Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Finding high tech materials for new guitar case design

We want the owners of Calder Originals (CO) cases to feel secure that their cases offer the best possible protection while at the same time being very light. We also want to give them the pleasure of owning a very beautiful piece of luggage.

I've spent a huge amount of time (hours of painstaking web research and many many phone calls) to find out what was on the market. I also have a big thing about environmental performance - so I wanted the materials to have as low an environmental impact as possible. Fortunately the automobile manufacturers are after the very same thing - they want lightness as this saves on fuel and they need strength to provide safety. And the arrival of stringent End of Life Regulations they need recyclable materials.

Eventually we came across two very similar materials CURV and MFT both made of polypropylene (PP) (the course fabric they make mail sacks out of) - and its 100% recyclable. These super versions of PP are made by stetching PP fabric and them baking it - the result a material that is 50% lighter than ABS (the material most commonly used for moulded guitar cases) and 33% stronger.

Is this all really nerdy stuff? Does anyone really care what the hell the cases are made of apart from me?

categories: early development

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