We were recently fortunate enough to be invited to Italy as guests of Abus UK to visit their factories and production facilities and attend the launch of their new helmet coming out later in the summer.
we also had the opportunity to ride and test the new helmet on the road.
We flew in to Venice and after a short bus journey we were at the first of Abus’ production facilities.
The first thing that struck me was how labour intensive the process is and how when the label says handmade in Italy is really is.
sheets of outer shell enter as big sheets, are painted (by hand), cut in to helmet sized sheets and then heat formed. They are then inspected and finished by hand.
Another department attach the straps and retention systems and then it starts to look like a helmet.
we have missed out the internal EPS production in this summary as this was produced at the second factory. Again totally from scratch. The EPS balls enter as almost solid tiny bearings, they’re then heated and cooled with water added as steam to change the density, reduce weight and affect the characteristics of the EPS.
the polystyrene (PS)
the Expanded Polystyrene (EPS)
Different countries have different safety standards and these are met by adjusting the eps characteristics. Higher safety standards often mean higher weight so these are reserved for the specific territories rather than have a one product for all approach.
The facility also have their own testing facilities so they can test prototype models and check they meet their standards before going in to full production
