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UHMWPE can stop M855, M193, M855A1 etc. but it has to be thick enough to do the job. A thinner, more powerful solution is to use a hard, ballistic ceramic tile strike face that is bonded to a UHMWPE backing material. There are all sorts of products out there but if you go w NIJ standards, you would need at least armor at the RF2 resistance level to stop 7.62x51mm M80, 7.62x39mm MSC, M193 and M855.

Thanks, I’m glad to hear that the videos were helpful. Appreciate your order and we will get those to you this week.

Glad you liked it!

Thank you!!

Thanks, let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you for watching!

Will try to do one soon

I can build you a set of SSiC side plates. We normally use alumina for smaller plates since they are less brittle and generally handle multi hits a little better.

Thanks!

This hasn’t been my experience. I agree though it’s acceptable if the consumer is aware of it. The foam is usually 1” wide, not 1/2”. Sometimes there is an “expanded” ceramic version people sell with a 1/2” border but most are 1”. This impacts the weight substantially… dropping an edge to edge alumina from 8 pounds to 6. Most people don’t understand the reason for the weight difference.

Unfortunately, most resellers and manufacturers do not inform consumers about the 1” edge. A few may allude to something that no one understands like “rubber edge that protects the ceramic.” But few would equate that to a retracted strike face. This design is most effective as a hybrid pistol/rifle protection plate but ONLY when the backer itself has been tested and is rated for HG2 threats.

Thanks. Most people don’t know this stuff and consider most armor equal when it is not!

That is our Model 9049 considered the strongest plate we make. Zero ceramic frag w a trauma reducer plate. Thank you.

Not sure I 100% understand. The ceramic is designed to fracture and then fragment the bullet and would not require metal on the outer surface.

Those are steel threaded suits that helped us achieve the same electrical potential as the energized power line circuit.

Good question!

Honestly I don’t remember how we found it. We have several methods to locate these damaged areas: 1. Comprehensive visual inspections. 2. Infra-red imaging. 3. Corona “arcing” camera. Sometimes the IR and Corona would light up together and that helped. Working inside of two circuits and between phases required us to be pretty precise because the last thing we wanted was to go phase to ground or phase to phase.

Excellent question. Chinese manufacturers use a chloroprene rubber non-heat activated adhesive. In the US, we mostly use heat activated adhesive sheets. The polyethylene backers are considered “low energy” material, so the resins in the PE normally match up with the ingredients within the adhesive sheets. For example, if you are working with a PE with polyolefin resins, you would generally select a polyolefin thermal adhesive. Not all PE has the same resins, so pairing up adhesives can be tricky and the adhesives are extremely important and will make or break effectiveness in armor. Most professional builders/manufacturers in the USA use a company called Pontacol to obtain their adhesives. However, this company is not a US company… so Made in USA really means “except the adhesive”. We wanted to develop a US adhesive with US sourced ingredients that is low VOC and CA Prop 65 compliant. The adhesive we use is thermally activated but is a flashed heat adhesive, meaning that it is not necessary to spend high time periods under heat (which can weaken PE chemical bonds). Adhesive use in armor is critical and not only is the correct product required, but proper pressure and temperature are also important. We can’t disclose the exact ingredients we use but they work very well with various types of PE resins… even water based polyurethane. We are considering offering our armor adhesives in the general market under our name brand next year. We are working on the MDS and SDS currently. No final decision on that yet.

Another brand of adhesive available is an American brand. It s a product called “T-Link”. It’s an epoxy with no release liners. It’s easy to use but requires a higher activation temperature. We have not been able to use it effectively with our material in R and D scenarios, so we opted to develop something else. We are also slowly making headway with Pontacol to test a couple of their products alongside of ours for upcoming 2025 projects.

It’s a younger man’s work but glad I was able to do it for a few years.

So why then would you trust a single piece? After one shot, there are lots of uncontrolled cracks. I have built mosaic style armor for many years and it’s much more effective against multiple shots. This style has been used for decades in personal armor and even vehicle armor. Check out our website and test reports… you won’t find better performance all documented with NIJ approved labs.

Many armor designs incorporate a foam or rubber edge (thin strip) that protects the ceramic edge. Ballistic ceramic is very durable, especially at high purity levels. With the correct adhesives and a crack arresting layer to protect the ceramic… it can take significant abuse. Mosaic arrays are generally more resistant to cracking and breaking than monolithics but not always. Using the materials I describe above, the builder can create what I call a “marble effect”. It’s like dropping a marble on a hard surface because of the PE backer and crack arresting layer saturated strike face ceramic in adhesive - all encapsulating and protecting the underlying material.

😃

😂 that’s many years ago and I would probably miss the whole thing now

Thank you much for your trust. We do have multi-curved monolithics using Bitossi tile. My own personal experience has been that the mosaics offer superior multi-hit protection, especially when the shots are close together. Thanks again.

Check out the last video I just uploaded.

Hello - hands full with ceramic plates. We do carry a Big and Tall carrier on our site made with 3 plies of 1670 denier ballistic nylon.

I see the NIJ notice… was there something else actually from LTC?

Some companies use a smaller, retracted strike face to save on weight… a 10x12 plate in alumina goes from 8 pounds to 6 by removing 1” along the edge and replacing it with foam!

Ballistic ceramic tile really isn’t the type of ceramic or porcelain that people think of. It is far more dense. Feldspar based ingredients in porcelain are interesting but I don’t know any manufacturers offering these types of materials for widespread use. The most common ceramic ballistic tile are aluminum oxide, sintered or reaction bonded silicon carbide, boron carbide and more common, a silicon and boride hybrid. Outside of those materials I don’t have much technical knowledge of porcelains. Thanks for the question. It’s a good one.

My experience with that is that projectile fragments still exit the PE steel interface layer. Fragments move parallel to the steel strike face and out the adhesive layer. Especially true with larger calibers.

When combining materials you always have to remember that the post-impact motion of projectiles is not always from front to back. The “give” of a PE backer helps keep the projectile and fragments moving in a strike face to wear face motion (good). But with steel, there is no gradual deceleration and fragmentation which means that the fragments splash against the strike face and move parallel… which unfortunately is aligned with materials boundary layers and adhesive layers. This results in delamination of all sorts and fragments moving upwards and outwards toward plate periphery (where you are).

Water based polyethylene resins in certain PE raw materials have great elongation properties.

Thanks man!

The adhesives require some heat to activate. We then keep pressure on during the cool down to room temp. Heat is dangerous for PE so you have to limit the time… freezing does not make the ceramic harder in any appreciable way as far as I know! Our adhesives are good to -40F

You can buy our OA+ outsourced version for $99 each… check the ballistics report. Stopped 4 rounds of .30 M2AP. Doesn’t have to be expensive or require a trip to Lowe’s.

Ha! Check out my video just before this one. So, hitting it with a hammer wasn’t enough?

Thanks!

A blend of performance, weight and cost effectiveness… thanks

Hello - very interesting and thank you for sharing that info. There is no metal in our plates… we use ceramic to UHMWPE via adhesive interface that is non-epoxy and will elongate enough to absorb energy. Some models have a carbon/aramid thermoplastic on the wear face.