaving a trace of its previous existence (2), erased or (3), smudged to the point that it is illegible. If it requires chemical or mechanical means such as the use of solvents, abrasives, grinding, etc., to remove a label or marking, then that label or marking is acceptable.”

Many helmets will have the logos embossed or stamped into the shell, but others may use a permanent label or printing to accomplish the same goal. As long as the label is permanent as defined above, the equipment labeling requirement is satisfied.

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What penalty will be imposed if an athlete is not wearing certified protected equipment mandated by the rules?

For specific rules and requirements regarding athletic equipment used in football, baseball/softball and lacrosse, the respective rules-making groups of the sponsoring organization would be contacted, i.e., the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), etc. There may be some circumstances where the use of non-certified equipment constitutes the use of illegal equipment and could result in player disqualification.

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How do add-on products impact helmets certified to the NOCSAE standard?

Helmets should not be altered. Add-on accessories can change a helmet and interfere with performance in ways unintended by the manufacturer. The helmet’s original padding, fit and components were tested for compliance with the NOCSAE standards, and altering these components may result in a helmet that does not perform as designed, and could increase the risk of injury. A manufacturer can declare a product’s certification to the NOCSAE standard void if its product is altered.

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Can a helmet which bears the NOCSAE seal be altered or repaired without legal ramifications?

A helmet should not be altered. Any change or modification in the configuration of the shell or liner materials from manufacturing specifications could substantially alter the performance of the helmet as a unit, causing a change in helmet performance, and possibly exposing the individual responsible to liability. Individual helmet models are certified in the condition and configuration in which they were manufactured, and any alteration, modification, or change from the manufacturing specifications could affect the model’s performance on the NOCSAE certification test. By following proper installation procedures and using replacement parts which meet or exceed original manufacturer specifications, skilled repair of a football helmet should not affect the integrity of the energy attenuation system. It is suggested that the manufacturer be consulted before any materials are applied to the helmet such as, but not limited to, paint, wax, thinners, solvents, vinyl tape designs, cleaning agents, etc.

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What is NOCSAE’s Severity Index?

NOCSAE’s Severity Index (SI) is a weighted impulse threshold criterion for a general category of significant head injuries based on scientific research and published data. SI is a method for measuring a helmet’s ability to reduce linear head accelerations caused by impact forces to the helmet. SI measurements are obtained from a range of different impact velocities to multiple locations and at various angles and temperatures, and from impacts with varying projectiles and impact surfaces. Test head form size and mass vary with different size helmets to demonstrate performance across all sizes offered in a given model.

The NOCSAE helmet standard uses a pass/fail threshold of 1200 SI to determine whether a helmet meets the standard performance criteria. Each helmet must perform below 1200 SI on every impact location. Helmets that perform below 1200 SI have been shown to reduce skull fracture, TBI, and other significant head and brain injuries. Once the 1200 SI threshold is met, there is no clinically measurable difference in injury risk based on lower SI scores. For example, a value of 450 SI isn’t more likely to reduce injury than 800 SI.

It is impractical for every individual helmet to be tested, so every certified helmet must be part of a comprehensive quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) certification program that applies a 3 standard deviation (SD), or a 0.65 acceptance quality level (AQL) requirement to randomly selected samples that accurately and statistically represent an entire batch or production run of the same model and size. The NOCSAE mandated QA/QC program establishes to a 95% confidence level that 99+% of the untested helmets would meet the standard if every helmet was tested. This level of compliance is the toughest of all helmet QA/QC programs, including military combat helmets and motorcycle helmets tested to federal helmet standards.

There is no single SI number for any single helmet or model. A helmet model in any given size alone may have over 10,000 different SI scores from all samples tested, depending on the number of helmets produced. NOCSAE does not allow SI-related safety claims about one model or brand over another because such claims would be scientifically unfounded and misleading to consumers.

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Why is the Severity Index (SI) threshold 1200? Would a lower SI threshold provide more protection?

Once the 1200 Severity Index (SI) threshold is met, there is no measurable difference in injury risk based on differences in SI scores. The SI value is a pass/fail threshold which is based on a number of scientific studies, but the data does not support using the SI numbers as a ‘sliding scale’, such that lower numbers reduce or prevent more injuries than higher numbers. For example, there is no way to determine whether a reduction of 200 SI units would result in measurable protective improvement in a helmet for all types of potential injuries. For example, it is not accurate to say that a helmet with an overall SI average of 600 is measurably better than a helmet with an overall SI average of 500. Most new and recently reconditioned helmets test far below the threshold, generally averaging in the 600-800 SI range. The ideal SI value for reducing the occurrence of one type of injury at low level hits may not be the same value for a higher impact force.

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What risks do athletes and parents need to understand when it comes to participation in sports, even when using athletic equipment that meets the NOCSAE standard?

Participation in sports requires an acceptance of risk of injury. Parents and players should understand that no helmet can prevent all concussions, and no helmet can protect you from serious brain and/or neck injuries including paralysis or death.

Using properly certified equipment is important in reducing the risk of injury, but it is only one of several steps that athletes and parents must take to reduce injury risk and injury severity. Avoiding unnecessary head contact and following the rules which prohibit dangerous play are all necessary parts of injury prevention. And when an injury does occur, it must be addressed immediately.

Players that experience concussion symptoms including loss of consciousness or memory, dizziness, headache, nausea or confusion, should immediately stop athletic activity and report these symptoms to their coach, athletic trainer and parents. Players should not return to a game or participation in sports until all symptoms are gone and medical clearance has been confirmed. Ignoring this warning may lead to another and more serious or fatal brain injury.

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Why do helmets certified to the NOCSAE standard include a warning label?

The NOCSAE warning label requirement has long been a part of each standard and is intended to warn participants of the limitations of protection. The helmet is designed to provide additional direct protection for the head, but neither football, baseball/softball batting, baseball/softball catcher’s or lacrosse helmets protect a player’s neck.

NOCSAE urges that the warning statement be shared with members of the football, baseball, softball and lacrosse teams and that all coaches alert participants to the potential for injury. The wording of the warning label as set forth in the NOCSAE standard specifies the core information that must be conveyed by the label, but permits a manufacturer to add or supplement the content as it determines necessary.

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Does NOCSAE certify athletic equipment?

NOCSAE sets test and performance standards for athletic equipment, including football helmets. NOCSAE does not certify or approve athletic equipment. Safety Equipment Institute (SEI) oversees the certification of athletic equipment to NOCSAE standards. Third-party certification enhances the integrity of all NOCSAE standards, giving athletes confidence that their athletic equipment has been tested by a neutral, independent body to meet the highest performance standards.

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Recertification

How does the NOCSAE recertification process work?

