If you were to encounter the phrases “500 lbf”, “thousands of impacts”, “impact-resistant fibre”, and “fire resistant”, what would you think of? You might think of mixed martial arts, or another high intensity contact sport. You might think of an extreme sport like street luge, or maybe of high durability clothing for a dangerous application, like firefighting. Perhaps surprisingly, the true application of these specs is in our impact screen mesh… for golf simulation. Yes, you read that correctly – golf simulation.
That material that repeatedly catches your golf practice strokes is more highly engineered than you might imagine. When you realize that the momentum of a golf ball can approach that of a 0.22 caliber bullet just fired from a rifle, you begin to understand why we manufacture our mesh to such stringent specifications. In addition to the strength of the material, it needs to possess similarly stringent aesthetic properties to be able to display an image capable of realistically simulating the greens and open fairways of your favorite golf course. This is why we use a particularly bright-lustered yarn with a high reflective gain. Other safety specs of our impact screen mesh include fire resistant testing (NFPA 701 Test 2), and a finish that allows the ball to hit the screen and drop to the floor safely, thousands of times, with no breaks.
So the next time you line up a great drive at the simulator, rest assured that science and technology are supporting your golf game, so you can focus on perfecting the art.