VOLUME 56 ISSUE 41 OCTOBER 15, 2019 P97
that does get inside—our goal is
to keep it out—not try to deal with
it once it gets in."
Although it may seem like Arai
is refusing to move with the times,
the company told us they will not
put any new element into a helmet
until it is guaranteed to improve
the finished product. That's anoth-
er reason why the shape barely
changes—it's better to continually,
but slowly, improve one design
over decades than to start fresh
every few years. The continual
small steps have one significant
appear when you crash, and the
helmet is impacted. Another is the
use of Specialized Glass Fiber, or
Zylon, a material found in bulletproof
vests and located at the crown of
the helmet, lowering the helmet's
center of gravity and weight, which
in turn, reduces rider fatigue.
(Above) Arai's foam
EPS liner. You can see
the various densities,
starting with the
higher density up
front that gradually
gets softer as it goes
further up the liner.
benefit to manufacturing; that
being, if one step is wrong and
doesn't improve the product, Arai
has only to go back one step to a
platform they know works.
"We've built the helmet as an
energy management system,
with each component designed
based on all the other compo-
nents, both the shell and inner
liner building upon and support-
ing the other," says Weston. "To
introduce a new design idea can
dramatically offset the balance
and performance that Arai has
evolved over the decades. We
know our system has shown
incredible performance across
those decades, so we are careful
not to leap blindly at new tech no
matter how trendy it may be."
One of the big changes of
late came from Arai's Formula
One department in the Hyper
Ridge, which is a step in the shell
designed to stop cracks that can
The Next Step
Once our shell has had the eye-port cut out (the only part of the pro-
cess to be done entirely by machine), been through the baking process,
and passed the two rigorous inspections, it's then shipped to paint.
The painting process involves 10-15 steps, depending on the model
being created. These include an initial hand buffing and primer coat-
ing, another trip to the oven for a bake, and three different stages of
wet sanding, all of which get their own primer. The labor required to
produce just one helmet is immense, with the initial base paint taking
three days per color—one for masking, one for painting and sanding,
and one to layout the water graphics.
