bodycage
Active Member
daisycrazy,
I see your point about motorcycle gear - and it is definitely an industry worth watching / pinching ideas from, my comments ref. sliding / abrasion come from our dicsussions with motorcycle manufacturers when we were developing Exo and that was the general view then, it is surprising, but their general view (right or wrong) is that the helmet will aim to deal with impact, but generally otherwise they don't have the same views on impact as a rider would - yes they will do selectiv impact protection (generally the knobbly bits - spine / elbows / knees / bottoms - well they aren't generally knobbly, but still included
) where a rider looks for less selective / more all around protection.
Not a disagreement - just another angle to consider, and certainly doesn't negate your correct assertion that it is an industry with many good innovations worth including...
The other issue though is convincing a motor cycle / gear manufacturer that the equestrian market is worth pursuing - yes it is a large market, but it is seen as amateur and fragmented, not commercially interesting - this is changing with the new chains of equestrian stores, but until now it has not been attractive to them.
Baileyhoss,
Understand where you are coming from - but maybe worth trawling back through some of my earlier posts on this in this thread - it is just not economically viable to have thie type of technology in the hadns of many companies - the more you split the market amongst several companies, the less the share of the market each has - considering that over £1 million pounds was spent on the development of this to get it to market in one set of sizes, and more money would be needed for tooling for other sizes etc. - there are very few companies who can afford those development costs. Of that £1 million+ not all was spent by Woof Wear, but they did spend a substantial chunk - we licensed them the IPR, not a physical product (though they did use our design), they developed the tooling / jacket / do the manufacture / marketing / distribution / etc.
we did talk to other body protector companies, but many of them are actually very small companies who just do not have the assets to afford to be able to do that kind of development - Woof Wear (part of the Gul group) is a far more substantial company, able to put in that kind of committment.
The comparison with Goretex is different - there (initially, as now there are competitor products), it was a material and the only committment needed by a licensing company was to order that material instead of another material and then continue to make their garment - i.e. the licencing company needed no additional financial committment other than paying the royalties...
Believe me - it would have been much better for us commercially as it would have been in every body protector instantly - but it just is not possible commercially.
teapot
good questions - but let me answer the last one first!
FOR ALL THOSE READING - THE ALLEN KEY IS NOT AN ISSUE - THERE ARE TWO BUILT INTO THE EXO
whew, got that out of my system, sorry for shouting!
the allen key issue is a total red herring - there are two built into the Exo - one in each flap on each side, with a green cross over the outside and full instructions in the flap...
right, back to science
Interestingly no-one actually knows the exact force of a horse landing at speed... so simulations were done with the horse modelled as a human, for which data is extant.
when a horse lands on a human, the human suffers dis-proportionally, let me give an example
drop a chunk of metal into plasticene...
newton's laws state that for every action there is an equal and opposite action
therefore when two bodies collide the force is the same in both directions - yet the plasticene gets squashed, the lump of metal doesn't (because it is harder and the force in that direction goes into de-acceleration of the lump of metal)
now drop a lump of plasticene onto a lump of metal - the plasticene deforms as before...
in other words the weaker body suffers a disproportionate share of the impact.
So, when a horse lands on a human, a disproportionate amount of the force is transmitted into the human...
With an Exo on the human, there is now metal in the way - in the accident more of the force will transmit into the horse (ouch, poor horse! but generally being a bigger animal they can take it...) it minimises the impact to the human...
1 - The Exo, takes the first part of the impact around the Exo into the ground
2 - It will then start to break down (tested to do so in a manner as non-destructive to humans as possible - legally required for the CE / Kite marking)
3 - Finally the remain impact (if any) is left for the ribs to deal with
In fact in the 2005 accident (don't know about thi recent one) there was no apparent damage to the Exo with 500Kg horse from 1m, so only stage 1 in force.
However obviously even with no apparent damage, we would suspect probably some internal stressing to the metal...
The wording that comes with them is like that of a hat - if in an accident replace it...
(Now on a side note - want to know about hats, mmm poss not - might scare you to see the testing we did on those
Hat companies test hats fresh from manufacture, never worn, to check that they pass the impact test for certification... we are the only company that has carried out extensive tests to see how hats perform after an accident... to work out how little / big an accident will start to degrade your hat - we developed the testing with SATRA... a hat only has to be dropped from c. 25cm onto concrete to possibly start damaging the internal material and leaving it less safe than whn you bought it
mmm... I am sure that we all change our hats after any impact don't we!?