NOCSAE is the only standards organization that has a provision for recertification. Headgear standards include a requirement that the original manufacturer inform the consumer of the headgear’s eligibility for recertification. If it is re-certifiable then an interval of re-certification must be provided. If it is not re-certifiable then a certification life statement must be provided. This information must appear on the headgear. Recertification must be carried out in accordance with the specific NOCSAE standard applicable to the headgear type by a licensed recertification house. Currently all such entities are members of the National Athletic Equipment Re-conditioners Association. (NAERA)

More information about the recertification and reconditioning process is available on the National Athletic Equipment Reconditioners Association (NAERA) website at http://naera.net/.

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How often does NOCSAE require that helmets be recertified?

NOCSAE recommends that organizations adopt and follow a program of helmet inspection and reconditioning that meets their particular needs. For example, some schools recondition and recertify their football helmets every year, others every two years. But in any case, recertification must take place as called for by the manufacturer.

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How long will helmets stay in certified condition?

Helmets are initially certified as part of the manufacturer’s process. For helmets manufactured after 2017, the life of initial certification is provided as detailed above (see “How does the NOCSAE recertification process work?”) The recertification process cannot extend that interval. For helmets manufactured prior to that date, the interval of required recertification to maintain warranty should be used as guidance. The recertification entity may declare the helmet is recertified for only one year or may follow the original manufacturer’s initial certification life as guidance to extend recertification life to not longer than that period specified by the manufacturer. Helmets prohibited from recertification by the manufacturer cannot be recertified.

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What happens when a helmet no longer meets the standard?

The helmet must not be used. In some cases, the no-longer-certified helmet can be recertified. For example, you have a re-certifiable helmet that must be re-certified every other year. But the helmet is now three years old. It was not used the last year for any number of reasons. You want to recertify the helmet and use it this year. So long as the helmet is presented to a licensed recertification entity and the helmet is not more than ten years from the date of initial certification, then it is eligible for recertification. Note: the ten year interval is set by NAERA and often helmets submitted cannot be recertified for any number of reasons other than age.

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Which reconditioners can recertify previously certified football helmets?

Information about licensed reconditioners is available on the National Athletic Equipment Reconditioners Association (NAERA) website at http://naera.net/.

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Does the NOCSAE standard require the use of specific brand name replacement parts when helmets are reconditioned?

No. The NOCSAE standard is not brand specific. Neither the test nor the performance standard call for any specific brands, materials or designs. The standard speaks only to the performance of the helmet when new, and recertification. The standard does not require the use of original equipment parts, but does require that “all components must function as originally certified” which requires OEM equivalence.

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Concussion Information

What is the helmet’s role in protecting against concussions?

Helmets provide a substantial level of protection for serious head injuries, including concussions, but no helmet can prevent all concussions. Concussions are complex events that involve many variables that have nothing to do with helmets or head protection. Concussions are caused by impacts to the head, neck and other parts of the body that result in the movement of the brain inside the head. Concussions can occur anytime a human body collides with another or with the ground. The reality is that a helmet can’t stop the brain from moving inside the head.

Changing behaviors and attitudes of players, parents and coaches is critical. Proper blocking and tackling techniques reduce the number of hits to the head which will reduce the risk of concussion and other head injuries. This includes reducing exposure by limiting full contact practices. If a concussion has been diagnosed, your child should not return to play until cleared by medically trained experts following return-to-play guidelines.

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Does certification to the NOCSAE standard mean that a helmet prevents concussions?

A helmet certified to a NOCSAE standard provides a substantial level of protection for serious head injuries, including concussions. However, the NOCSAE helmet standard is not a concussion standard, and no helmet can prevent all concussions, even those certified to the NOCSAE standard. Currently there are no helmet standards in existence that are concussion specific. NOCSAE has been and is currently dedicating millions of dollars in concussion specific scientific research to try and identify criteria that could be used in a concussion specific helmet standard.

In 2017, NOCSAE finalized revisions to its existing football helmet standard to limit maximum rotational forces involved in many concussions. Rotational accelerations are thought by the majority of neuroscientists to be more injurious to the brain than linear accelerations. The revised football helmet standard went into effect in November 2018 and represents a critical step forward in addressing concussion risks.

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Can the NOCSAE helmet test results be used to determine which helmet is the best helmet for protecting against concussions?

No. The NOCSAE helmet standard uses a pass/fail threshold of 1200 SI to determine whether a helmet meets the standard performance criteria. A helmet must perform below 1200 SI, by at least three statistical standard deviations in all demanding impact locations. Once the 1200 SI threshold is met, there is no measurable difference in injury risk based on differences in SI scores. For example, a value of 450 SI isn’t more likely to reduce concussion injury than 800 SI.

There is no single SI number for any single helmet or model. A helmet model in any given size alone may have over 10,000 different SI scores from all samples tested, depending on the number of helmets produced. NOCSAE does not allow SI-related safety claims about one model or brand over another because such claims would be scientifically unfounded and misleading to consumers. Regarding concussion protection claims, there is currently no scientific consensus for a concussion or sub-concussive threshold, whether that threshold is SI, accelerations in engineering units or other values. It is a misuse of SI values to make helmet comparisons, particularly when the comparative question is concussion protection.

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How is NOCSAE working to advance concussion research in sports?

Since 1995, NOCSAE has spent more than $10.5 million on concussion research by the foremost experts in sports medicine and science to develop and advance athlete safety. In 2017, NOCSAE finalized revisions to its existing football helmet standard to limit maximum rotational forces involved in many concussions. Rotational accelerations are thought by the majority of neuroscientists to be more injurious to the brain than linear accelerations. The revised football helmet standard that went into effect in November 2018  represents a critical step forward in addressing concussion risks. NOCSAE continues to work to identify criteria that could be used in a concussion-specific helmet standard in the future.

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Commotio Cordis Protector – Performance Standard for Commotio Cordis

What is commotio cordis and how does NOCSAE’s protector performance standard protect against it?

Commotio cordis, a heart rhythm disruption caused by a blow to the chest, is one of the leading causes of sudden cardiac death in athletes. The condition is an episode of ventricular fibrillation induced by a direct blow to the chest over the heart during a specific portion of the heart’s electrical cycle. This can be caused by a direct hit from an object such as a baseball or lacrosse ball, a lacrosse stick or even a collision with another player. The impact doesn’t have to be hard or high velocity. Approximately five to 15 athletes die every year from this event. Most of these deaths are males under the age of 14, many of whom were wearing a form of chest protection when they were hit. Commotio cordis deaths have been recorded in baseball, lacrosse, football, and soccer, as well as in other recreational activities.

