Our Armor
We Start With Waterjet Cutting
Our armor is designed to stop rifle fire. Because of the higher velocities and sometimes hard bullet core materials encountered in military cartridges, we use ceramics embedded into proprietary materials. Many ceramics squares(and other geometries) are placed tightly together and wrapped with ceramic cloth layers to put compressive stresses on the ceramics. The assembly is then vacuum bagged to create the final composite.
Multiple Ceramics Provides Multi-hit Capability
The primary law enforcement ballistic standards are from the National Institute of Justice(NIJ). The two highest standards are NIJ3( 5 shot test, 150 grain, 2800fps max.) and NIJ4 (1 shot, 166 grain, 2900fps max.).
The NIJ4 standard started years ago when monolithic ceramic plates were used and when impacted, shattered , compromising the entire plate to other impacts. As seen from the photograph, we use many
individual ceramics, such that bullets impacting one area won't destroy all the ceramics in the assembly.
Since our standard ceramic assemblies do not use dyneema(polyethelene based plastic) or kevlar(nylon based plastic) materials, we can offer a 30 year warranty on ballistic materials.
You Won't See Bolt Heads Facing The Threat Side
Did you ever notice most ballistic equipment has bolts facing the threat side? Manufacturers use the bolts to hold the shield together. What they don't tell you is that a lucky shot hitting one of their bolt heads could lead to failure of the shield. Even grade 9 bolts only have a rockwell C hardness of about 42. The National Institute of Justice realized that this is a failure mechanism and are requiring manufacturers to change. Fortunately, our ballistic panels use a novel, patent pending design, eliminating weak points in the impact side of the shield. The added benefit is that our ceramic plate assemblies are replaceable in the field!