)
lrobson
The 17th of this month has nothing to do with Exo being stopped - that is when Bodycage Ltd. is no more...
The Exo marches on strongly as ever in the hands of the RDA / Woof Wear - all is as normal...
would love to see that video - if necessary I can host it on our website...
CrazyMare,
not off topic at all... we proposed two thoughts to BETA:
- development of a Level 4 standard
- development of a 'crushing standard' as a parallel standard
we were turned down with the comment that because we wouldn't licence / give our technology to all BETA members they couldn't do anything about developing a new standard...
so standards are not to do with levels of safety an item can offer - but commercial decisions, the simple answer is that commercial issues stand in the way...
perhaps it is time that the safety standards were maintained by a body which is not the trade body for the industry?
Claire Williams states in the H&H article:
"...though its abilities to withstand a crushing fall have not been tested because a "crush test" is not part of the BETA standard."
Ms Williams knows (because we have given her the info) that the EXO has been through rigorous testing, computer simulation / real testing / laboratory testing / etc. and its abilities to withstand a crushing fall have been tested. She implies that they can not have been tested as such a test is not a part of the BETA standard, totally ignoring the fact that the BETA standard is not the only type of test possible to do - we spent considerable money with Bolton Institute (world leaders in impact testing) and SATRA (government test laboratories who also do the EN 13158 test - which gives you BETA level 3) and developed our own testing - to much harsher levels than any other body protector has been through...
The Exo is the only body protector in the world to have trasmitted impact readings of 0 in the Beta standards - the impact does not come through to the body when it is on the Exo... hardly surprising really as it is transmitted around the body - but still - leagues ahead of other body protectors.
I thought that for light relief people might like to see some photos of our very early testing...
I will stress that this is not scientific, and we did move on to test in laboratories - but it still makes a point.
Here we carried out two tests:
- we got 650kg of sand bags and laid them out to scale to the correct weight distribution of a full size horse - after all if the Exo can't take a horse lying on top of it, it won't do well with a falling horse!
- we also looked at some light weights (a 5kg log in this case) and compared what happened to a blood orange (rather gruesome I know and you try cleaning up a BP with bits of blood orange in it!) inside a normal Beta 3 body protector (this is the one I used to ride in), and inside the EXO - it is a quite dramatic illustration of the difference...
photos can be found at www.snipephotos.com
log in with username: horse / password: hound
to see them...
regards
Alasdair Kirk
Managing Director
Bodycage
I see your point about motorcycle gear - and it is definitely an industry worth watching / pinching ideas from, my comments ref. sliding / abrasion come from our dicsussions with motorcycle manufacturers when we were developing Exo and that was the general view then, it is surprising, but their general view (right or wrong) is that the helmet will aim to deal with impact, but generally otherwise they don't have the same views on impact as a rider would - yes they will do selectiv impact protection (generally the knobbly bits - spine / elbows / knees / bottoms - well they aren't generally knobbly, but still included
Not a disagreement - just another angle to consider, and certainly doesn't negate your correct assertion that it is an industry with many good innovations worth including...
The other issue though is convincing a motor cycle / gear manufacturer that the equestrian market is worth pursuing - yes it is a large market, but it is seen as amateur and fragmented, not commercially interesting - this is changing with the new chains of equestrian stores, but until now it has not been attractive to them.
Baileyhoss,
Understand where you are coming from - but maybe worth trawling back through some of my earlier posts on this in this thread - it is just not economically viable to have thie type of technology in the hadns of many companies - the more you split the market amongst several companies, the less the share of the market each has - considering that over £1 million pounds was spent on the development of this to get it to market in one set of sizes, and more money would be needed for tooling for other sizes etc. - there are very few companies who can afford those development costs. Of that £1 million+ not all was spent by Woof Wear, but they did spend a substantial chunk - we licensed them the IPR, not a physical product (though they did use our design), they developed the tooling / jacket / do the manufacture / marketing / distribution / etc.
we did talk to other body protector companies, but many of them are actually very small companies who just do not have the assets to afford to be able to do that kind of development - Woof Wear (part of the Gul group) is a far more substantial company, able to put in that kind of committment.
The comparison with Goretex is different - there (initially, as now there are competitor products), it was a material and the only committment needed by a licensing company was to order that material instead of another material and then continue to make their garment - i.e. the licencing company needed no additional financial committment other than paying the royalties...