In 2017, NOCSAE finalized its chest protector standard for commotio cordis, based on a scientific breakthrough in understanding the cause and prevention of commotio cordis. In conjunction with research efforts by the Louis J. Acompora Memorial Foundation, NOCSAE funded more than $1.1 million in research to discover the precise cause of commotio cordis and then determine how to protect against it. Through a series of NOCSAE funded studies, Dr. Mark Link, M.D., identified the precise cause of commotio cordis, including the critical moment of occurrence in the cardiac cycle. With funding from NOCSAE, research engineers Cynthia Bir, PhD, and Nathan Dau, PhD, at Wayne State University were able to develop a mechanical chest surrogate that mimics the response of the human chest and heart to testing impacts. With the identification of an injury prevention threshold by Dr. Link and laboratory validation of the mechanical chest surrogate, NOCSAE developed the world’s first chest protection standard specific for commotio cordis. Equipment certified to this new standard is expected to significantly reduce the risk of injury and death from commotio cordis. The new standards currently are specific to baseball and lacrosse only, but plans are being developed to include other sports.

Even the best protective equipment cannot prevent all such injuries, so it is important for coaches, parents, players and bystanders to be able to recognize the danger if an athlete is struck in the chest and collapses. Without immediate efforts to resuscitate the victim with an automated external defibrillator (AED), death can occur within just a few minutes. Coaches, parents and athletes who have access to an AED and training in CPR will help prevent tragic outcomes from commotio cordis. When an AED is used within three minutes of a collapse, survival rates are as high as 89 percent.

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Are products currently available that meet the NOCSAE protector performance standard for commotio cordis? Is the standard required by sports governing bodies?

The NOCSAE protector performance standard for commotio cordis applies to baseball and lacrosse and went into effect July 1, 2018. Currently, there are several protectors on the market that meet the standard. For updates on products that meet the standard, visit http://www.seinet.org/search/search.php.

The new standard is a recommendation for manufacturers, but with support from US Lacrosse and the NFHS, NOCSAE is hopeful that compliance with the standard will be part of the rules of play in lacrosse and baseball very soon.

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Football

(For specific questions about concussion risks and protections, see previous section.)

How can I determine if a helmet meets the NOCSAE helmet test standard?

Helmets which meet the NOCSAE standard must bear the seal, “Meets NOCSAE standards” and the logo for that type of helmet. The seal and logo are permanently branded or stamped on the outside rear portion of the helmet.

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How does NOCSAE’s football helmet standard address youth and adult players?

The NOCSAE football helmet standard applies to helmets of all sizes, worn by players of all sizes from youth to adult. The NOCSAE standards utilize variable-mass biofidelic headforms to account for the different sized players. Helmet sizes likely to be worn by players at the youth level are tested on the smallest headform which represents a 10-year-old male in the 50^th percentile of head mass and shape. As helmet sizes get larger, headforms with more mass are used in the testing protocol. The largest headform represents the 95^th percentile adult male for head mass and shape.

NOCSAE has been researching the potential benefits of creating a separate standard for helmets designed for youth. At this time, there is insufficient data to suggest a distinct helmet mass limit for youth or other similar performance changes would provide more injury protection, or would protect against injury risks not already addressed.

As we have for years, NOCSAE continues to prioritize this issue. We are the only standards organization actively pursuing a youth helmet standard through active research grants and contract funding. However, NOCSAE will not develop a standard without solid science from which we can conclude that taking an action such as limiting helmet mass will not present an increased risk of injury or otherwise prohibit the helmet from effectively addressing rotational acceleration-induced injuries.

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What are the most important factors when selecting a football helmet?

NOCSAE recommends that helmets be certified as compliant to the NOCSAE standard, be regularly recertified, and properly fitted to the individual athlete’s head. Helmets are designed for safety and performance based on proper fit ― specifically contact with the head.

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How are football helmets tested?

The NOCSAE helmet testing standards utilize a twin-wire impactor that relies on gravity to accelerate the headform and helmet combination to the required impact speeds. The standard also requires the use of a pneumatic ram impactor to deliver impacts in locations and directions that are not possible with the twin wire system. The NOCSAE headform is a biofidelic and variable-mass headform scientifically instrumented with triaxial accelerometers at the center of gravity to measure headform accelerations in three different directions.

The testing involves mounting a football helmet on an appropriately sized and mass-specific headform. The headform and helmet combination is then dropped at specific velocities onto a steel anvil covered with a ½-inch hard rubber pad. A single helmet test involves 29 impacts at seven different impact locations, including three random impact locations, four lower-velocity impacts, and four impacts at high temperatures. For the pneumatic ram testing, the helmet and headform are mounted onto a linear bearing table and impacted with a pneumatic ram at 19.6 meters per second on six different locations, including one random location. Helmets must meet the standard at all impacts in both testing configurations.

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Are all football helmet sizes tested?

No. It would not be feasible to test all helmet sizes. The most critical sizes are tested in the three or four most common shell sizes used by most equipment manufacturers. These sizes have the least amount of standoff distance between head and shell, and if these shell sizes meet the NOCSAE standard, it is reasonable to assume the other helmet sizes in that particular shell would also pass.

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Does the NFL require that players wear helmets certified to NOCSAE standards?

Yes, the NFL requires players to wear helmets that meet test and performance standards set by NOCSAE. NOCSAE does not certify or approve athletic equipment. Football helmets are certified to NOCSAE standards by Safety Equipment Institute (SEI). Third-party certification enhances the integrity of all NOCSAE standards, giving athletes confidence that their athletic equipment has been tested by a neutral, independent body to meet the highest performance standards.

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Does NOCSAE have a rule that prevents helmets that are 10 years old or older from being worn or recertified to NOCSAE standards?
No. NOCSAE does not have a rule that prevents players in the NFL or any league from wearing football helmets that are more than 10 years old. There is also no NOCSAE rule that prevents football helmets 10 years old or older from being recertified to NOCSAE standards.

The rule that prevents recertification for helmets after 10 years is set by NAERA, the National Athletic Equipment Reconditioners Association. NOCSAE does not participate in the management or administration of NAERA and does not direct or control NAERA policies.

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Lacrosse

How are lacrosse helmets and face masks tested?

Impact by the ball and stick, as well as collision with other players and turf are the hazards which must be guarded against in this sport. Consequently, the helmet is mounted on the appropriate size head model and is subjected to one drop test from 60 inches onto six specified locations plus a random location, at ambient temperature. The side of the helmet is also subjected to a single 60-inch drop immediately after being stored for four hours at 120 degrees F. The front, side, rear and two random locations are struck by the ball at 70 mph at ambient temperature, and the side is struck by the ball at 60 mph, after being stored for four hours at 120 degrees F. Shock measurements are taken by a triaxial accelerometer mounted at the center of gravity of the head model to determine if the helmet meets an established Severity Index tolerance. There is a recertification procedure which involves one drop from 48 inches onto two locations, including front and one rotated position, on a sufficient number of randomly chosen helmets, as well as 100 percent inspection of all helmets. This procedure forms the basis for parts replacement and rejection of helmets adequate to ensure that all helmets leaving the plant will meet the Standard. Face masks are subjected to ball and stick penetration and deflection tests at 55 mph and at ambient temperature. Neither the ball, stick nor mask must touch the face. A stick impact test is also conducted at 40 mph after the helmet and face mask have been stored for four hours at 120 degrees F. Recertification of masks is dependent upon inspection of all masks. Masks must not be distorted more than 1/8 inch from a standard form and attaching straps and hardware must be free of distortion, defect or deterioration upon disassembly. Manufacturers certify and reconditioners recertify that helmets meet the respective performance test standards. NOCSAE does not certify, recertify, approve or disapprove helmets or any other athletic equipment.

