Aquila push forward development of impact protection gloves

By OEM Update Editorial May 9, 2019 4:37 pm IST

One of the market’s leading glove manufacturer Aquila have long recognised that injuries caused to hands are not confined to the palm of the hand or fingers, but also the back of the hands where hazards can lead to painful injuries with time lost from work, which is expensive for both workers and employers. This has led to their focus on Impact Protection gloves as an integral part of an all-round hand protection strategy.

In gloves, along with comfort goes performance – the ability to absorb impacts and prevent injuries to the fingers/back of hand is inextricably linked to other factors such as providing a suitable grip on the palm/finger area. This means that it is important to carefully match the glove to the specific tasks together with other requirements such as back of the hand protection, wrist security, and good grip in oil, mud or other fluids.

TPE/TRP is excellent for impact protection, but is expensive compared to much cheaper and lower performing PVC as used in extreme low-cost items where the result is some 20-30 per cent cheaper to make, but the trade-offs are that PVC rapidly age hardens leading to hard, brittle protection, increased hand fatigue, less flexibility and sometimes resulting in injury after long hours of wearing.

When looking at the many widely varying applications to be found in industries such as oil and gas, utilities, mining, vehicles, or materials handling we see that over and above the specific impact resistance, gloves are usually required to offer more complex characteristics in combination e.g. Impact resistance with:

– Cut resistance
– High visibility colouration
– Wrist protection
– Secure retention
– High grip finger/palm area,
e.g. coated with sand nitrile
– Thermally insulated