In the sports and recreational equipment industry, high-performance plastic parts are essential for ensuring both durability and functionality. Vacuum casting offers a precise and cost-effective method for producing prototypes and low-volume production runs of components used in items like protective gear, sports equipment, and accessories. PEEK (Polyetheretherketone) and Polypropylene (PP) are two materials commonly chosen for these applications due to their exceptional strength, resistance to wear, and lightweight nature.
PEEK is renowned for its high strength, chemical resistance, and ability to withstand extreme temperatures, making it an ideal material for sports equipment components that experience significant stress or exposure to harsh environments. It is used in parts such as helmet shells, protective gear components, and high-performance athletic equipment, where durability and resistance to repeated impacts are critical. Polypropylene, on the other hand, is lightweight, flexible, and cost-effective, making it a popular choice for producing sports accessories like bags, padding, and protective covers.
Vacuum casting involves creating a master model, which is often a 3D-printed prototype or a physical model, and using it to make a silicone mold. Liquid PEEK or Polypropylene resin is poured into the mold, and a vacuum is applied to remove air bubbles, ensuring the resin fills every cavity and results in a smooth, defect-free part. This process is especially useful for creating functional prototypes for sports gear, where performance testing and quick design iteration are critical.
The main benefits of using vacuum casting for sports equipment manufacturing include rapid prototyping, the ability to test different designs, and low-volume production runs. It allows designers to quickly produce parts for testing, which helps ensure that the final product is both functional and safe for users. Additionally, vacuum casting can create highly detailed, durable prototypes that replicate the performance of the final product. This is particularly important in the sports and recreational equipment industry, where precision and performance are crucial to the safety and success of the product.
Applications of vacuum casting Vacuum casting is one of the most cost-effective ways to produce high quality, low volume plastic parts which can be similar to injection moulding parts
The parts are especially suitable for form, fit and function tests during the embodiment design stages, where they can be used for marketing, field user testing and product design verification purposes
There are many Urethane casting resins commercially available that can be used to create parts to satisfy a wide range of design requirements such as temperature requirements, different surface textures, hardness, etc.
Materials are also available to create parts that are fully opaque, translucent or completely transparent
Sometimes high-quality wax masters can be made using vacuum casting for investment casting to increase the finer details of intricate features
Typical technical specification
Time frame
Within 24 hr – 5 working days for up to 30-50 parts
Material choice
Wide variety of materials available
Accuracy
±0.3% (with a lower limit of ± 0.3 mm on dimensions smaller than 100 mm)
Minimum wall thickness
To ensure that the mould is filled properly, a wall thickness of at least 0.75 mm is necessary. But best results are achieved with a recommended wall thickness of 1.5 mm
Maximum part dimensions
The size of the mould is limited by the dimensions of the vacuum chamber
Typical quantities
Up to 50 parts per mould
Surface structure
Gloss to Matt surface finish can be obtained
Polyurethane (PU), the full name of polyurethane, is a polymer material formed by polyol and polyisocyanate through polycondensation reaction with excellent mechanical properties
[1], which is extremely plastic. Its synthesis can be traced back to 1937, when Professor Byaer first synthesised straight-chain linear polyurethane resins using 1,6-hexanediisocyanate and 1,4-butanediol as raw materials
[2]. Several major classifications of polyurethanes include polyether-type, polyester-type, polyimide-type, and polyurea-type, etc. They can be made into materials such as polyurethane plastics (mainly foams), polyurethane fibres (known as spandex in China), polyurethane rubbers and elastomers
[3].After nearly eighty years of technological development, this material has a wide range of applications involving products such as coatings, adhesives, fabric finishes, leather modifiers, polyurethane soft/rigid foam, elastomers, etc., which are used in the fields of textiles, construction, aviation, shipping, transportation, medicine, electronics, and so on.
Flexible polyurethane mainly has a linear structure with thermoplasticity, which has better stability, chemical resistance, resilience and mechanical properties than PVC foams, with less compression variability. Heat insulation, sound insulation, shock resistance, anti-virus performance is good. Therefore, it is used as packaging, sound insulation and filtration materials. Rigid polyurethane plastic is lightweight, sound insulation, superior thermal insulation performance, chemical resistance, good electrical properties, easy processing, low water absorption. It is mainly used in construction, automotive, aviation industry, thermal insulation structure materials. Polyurethane elastomer performance between plastic and rubber, oil resistance, abrasion resistance, low temperature resistance, aging resistance, high hardness, elasticity. It is mainly used in the shoe industry and the medical industry. Polyurethane can also make adhesives, coatings, synthetic leather, etc.