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What steps can consumers take to ensure lacrosse balls meet NOCSAE standards?

In March 2018, NOCSAE issued a warning for lacrosse players, coaches and teams to use caution when purchasing lacrosse balls online. NOCSAE is taking aggressive steps to stop the sale of counterfeit lacrosse balls by multiple illegitimate vendors, primarily on the Internet, including working with Amazon, GoDaddy and other online shopping platforms to shut down vendors selling lacrosse balls that have not been certified to the NOCSAE standard. Without proper testing and certification to the NOCSAE standard, these counterfeit lacrosse balls could pose safety risks for players. For example, helmets are tested with balls that meet the standard. Any balls which don’t meet the standard could penetrate the face guard, break the shell, or bottom-out the padding if the ball is too hard, too soft, and/or too small.

Consumers should also be aware that many of the counterfeit lacrosse balls appear to have the proper NOCSAE and Safety Equipment Institute (SEI) logos, but the vendors in question are not registered licensees and the balls fail to meet the NOCSAE standard. Consumers should not rely solely on the presence of on-ball marking to assess whether lacrosse balls meet the NOCSAE standard. To ensure these products have been certified to the NOCSAE standard, NOCSAE recommends checking the name of the manufacturer and the ball model against the certified product list available on the SEI website at www.seinet.org.

How does resurfacing used lacrosse balls affect their certification to a NOCSAE standard?

Resurfacing used lacrosse balls will invalidate the certification to a NOCSAE standard. Balls that have undergone changes that occur during the resurfacing process are in a different condition than they were in when they were initially tested and certified. Such changes can reduce a ball’s weight and circumference, and may change the dynamic performance properties of compression-displacement (C-D), and coefficient of restitution (COR). Any such change will negate the original certification, even if the NOCSAE and SEI logos are still visible. Read more here.

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Baseball/Softball

Does NOCSAE have a standard for protective headgear for fast pitch softball pitchers?

NOCSAE has a headgear standard for defensive players in baseball and softball, which would include the pitcher. This standard, ND029, specifies equipment that would provide only head protection, or head and facial protection. The standard does not include equipment that provides facial protection only.

The exposure of a defensive player, including the pitcher, to serious injury from a batted ball is greater than the exposure of a base runner. Baseball and softball rules of play, almost unanimously, specify that a baserunner must wear a helmet as a minimum level of protection while running the bases. Some leagues and organizations may also require the addition of a face guard, but none permit a baserunner to wear only facial protection. The NOCSAE standard for baseball and softball defensive players follows the same logic.

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Do cheek flap products meet the NOCSAE standard for face protection?

No. Cheek flap products cannot meet the NOCSAE standard for face protection because they do not protect the eyes, nose and mouth.

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Do new helmet models that include a built-in cheek flap meet the NOCSAE standard for face protection?

No. While newer helmet models that include only a built-in cheek flap do meet the NOCSAE standard for head protection, they do not meet the NOCSAE standard for face protection.

It’s important to note the difference between head protection – the helmet; and face protection –the face guard. When purchasing a helmet with a built-in cheek flap, consumers should understand that the “Meets NOCSAE Standard” logo applies to the NOCSAE standard for head protection. The cheek flap is not included in that standard and does not meet the NOCSAE standard for face protection.

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Are products available that meet the NOCSAE standard for face protection?
Yes. Face guard products that meet the NOCSAE standard for face protection are widely available. Currently, 11 different brands sell face guards certified to the NOCSAE standards, not including face guards that are sold as part of a combination helmet/face guard package. The “Meets NOCSAE Standard” logo indicates a face guard meets rigorous safety and quality control criteria and provides protection for the entire face, including the eyes, nose and mouth.

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Why do some youth leagues not allow cheek flaps?
While the policies of youth sports leagues vary with each organization, add-on helmet accessories are often not allowed because they change the original helmet model. The addition of an add-on product from a third-party manufacturer can void the NOCSAE certification, because it creates a new and untested model, as defined by NOCSAE standards. This policy has been a part of NOCSAE standards for many years, applies to all NOCSAE standards, and is typical of certification procedures for other types of personal protection equipment. See, e.g., NIOSH standards for respirators and the use of after-market modifications.

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Other Sports

Does NOCSAE have a hockey helmet standard?

While NOCSAE offers a standard for hockey helmets, it is not the standard chosen by the Hockey Equipment Certification Council (HECC). NOCSAE published its hockey helmet standard in 2002 after its testing indicated that existing standards didn’t require the level of protection NOCSAE’s scientific committee would recommend based on the level of injury exposure in the game. Upon completion, NOCSAE shared its research findings and standard with the HECC for its consideration. None of the hockey helmets on the market today are certified to the NOCSAE standard. It’s important to note that hockey helmets should not be compared directly to helmets designed for football or any other sport. Variations in frequency and types of exposure must be considered.

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How to make a stormtrooper helmet with your own hands

I live in a city with a long pedestrian street, where most of the shops, cafes, etc. are located. This is the most walkable street in our city. I got an idea why not make a First Order Stormtrooper suit from Star Wars for the flyer distribution. And not only for distribution, you can do animations, etc. People themselves will often approach a person in such a suit to take a photo, for example.

First of all, you need to install the Pepakura Designer program and download the sweeps you need.The suit is 176 cm tall, but the stormtrooper suit is universal, because it is composite, it will suit people from 170 to 188, although you can always change the size in the program itself.

The sweep should be printed on paper with a density of 200-220, this is the density of whatman paper. I glued PVA with glue. This is how almost the entire printed and glued suit looks like. Many parts do not yet have spacers.

I started with a helmet, unfortunately I did not immediately start taking a photo, first I glued the helmet, then from the inside I reinforced it with polyester resin and glass mat.In no case should you work with this stinking rubbish at home, even on the balcony, the smell will disappear for a long time. I worked in a garage, I definitely need a respirator and gloves. After I strengthened the helmet, I noticed that it was very bad, I had to cut it out, print it again and paste it.

Next, a few photos after puttying and sanding, I putty putty on wood, it is not toxic.

With the help of cold welding I built up parts that were not in the paper reamer.As a result, I reworked these parts 10 times more. I also corrected the place above the bridge of the nose, in the scan it is not prominent enough.

