SupaSnail

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Now things start to make a little more sence.

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?

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Honestly it kind of sound like a Gee whiz idea come up with by some guy in your marketing department. I'm not saying that there isn't room in the industry for you but you make it sound like this whole idea of branching into a new industry is based on a one time marketing idea to promote your company as a whole. This approach does not exactly inspire confodence in an industry that has been plaged by quality control problems. It's a bussness based on trust between companies that have been doing business with each other for many years. And frankly it's taken that long for every one to get each other "trained" to meet our needs.

There's history here that you're probable not aware of. This industry has been plagued by problems some going all the way back to the very yarn it self. I'll give you a few examples off the top of my head.

Mystery Bulk. This was in fact a yarn problem. We'd been buliding canopies for years. Every thing was butter flys and bright sunny days. Then our of the blue suddenly the canopies will not fit in the containers. I mean you can't pack them. A Raven I, that's a canopy, fits into a Vector II size xx, that's the container. But now some one orders a new system, brand new in the box, and pays a lot of money for it. Doesn't fit. No way. Rigger can't pack it, he can't jump it, he's screwed. So just go out and buy the next smaller canopy you say. Not only is this a good peace of change but it's SMALLER I know you're a Woofoo, look it up do a search, but you don't want to jump too small of a canopy, it's a safty issue. Can't sell the canopy to some one else. They don't want to jump a larger rig then they have to for that size canopy, big bricks on your back suck. Every ones pissed. It was the yarn. And it proliferated through the whole supply chain. It was a big deal by the time it was caught. But that could never happion with us you say. The suppiers in question had been weaving this same product for years. They were established. They were good. We're talking tighter tollerances then you've ever worked with. It was a rude awakening for us all. And it's still there. Not as bad as the event that I refer to but canopies are still not equal and some times you get a system in that was only supposed to be tight and you just can't pack it.

I'll give you another example. This doesn't applie dirrectly to you but I'll through it out there any ways. Canopy fabric is not just fabric. It's actually specal. It's almost magic. Or it had better be other wise the "magic" will not be there in the canopy. Now the lack of this can manifest it self in a number of ways ranging from really anoying to death. Yes I said death and I've got a whole list, longer then my fingers and tows of friends that are dead. I'll give you some examples.

Canopy turns with no toggel in put. It's like a car that just pulls to the right all the time. This can range from very annoying to barely controlable. This can be a fabric issue. The fabric of a canopy has to bee almost like the wood of a base ball bat. The tree that it's taken from has to be grown from a seed from the very begening to be a bat or it will crack. Another example is a violin. You can't just make it out of any wood. In this eample the problem is in the weave. The fabric must be straight. The fill fibers must be 90 deg to the warp of the fabric. This is really an issue with the mill that weaves it but you're asking them to comit to a run in which they will have to learn how to do this with a compleatly new yarn that they are not familure with. Yes I know. What ever specs they want. Well the specs and qc are really fucking tight and if the run, they tend to be long, doesn't come out perfect they will not be able to sell it. Canopy manufacterers have run a 60% rejection rate at times.

Perrosity and weave. Perrosity is a big deal. How tight it is and how well it maintains it's tightness. This is an issue with it's flight caricteristics. It can make a noticable diffrence in performance. It can even be a safety issue. Designs have become more extreame with smaller inlets. Perrosity in the fabric and the seams can affect the stability of the airfoil. I'm not talking about a minor change in performance. I'm talking about a catistofic leading edge collaps ending in a fatality. Even just the air leakage through the seams as the ribs pull on the seams over time opening up the sewn holes can lead to problems. Part of this is a weave thing but there work depends on your yarn. And people would be hessetant to put an unknown yarn into the system.

And all of this is based on your wish to do a one time promotion for your product. Or at least that's how you make it sound. Don't get me wrong. Every one is always looking for new suppliers. But if you want to work in this industry you might want to try approaching them honestly about makeing a serious comitment to working with them in this market. Not some cheap promotonal gimmic that your sales depart ment came up with.

Lee

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!

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If you are making thread here is the specs that are typically used: E sized Thread

Size 69 Nylon is a middleweight thread typically used for sewing leather, lightweight upholstery fabric, canvas, and vinyl. Stitching, with a size 16 or 18 needle, is noticeable. This size is also known as Tex 70 and Government Size E. It has an 11 lb. (5.0 kilo) tensile strength; a 0.115 in. (0.2921 mm) diameter; and gives about 6,000 yards (5,480 meters) per pound.


In terms of some of the other materials like the lines and the canopy fabric we have PIA that holds all the Military level specs for those materials since a lot of the materials are used in military items and they have very specific specs.

http://pia.com/

http://www.pia.com/shopcord.htm
http://www.pia.com/shopcloth.htm

Thanks for the info!

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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.

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 :)

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So you would manufacture the bolt(s) of fabric and just send them off to be sewn?

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...

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We invested years and huge amounts of money into making it in this way :)

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?

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So you would manufacture the bolt(s) of fabric and just send them off to be sewn?

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/)).

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What advantages will your new yarn have over the materials currently in use? The answers to that question is what may or may not sway the manufacturers into testing it. It takes a chunk of $$ to test new materials.

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 :)

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What part would your yarn be used for?

Are you wanting to weave the yarn into the fabric the canopy is made from?
Or use it as thread to sew the canopy together?
Or use it for the suspension lines?

The answer to that will allow better answers as to why nobody wants to talk to you.

There's a "Top Secret" book with a lot of info about parachutes, their construction and composition.

It's called "The Parachute Manual." Most often referred to as "Poynter" (the author).

http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/parachute/information/parachutes.cfm

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