Believe me - it would have been much better for us commercially as it would have been in every body protector instantly - but it just is not possible commercially.
teapot
good questions - but let me answer the last one first!
FOR ALL THOSE READING - THE ALLEN KEY IS NOT AN ISSUE - THERE ARE TWO BUILT INTO THE EXO
whew, got that out of my system, sorry for shouting!
right, back to science
Interestingly no-one actually knows the exact force of a horse landing at speed... so simulations were done with the horse modelled as a human, for which data is extant.
when a horse lands on a human, the human suffers dis-proportionally, let me give an example
drop a chunk of metal into plasticene...
newton's laws state that for every action there is an equal and opposite action
therefore when two bodies collide the force is the same in both directions - yet the plasticene gets squashed, the lump of metal doesn't (because it is harder and the force in that direction goes into de-acceleration of the lump of metal)
now drop a lump of plasticene onto a lump of metal - the plasticene deforms as before...
in other words the weaker body suffers a disproportionate share of the impact.
So, when a horse lands on a human, a disproportionate amount of the force is transmitted into the human...
With an Exo on the human, there is now metal in the way - in the accident more of the force will transmit into the horse (ouch, poor horse! but generally being a bigger animal they can take it...) it minimises the impact to the human...
1 - The Exo, takes the first part of the impact around the Exo into the ground
2 - It will then start to break down (tested to do so in a manner as non-destructive to humans as possible - legally required for the CE / Kite marking)
3 - Finally the remain impact (if any) is left for the ribs to deal with
In fact in the 2005 accident (don't know about thi recent one) there was no apparent damage to the Exo with 500Kg horse from 1m, so only stage 1 in force.
However obviously even with no apparent damage, we would suspect probably some internal stressing to the metal...
The wording that comes with them is like that of a hat - if in an accident replace it...
(Now on a side note - want to know about hats, mmm poss not - might scare you to see the testing we did on those
lrobson
The 17th of this month has nothing to do with Exo being stopped - that is when Bodycage Ltd. is no more...
The Exo marches on strongly as ever in the hands of the RDA / Woof Wear - all is as normal...
would love to see that video - if necessary I can host it on our website...
CrazyMare,
not off topic at all... we proposed two thoughts to BETA:
- development of a Level 4 standard
- development of a 'crushing standard' as a parallel standard
we were turned down with the comment that because we wouldn't licence / give our technology to all BETA members they couldn't do anything about developing a new standard...
so standards are not to do with levels of safety an item can offer - but commercial decisions, the simple answer is that commercial issues stand in the way...
perhaps it is time that the safety standards were maintained by a body which is not the trade body for the industry?
Claire Williams states in the H&H article:
"...though its abilities to withstand a crushing fall have not been tested because a "crush test" is not part of the BETA standard."
Ms Williams knows (because we have given her the info) that the EXO has been through rigorous testing, computer simulation / real testing / laboratory testing / etc. and its abilities to withstand a crushing fall have been tested. She implies that they can not have been tested as such a test is not a part of the BETA standard, totally ignoring the fact that the BETA standard is not the only type of test possible to do - we spent considerable money with Bolton Institute (world leaders in impact testing) and SATRA (government test laboratories who also do the EN 13158 test - which gives you BETA level 3) and developed our own testing - to much harsher levels than any other body protector has been through...
The Exo is the only body protector in the world to have trasmitted impact readings of 0 in the Beta standards - the impact does not come through to the body when it is on the Exo... hardly surprising really as it is transmitted around the body - but still - leagues ahead of other body protectors.
I thought that for light relief people might like to see some photos of our very early testing...
I will stress that this is not scientific, and we did move on to test in laboratories - but it still makes a point.
Here we carried out two tests:
- we got 650kg of sand bags and laid them out to scale to the correct weight distribution of a full size horse - after all if the Exo can't take a horse lying on top of it, it won't do well with a falling horse!
- we also looked at some light weights (a 5kg log in this case) and compared what happened to a blood orange (rather gruesome I know and you try cleaning up a BP with bits of blood orange in it!) inside a normal Beta 3 body protector (this is the one I used to ride in), and inside the EXO - it is a quite dramatic illustration of the difference...
photos can be found at www.snipephotos.com
log in with username: horse / password: hound
to see them...
regards
Alasdair Kirk
Managing Director
Bodycage