Halfway to the end of the work, I learned about such a wonderful tool as a template, although it has many other names, I ordered it on Ali. And then a long and hard work began, because I set myself the task of making the helmet as symmetrical as possible.

I found the middle points on the helmet, drew circles with a compass, drew and pushed from them to level the helmet on both sides.

I noticed that many people who made such helmets simply drilled out places for holes. And I wanted to make honeycombs just like in the original helmet. I asked a friend who was engaged in laser cutting of metal, but nothing came of it, the distance between the holes was 0.7 mm, the metal was twisting and moving. An unexpected idea came to my mind, why not cut the self-adhesive on a plotter and glue it in several layers? I went to an advertising agency, I found out that cutting several A4 sheets will cost me almost 500 ye, they take it for the length of the cut, and it was at least 200 m.I remembered that at my previous job there was a plotter and went there, asked the former bosses for the evening. This whole thing was cut for 8 hours.

10 glued layers gave the desired thickness of 1 mm.

Next, the final photos, black paint is a primer. Before priming, the helmet was smoothed with 440 sandpaper.

Next was a plastic molding, for this you need to make a copy of the helmet. All this time I was making a master model.This is done with silicone. I’ll run ahead and say that I made several unsuccessful silicone casts, the final result is after 3 casts, and then it was not successful enough, I had to putty a little, 4 the casting will be the most ideal. Silicone over the helmet.

Glass mat and polyester shell

as a result, it will bend and when filled with plastic, there will be dents on the copy.Only after 3 casts, I learned that there is a paste, it is thick and is used just to create the shell, it perfectly covers the entire area and hardens. It looks like plastic.

The photo shows the result of the last casting. I had to putty a little. How is it filled with plastic? The form is removed from the helmet, inserted into the shell, then two-component liquid plastic is poured into different cups in equal proportions, poured into one, mixed. Then we pour this glass into the helmet and start rotating, the plastic hardens in 15 minutes.This helmet used 860 grams of plastic. Together with painting and interior foam rubber, the helmet weighs approximately 1-1.1 kg.

Then I had the task of making a visor (lens) for a helmet, many cosplayers take a dense transparent cover and glue the car tinting over and paste it into the helmet, it looks good, but I wanted better. I wanted to make a convex glass like in a real helmet. For this, the unsuccessful first casting came in handy, I cut out the part where the eyes are located and with the help of automobile putty, bolts, nuts, I strengthened the bottom so that the form became solid.Then, with the help of cold welding, I began to shape the top.

Plexiglas, 1.5 mm thick, can be easily bent with a construction hair dryer. I made a lens from transparent plexiglass, it was unrealistic to find a black translucent one. I glued the tint, but there were folds in the bending places, even the construction hairdryer did not help. Suddenly, in the car market, I found a black translucent plexiglass, a car deflector is perfect for the lens.

Further painting with an airbrush.My total spending on creating a suit and a helmet today is about 500 ye, this cost includes tools, materials, by the way, I often used cold welding, according to my calculations, 1 kg went away. Silicone and plastic are not cheap. Almost the entire suit is reinforced with polyester and glass mat, but not putty yet. A few final photos. More than 500 hours of work were spent on the helmet.

Further in my plans to finish the whole suit, to remake a helmet from one casting into a helmet of Captain Phasma and finish a helmet of Kylo Ren, the fabric is original as in the movie for sewing a suit, I already found on a foreign website.

Why is so much time wasted? 500 hours is for sure, maybe more, many times I redid the same areas to bring out symmetry, down to 1 mm.

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Armor in Valheim – recipes for crafting helmets, armor, pants and cloaks

Armor is one of the cornerstones of progress in Valheim.Good armor will help you both in clearing the map and in battles with bosses (if you have difficulties with bosses, you can check out our guide on this topic). In this article, we will talk about the creation of all available armor in the game.

Item Guides in Valheim

1. How to Create a Portal in Valheim – Where to Find Greydwarf Eyes, Surtlig Kernels and Quality Wood
2. Armor in Valheim – Recipes for Crafting Helmets, Armor, Pants and Cloaks
3. Recipes in Valheim for crafting bows, arrows, spears, harpoons, bombs, halberds, axes, maces, hammers, swords, knives, and shields
4. How to get the key to the crypt in Valheim.How to open the door to the sunken crypts
5. How to get a lot of bones in Valheim. Where can I find skeletons?
6. How to protect yourself from the cold in Valheim – where to find warm armor and mead?
7. How to make a cart in Valheim and why you need it
8. Where to find trophies and how to hang them on the wall in Valheim
9. How to get a shackle in Valheim and use it to find chests and silver
10. Where to find a dragon egg in Valheim and how them to do
11. Where to find (how to get) the “Draug’s fang” bow in Valheim – characteristics and resources for crafting
12. How to make (where to find) linen thread in Valheim and why you need it

Making armor

To create armor you you will need resources and a workbench.Please note that different recipes require different workbench levels. If you do not know how to improve the workbench, we recommend that you read our guide on this topic.

Improving armor

You can improve the parameters of your armor. To do this, open the update tab on your workbench. The maximum level of improvement is 4.

Blueprints for creating a helmet

The first piece of equipment is a helmet. Its main attribute is armor, it does not have additional protection from cold.

Leather Helmet

• Workbench level: 2.
• Resources for crafting: Deer hide (6 pcs.).

Bronze Helmet

• Workbench level: 1.
• Resources for crafting: bronze (5 pcs.), Deer hide (2 pcs.).

Iron Helmet

• Workbench Tier: 1.
• Crafting Resources: Iron (20 pcs.), deer skin (2 pcs.).

Dragon Helmet

• Workbench Tier: 1.
• Crafting Resources: Silver (20), Wolf Skin (2), Dragon Trophy (2).

Padded Helmet

• Workbench Tier: 1.
• Crafting Resources: Iron (10), Linen Thread (15).

Drawings for creating armor

The second piece of equipment is armor.In addition to armor, some armor can provide additional protection against cold.

Canvas Tunic

• Workbench Tier: 1.
• Crafting Resources: Leather Scraps (5 pcs.).

Leather Tunic

• Workbench level: 2.
• Resources for crafting: Deer hide (6 pcs.).

Bronze Breastplate

• Workbench level: 1.
• Resources for crafting: bronze (5 pcs.), Deer skin (2 pcs.).

Scale Iron Armor

• Workbench Tier: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Iron (20), Deer Hide (2).

Wolf Chestpiece

• Workbench Tier: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Silver (20), Wolf Hide (5), Chain (1).

Studded Breastplate

• Workbench Tier: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Iron (10), Linen Thread (20).

Blueprints for creating greaves

The third piece of equipment is greaves. Like a helmet, they only give an increase to armor, without protection from the cold.

