SupaSnail

Thanks for your understanding and wishes! I showed our engineers what PhreeZone attached, but they told me they can't understand from the documents if PA6 or PA66 (if any of these) is used in the production... Does anyone know this info?

I was aware that it's a parachute and that it's a tricky thing to manufacture, but I had no idea it was this bad. You actually made me a little bit scared and, rest assured, I will have your words in my mind throughout my next couple of jumps :D Based on the feel of your post where your implying I'm just trying to sell something I will take it with some respect and will remain confident in my parachute (although, again, your post made my knees a little bit weak with what I'm actually trying to save my life from falling 1000 meters into the ground). In any case, yes, I work for a company that could be classified as a potential supplier. But, I work in IT for a child company of our international company and our marketing department barely noticed my idea. In fact, I have so many over time hours this would be my compensation, if it would make sense in terms of money. Yes, surely, I would place my company logos onto parachute and pray to god they would decide to place my pictures in their commercial material as this would only promote the sport that is not getting enough correct attention in any case. In any case, the field is just too small for our company to be of any real interest. We make... I don't know exactly how much, but based on the number of trucks that pass through our (one of some 10-15 worldwide) company I would say we are speaking in thousand upon thousands of tons of the nylon each year. I'm thinking 1 ton of nylon can satisfy a huge amount of yearly need for sport parachuting - just for comparison. I can understand your feeling, but hey, look at it from the bright side. Every now and than there really might be just a guy with a "good" idea that does not have profit as the main reason. As I already wrote, I need something to fire up my superiors to buy me a rig and was just thinking this might be a nice chance. Great post though! It seems to explain the "what am I missing" part... In any case I have a bad feeling already without it, as I know we are producing only the 6 and 66 yarn while post above me is mentioning a 69. Enjoy & bs!

Thanks for the info!

It doesn't seem like he's looking for a production run, just for assistance building a one-off to see how the material performs. Exactly! We are not a "made in China" cooperation searching for new customers. Even though, if there would be interest we make enough of material every year that could probably sew all the parachutes in the world :)

Yes (please excuse my lack of English - I assume bolt of fabric is the same as bobbin of fabric (http://sewthisandthat.com.au/technically-speaking-bobbin-along/)). If I was a supply manager at PD or any other of the big companies, I'd welcome a new serious supplier. Normally, canopy fabric is not very high up the fabric's manufacturers lists of priorities, so someone new may be interesting to them. You or your marketing people should contact them. You never know. I wrote to the general contact ([email protected]), maybe this was the problem - there was no response whatsoever. I don't know any of the managers...

And the parachute manufacturers have invested years and huge amounts of money into their own R&D processes, and have corporate strategies and goals that (right now) may not include any modifications to the fabric they use or the suppliers of said fabric. It's not that they're not interested in changes. Both PD and Aerodyne, for example, have come out with innovative new fabrics in the last few years (PD's Optimum fabric, Aerodyne's ZPX fabric). It may be that their corporate focus is now elsewhere, on different things and they're not going to just devote their resources to the investigation of your fabric as a viable option just because you think they should. Sure, I understand it's not that simple (also I'm not blaming anybody for "not wanting to talk to me" if it sounded in that way). I was just interested in what I was missing... As I understood our engineers a yarn with exact specification to another yarn is - the same yarn :) I don't need ZPX - I can imagine aerodyne is not keen in letting us know exactly how they made it. I'm actually satisfied with F-111 "formula", which I suppose, is not that big of a secret anymore?

Yes (please excuse my lack of English - I assume bolt of fabric is the same as bobbin of fabric (http://sewthisandthat.com.au/technically-speaking-bobbin-along/)).

We don't need any advantages, were just interested in using canopy built from our yarn as marketing... Can you give a rough estimate into what it would cost to test "new" material (built upon exact specification of manufacturer)? I can imagine PD or Icarus would be bored with this idea as they might feel there is no actual gain for them (even though they could AT LEAST learn from experience for free), but maybe some smaller manufacturer would be interested... In fact, this polyamide is made from 100% recycled material so I'm pretty confident it could be classified at least as a "project of achievement". As said, our engineers assured me it's 100% the same as "original" polyamide. We invested years and huge amounts of money into making it in this way :)

Idea is that manufacturer of parachute fabric (yarn that canopy is made from) would use our material instead of its original supplier. Manufacturer of parachute would give exact specification yarn must achieve and we would produce it. We make tons of this stuff in huge varieties every day. As said, our engineers felt confident we can produce it to exact specifications. Thanks (specially for the link to the document)!

I work for a company that produces polyamide yarn. Company engineers told me that probably we can produce a yarn suitable for parachute production and managers seemed interested in sponsoring a parachute made from our material. Problem is that I can't seem to find any manufacturer willing to even discuss this idea with me. Am I missing something? I do assume it's not a top secret information to know what type of yarn you need to sew a parachute? Anyone able to help? Enjoy & bs