WHICH ‘NEW’ MATERIALS CAN WE FIND WITHIN YOUR KITE RANGE?
DUOTONE: For the last few years, we’ve been progressing with different kite materials. Everything has really started with lighter materials like Penta TX, and today we have a range of three segments: Originals, SLS and D/LAB. The Original features standard materials, SLS uses Penta TX, and D/LAB uses ALUULA material. The journey is all about creating products with better flying ability, especially in reducing the overall weight of the kite, which of course helps to increase the lightwind abilities. A big step in this direction were the SLS models with Penta TX, and ultimately progressing to the D/LAB models with ALUULA, currently the lightest inflatable material on the market. The Juice D/LAB, which is built with ALUU-LA, is the benchmark in lightwind kiting, especially in twintip riding. The development process started years ago, but now is finally in full swing.
AIRUSH: The key one for us over the last year, is the Ho’okipa leading edge fabric. This concept has been in development in some form for the last six years and it has been really exciting to get our Team Series Kites to the next level. We have always been focused on chasing light weight and durability through innovations such as the load frame, and this is the next big step for us. Looking at the journey through development into production, a key point that many people do not see, is the timelines required to develop these materials – we need at least 18 months to bring any single material formulation from concept, through to testing, into limited production, then full production.
Our original belief was that the current Dacron material (Woven polyester) was on its engineering limit and we wanted to be able to builds kites that were more durable than existing ones, lighter weight and could run at higher pressures. The real limitation is the polyester fibers, although these are a very proven technology and widely used, we knew we would need to move to more exotic fibers to progress. We believed the best substitute was some form of Ultra PE (UHMWPE) as this has key mechanical advantage over polyester, is UV stable and still relatively affordable. This is the base material we use in our load frame and is widely used in flying lines.
We started with a company called Dyneema Corp as they had continued the development of a laminate that was originally Cuben Fiber; it had been used in some early kites, although there had been challenges with the original fabric. We considered that through the ongoing development, these issues may have been addressed. However, we ran into two challenges, to do with seam construction, consistency of fiber within the laminate, and with shrinkage. We then moved to an alternate laminate supplier that had been doing more work within the kite arena, and while this was in long-term development, we continued our research into development options and started working more closely with Challenge Sailcloth.
This was a critical point, as there had always been reservations within our design and manufacture team about using a primarily laminated fabric, but lightweight woven composites did not really exist in commercial applications. Challenge Sailcloth were the first supplier we had found who were able to develop woven composite that was considerably lighter than Dacron in a commercial application. They also had a lot of experience of fine-tuning the fabric formulation