Canvas Pants

• Workbench Tier: 1.
• Crafting Resources: Leather Scraps (5 pcs.).

Leather Pants

• Workbench level: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Deer Hide (6 pcs.).

Bronze Greaves

• Workbench Level: 1.
• Crafting Resources: Bronze (5 pcs.), Deer Hide (2 pcs.).

Iron Greaves

• Workbench Tier: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Iron (20), Deer Hide (2).

Wolf Leg Guard

• Workbench level: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Silver (20), Wolf Hide (5), Wolf Fang (4).

Studded Greaves

• Workbench Tier: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Iron (10), Linen Thread (20).

Drawings for creating cloaks

The final piece of equipment is a cloak. Its main purpose is protection from the cold, it almost does not give armor.

Deer Skin Cloak

• Workbench level: 2.
• Resources for crafting: deer skin (4 pcs.), Bone fragments (5 pcs.).

Linen Cloak

• Workbench level: 2.
• Resources for crafting: Linen thread (20 pcs.), Silver (1 pc.).

Bovine Hide Cloak

• Workbench Tier: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Bovine Hide (6 pcs), Silver (2 pcs).

Wolf Skin Cloak

• Workbench level: 2.
• Crafting Resources: Wolf Hide (6), Silver (4), Wolf Trophy (1).

Troll Skin Armor Set

The key feature of this set is the stealth upgrade. A set of 4 pieces makes you invisible by 25%. But it’s worth noting that its protective performance leaves much to be desired, so be careful.

Troll Skin Helmet

• Workbench Tier: 3.
• Crafting Resources: Troll Skin (5 pcs.), bone fragments (3 pcs.).

Trollskin Tunic

• Workbench level: 3.
• Resources for crafting: Trollskin (5 pcs).

Troll Skin Pants

• Workbench Tier: 3.
• Crafting Resources: Troll Skin (5 pcs).

Troll Skin Cloak

• Workbench Tier: 3.
• Crafting Resources: Troll Skin (10 pcs.), bone fragments (10 pcs.).

Iron Helmet

Iron helmet

Iron Helmet ID: 306.

Iron helmet – English name for iron helmet in Minecraft.

Armor (defense points) –

Durability (amount of damage before breaking, durability) – 166.

Iron helmet in Minecraft is a great option as an element of armor. Although his armor (protection points), of course, is better than a leather helmet, it does not exceed chain and gold helmets in this indicator – 2 (). In terms of strength (166), the iron helmet is second only to the diamond one (364). In view of the fact that iron in Minecraft is easier to get, then in terms of the ratio of ease of production vs protection, iron armor is preferable.

If we consider a full set of armor, then in terms of the number of protection points, iron is also second only to diamond:

And if iron armor is enchanted for durability?

Iron helmets on the player and armor stands.

They will not be forced to do, but they will not be able to eat (proverb).

In order to craft an iron helmet, you need 5 iron ingots. (Ingots are usually smelted in a furnace from iron ore.) The recipe for crafting helmets is the same in all cases, the difference lies in the materials used.

Iron Helmet

To make an iron helmet you need:

With a small chance, an iron helmet can drop from a zombie or skeleton.

An iron helmet can be melted in a furnace to get a piece of iron. Sometimes this opportunity should be used.

To smelt a piece of iron:

Iron Helmet

1 pc.

Recall that nine pieces of iron can then be made into one iron ingot.

A complete set of iron armor, including an iron helmet.

Iron Helmet Reliability

The hammer does not forge iron, the blacksmith forges (proverb).

Obviously, Minecraft helmets made of different materials have different protective properties. The table, just, shows the number of protection points that are added by all helmets made of leather, gold, chain mail, iron and diamonds.

Iron Helmet Strength

When iron is boiling, then it is necessary to cook (proverb).

Consider the amount of damage that a helmet, including an iron one, can withstand before it breaks. It is also more convenient to do this in the table.

Durability in Minecraft is a property that shows how many times an item can be used.For a helmet, this is the amount of damage that it can absorb before collapsing, as well as how much of the damage will fall on it.

What damage does the armor protect against?

It is not fire that burns iron, but fur (proverb).

Armor in Minecraft, of course, can protect the player, but not always. Some types of damage cannot be reduced by armor and do not affect its durability, except for properly enchanted armor elements.

Enchanting armor with a protective enchantment expands the range of damage that armor absorbs. Enchanted armor does not lose durability when receiving damage from the environment.

Armor can have enchant

Rusty iron does not shine, but still iron (proverb).

Armor can receive enchantments. The total protection factor obtained by adding the factors of all the worn parts of the armor is limited to 20.

How difficult it is to get high enchant levels depends on the material:

Comparison of iron helmet

Iron melts in the forge (proverb).

In order to compare all the armor in Minecraft, that is, all the elements of armor, it is more convenient to use the table again. Strength and protection are considered.

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Contents of the article:

Making your helmet unique

Despite the fact that modern equipment manufacturers pay great attention not only to technical characteristics, but also to the styling of the final model, many pilots rework their helmets.Someone is looking for a master, someone orders exclusive films for pasting or chases after rare models from narrow lines, so that only true fans of the brand can admire the uniqueness of the resulting helmet.

The majority of motorcyclists rely on price-quality ratio in the purchase of equipment, not forgetting to combine the purchase with the general appearance.

Painting the helmet – the choice of the driver after light falls, scratches or when it is necessary to update the appearance. Tuning a helmet is a topic no less broad than painting any other element.

Work steps:

• Helmet disassembly
• Cleaning from dirt, removing stickers
• Matte
• Treatment of scratches or other abrasions
• Primer application
• Primer / undercoat
• Painting
• Varnish application

Dismantling the helmet for painting is useful for washing the lining, checking the condition of the visor and cheek attachment mechanisms, ventilation holes.Mechanisms are dismantled, obsolete parts are replaced. The technical openings are closed with masking tape.

Foil will become a convenient material for working with technical details that cannot be painted. It easily takes the desired shape, it is easy to place it in the holes and remove from there. Sometimes, pasting small parts with masking or contour tape leads to a frantic desire to throw the helmet out the window, and poor pasting will certainly affect the result. If you do not seal the holes, dust and paint will accumulate there, after which the ventilation hole will become just a fiction.The corners of the masking tape on the surface will act as a stencil when you are too lazy to remove them

If you do not want or cannot disassemble the helmet, then cover the lining with paper or bags, glue it with masking tape so that dust, dust from soil, paint, varnish does not get on the lining. Although working with a helmet is an ideal excuse to wash the lining.

In matting, integrals, motocross and helmets are light. Anything where the minimum set of moving parts will not create any special problems.

So, when painting a modular, if you do not disassemble it, you risk contamination of the mechanisms.After painting, at the time of development of the same “cheek”, you can get scratches or even torn pieces of paint in the case when you did not notice how the paint-and-varnish layer has united at the joint. Some little things may remain unpainted at all.

When working with the helmet, do not forget about adhesion. ABS plastic or carbon will not accept normal soil without initial treatment.

Airbrush drawings and pinstriping look very original on helmets. Recently, it has become popular to stylize the helmet with additional elements: “cat ears”, “pigtails”, “tails”, “mohawks”.

There are interesting projects in which fans create whole parodies of “alien”, “predator” and other characters from a helmet. This is done with putties, fiberglass, a lot of patience, and on condition of growing arms from the shoulder girdle, not from the hip bone. Laces and all kinds of dreadlocks are woven, suggesting a shocking image. Yes, such devices provide maximum attention, but on the way they become a hindrance. The wind currents mercilessly flutter the pink braids, tear them off and present them to the pilots following the trail.For some reason, they are not always delighted with such souvenirs. In any case, such gadgets are rather whims, a bright addition to the image within the city traffic.

The drawing on the motorcycle and helmet is an associative row of the pilot, a hint of how he sees himself at the wheel.

For adherents of a particular brand, a helmet can express loyalty to it, for example, a BMW helmet.

Also a helmet – a space for ideas among professional racers. After all, how not to place logos, names, nicknames or sponsors and partners on the helmet? Racers are always in the sight of the camera, and no one will miss such an advertising space, so the equipment and plastic of professional motorcyclists are full of combat symbols.

Hence such an increased interest in tuning this type of equipment.

When you work with painting yourself, it is important to consider the insidiousness of the round shape. Many beginners make mistakes in excess of primer, paint or varnish material, which results in extensive smudges. An offensive mistake when you worked on the general appearance for a long time and made a complex multi-layered drawing.

The presence of an airbrush or a thin brush among the materials, which does not fit in all directions after the first stroke, will definitely be a bonus in the work on creating an original image.Supplementing with sketches of light-emitting paints will pleasantly surprise those around you with unexpected effects. In the photo above, the master used such paints that he vividly blended into the concept of the conceived drawing.

And yes, before you paint anything, spend half an hour sketching. Even if you are not a mega artist, but just want to make a couple of stripes of different colors, draw it to understand how your idea looks when it takes physical form, and not imaginary, in which everything is usually too perfect.On the sheet, you may not like the created coloring, and this will save you the trouble of redoing the idea in the process. A well-thought-out, clear idea is always more successful than working on a whim.

How to Make a Pea Helmet »SwordMaster

Early Grand Slam – Pothelm

The presented pattern has been surfing the Internet for a long time. Most pothelms are made according to it. Patterns are recommended to be printed through Photoshop and can be cut. Just do not rush to make a helmet, I recommend making a paper model of a helmet, otherwise it will suddenly turn out to be too big for you.Do not forget that the helmet is worn on a comforter, therefore it is necessary to add 10 cm to head circumference – let’s say your head circumference is 57 cm, then the helmet is made as if the head circumference was 67 cm.

1. Cut out templates from 2 mm steel, except for the back part, which can also be made of metal a little thinner, as it will be necessary to perform flanging.

2. Make a hemispherical shape of the helmet cover on a metal plate, align it.

3. Bend the side plates with a pipe. It is advisable to mark 4 holes for rivets on the side parts, rivet these parts into 2 central rivets (Fig. 1). Docking width is 1.5 cm.

4. The helmet cover can be connected to the side parts by welding, then clean out the outer seam, and if you add semicircular petals to the finished template (Fig. 2). Bend these petals and rivet them “in the sweep” from the inside of the side walls (Fig. 3).

5. Bend the decorative strip using a round blank (fig. 4) and rivet it to the top of the helmet. For better adherence of this bar to the top cover, you can tap it with a fluoroplastic hammer (Fig. 5).

6. Bend the front part of the helmet and knock out a vertical rib on it.

7. It is possible to make an additional decorative overlay to the front part, which will also play additional protection. To do this, connect the front part with the side walls using bolts.Take a piece of paper to attach to the front and draw the templates. The pads are 1.5 cm wide (fig. 6). Rivet these overlays.

8. Flanging on the rear part. Bend the edge on a metal blank (fig. 7) and fit it to the shape of the helmet. Mark and drill holes both on the rear and on the side walls.

9. Assemble the helmet completely on the bolts, and taking out the bolts through one, rivet the helmet with rivets.

10.Bend and fit the bow arrow and rivet it (fig. 8).

11. Attach the liner to the helmet, but this is at the discretion of the manufacturer.

Patterns and making of Topfhelm

This is what the finished product looks like:

Instruction for the production of a knight’s helmet Topfhelm:

1) Cut out the plates, keeping in mind that the frontal and occipital plates are the same and their pattern.
2) Finish the edges and corners of the plates.
3) Form the front and back plates of the top of the helmet and rivet them together, overlap 7-8 mm (3/10 in.) Between them.
4) Drill 5mm (3/16 “) rivet holes according to the pattern.
5) Bend outward into the top cover of the helmet, fold the edges of the cover inward an inch (2.54 cm). This will be the support for attaching the cover to the frontal and occipital plates.
6) Insert the helmet cover from the inside (if necessary, adjust it to fit snugly).Use a felt-tip pen to mark the riveting holes through the holes in the frontal and occipital plates.
7) Drill the holes in the cap and rivet the cap and the top of the helmet.
8) Form a back plate to match the top of the helmet and arrange the rivet holes according to the pattern.
9) Use a felt-tip pen to mark the bottom row of holes in the upper back plate through the holes in the lower back plate and drill them. Attach attach the bottom back plate to the top
10) Drill breathing holes and crosses on the face plate.
11) Fit the faceplate to the helmet and attach it to the rest of the helmet in the same way as described above.
12) Polish the helmet and brass plates for the cross.
13) Attach the arms of the brass cross over the eye slits.
14) Rivet the main part of the brass cross. Remember to use a strip of steel reinforcement under the part of the cross that runs between the eyes.
15) Refinish the helmet and cross if necessary.

90,000 Archives Helmets – Nitrinos

New from Nitrinos – Fury helmet.

Each Nitrinos helmet has its own story and character, in the image of which the helmet was created. The idea of ​​creating a Fury helmet arose after the release of the cartoon “How to Train Your Dragon”. Smart, charismatic and incredibly adorable dragon named Toothless fell in love with the developers of the Nitrinos motorcycle studio and inspired the creation of a new helmet. Continue reading →

The Predator Helmet is a challenge to the outdated approach to motorcycle helmet design.When creating our helmet in 2010, we thought that this helmet is for those who are ready to be different. An incredibly bold, eye-catching design and state-of-the-art, composite technology are the keys to a stylish and safe helmet. Maintaining an unsurpassed design, we are constantly improving the characteristics of the Predator helmet, adding new, unique options, creating a truly exclusive product. Continue reading →

This is an unusual motorcycle helmet from the Nitrinos motorcycle studio.The first sample of the Neko-helmet was made for Nitrinos’ participation at the 2011 Japanese Culture Festival. After the festival, the helmet became available for orders. (Neko is translated from Japanese as a cat)

Continue reading →

Post-apocalyptic design with motorcycle helmet characteristics. We continue to break down gear styling stereotypes with the addition of unique Nitrinos helmets.

Continue reading →

MOTOSPARTA is a new word in the world of the motorcycle industry.Nitrinos presents a unique motorcycle helmet, combining the image of ancient warriors and functionality that meets modern requirements. MOTOSPARTA is a helmet for those who choose shocking, rejecting the routine.

Continue reading →

Modification of the legendary helmet from Nitrinos – Predator Cross.
We have made a helmet for those who like active riding on motorcycles, ATVs, snowmobiles.

Continue reading →

Russian helmets – “Republic”

The helmet protects the soldier’s head from sand, stones, small fragments, precipitation and, most importantly, from stray bullets.And from a direct hit of a projectile, alas, not always. Nevertheless, it was impossible to participate in battles without this protective headgear.

The Center of Military Glory contains samples of almost all steel helmets worn by soldiers of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. There are also rare specimens that allow you to find out the history of the emergence of the Russian steel helmet.

Tells the collector and employee of the center Valery Lazarev:

Valery Lazarev. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

“The first helmet that appeared on supply as a protective headgear back during the First World War – that is, when the Russian Imperial Army existed, was produced in France.These helmets of the 1915 model of the year were purchased in large quantities by the Russian Empire to protect the heads of the fighters of the imperial army. We bought them in the amount of approximately two million pieces. It should be noted that the contract on the part of France was fulfilled in full. This helmet is called “Adriana”.

Helmets are often called helmets, but this is not entirely correct. Helmet is a French word that means “helmet”, the word, of course, has taken root in Russia, but it is more correct to call these headwear steel protective helmets.So it is written in all statutes.

French helmet, model 1915. Adriana. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

However, two million helmets were sorely lacking to supply the entire army. It was decided to copy this protective headdress, but to make it more successful and, most importantly, to make it cheaper for the Russian treasury. Design engineers of the Granata factory invented a steel helmet, which later became known as the Russian helmet made of blade steel (its abbreviation SHLS).This is generally the first helmet of Russian origin.

SHLS began to be urgently produced at almost 20 enterprises in the Russian Empire, including at a metallurgical plant in the village of Vyartsilya, known to us.

The first Russian steel helmet of imperial origin. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

In 1917, a revolution took place – the Russian Empire ceased to exist, and Finland became an independent state. And since SHLS were also produced there, they remained in Finland, and these helmets were transferred to the supply of the newly formed Finnish army.

In 1918, the Workers ‘and Peasants’ Red Army appeared. In the warehouses of our country, there were a large number of two types of helmets – SHLS and the French “Adriana”. Both those and others also protected the heads of our soldiers. They were on supply in the Red Army until 1936.

In the end, the well-known steel helmet of the 1936 model was adopted by all of us to supply our army. There is a myth that the great and famous commander of the Civil War, Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny, took part in the development of this helmet.He commanded the First Cavalry Army during the Civil War and, accordingly, was related to the cavalry. Therefore, according to the myth, he advised the design engineers to make a ridge on the top of the helmet, as well as large contours: this is necessary to deflect a blow to the head with a saber.

The first steel Soviet helmet of the 1936 model. There is a myth that Semyon Budyonny participated in its development. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

But the purpose of this ridge is very simple: it is only needed to protect against precipitation from entering the ventilation openings.By the way, there are no such holes in the next Soviet helmet in chronology.

This protective headdress was adopted by the Red Army, and among collectors it has such an unofficial name – halhingolka. This is because these helmets received their first combat experience in military conflicts at Khalkin Gol.

Of course, these helmets participated in the Soviet-Finnish War in 1939-1940, as well as at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

The first steel Soviet helmet of the 1936 model.Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

In 1938, the USSR developed a special helmet for the air defense troops. Its prototype was the English MK1 helmet. Few people know about him, but, nevertheless, he was in the Red Army.

It was released for a short time, one of the features of this helmet is that it was made even in besieged Leningrad. Therefore, it was used not only by the air defense troops, but also by the defenders of besieged Leningrad.

Helmet liner, model 1939.Released in besieged Leningrad. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergei Yudin

Cap comforter of the 1939 helmet. Released in besieged Leningrad. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

The next helmet was developed by the USSR in 1939. Its prototype was a 1938 Swedish protective headgear. The new Soviet helmet became the main protective headgear, and its image, one might say, became the image of a soldier of Victory. This sphere of the dome was used in the Soviet army until the mid-sixties.

The collectors call a 1939 helmet a three-rivet. The fact is that a liner was installed in it, the design of which was held on by three rivets. In 1940, a modernized liner appeared, it was already held on six rivets. Collectors know this helmet as a six-rivet.

Helmet, model 1939. Three rivets. The image of a victorious soldier. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

This helmet protected the fighter’s head from small fragments, from what is called a stray bullet, from stone and sand, and, of course, from precipitation.But this helmet did not always save from a direct hit of a bullet.

It should be noted that there are archival photographs that confirm that all these helmets were used in the Great Patriotic War. Even the French “Adriana”. But, of course, the most famous, most massive helmet in the Great Patriotic War is the 1939 model helmet.

By the way, there is a wonderful book “The History of the Russian Steel Helmet” by the famous collector Ivan Karabanov. I know him personally, he is very well versed in this.I advise readers of Respublika to read this book. ”

Book by Ivan Karabanov. Photo: “Respublika” / Sergey Yudin

The Center of Military Glory of Petrozavodsk is an innovative platform for patriotic education, where artifacts of the city’s military history, materials and documents are presented. This is a living community of people who want to study the history of their homeland, city, and family. The military history of Petrozavodsk is connected with the military glory of the Olonets regiments and the Olonets militia in the Patriotic War of 1812, the Crimean, Russian-Turkish 1877-1878 and the First World Wars.A special place in the history of the city is occupied by the events of the twentieth century, to which the main exposition of the military museum is dedicated. The center was established with funds from the Sergei Pirozhnikov Foundation.

The project is being implemented with the support of the Relay of Generations Foundation jointly with the National Museum of the Republic of Karelia.

The Victory Exhibition project is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, which our country will celebrate in 2020. With the support of the republican museums and the Relay of Generations Foundation, journalists throughout the year will talk about the war with the help of museum exhibits.A photograph or a soldier’s spoon, an overcoat or an epaulette – each item has its own story, through which one can understand what the war was for ordinary people.

Ilya Prokhorov

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